I care if the President of the United States has a corrupt relationship with the Russian government. https://t.co/ajT8ys9xgN pic.twitter.com/A8v89BcZe1
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) January 21, 2018
What committed activist could resist the lure of a long-form profile in a glossy NYC-based magazine, nestled between full-page ads for Rolex watches and Broadway hits? Unfortunately, despite Simon van Zuylen-Wood’s best beat-sweetening efforts, Greenwald’s logorrheic arrogance and simmering resentment of all the mundanes who fail to appreciate his brilliance make him sound less like Andrew Sullivan and more like Ted Cruz:
It’s 10:45 p.m. Rio de Janeiro time. Glenn Greenwald and I are finishing dinner at a deserted bistro in Ipanema. The restaurant, which serves its sweating beer bottles in metal buckets and goes heavy on the protein, is almost aggressively unremarkable (English menus on the table, a bossa-nova version of “Hey Jude” on the stereo). Greenwald avoids both meat and alcohol but seems to enjoy dining here. “I really believe that if I still lived in New York, the vast majority of my friends would be New York and Washington media people and I would kind of be implicitly co-opted.” He eats a panko-crusted shrimp. “It just gives me this huge buffer. You’ve seen how I live, right? When I leave my computer, that world disappears.”
Greenwald, now 50, has seemed to live in his own bubble in Rio for years, since well before he published Edward Snowden’s leaks and broke the domestic-spying story in 2013 — landing himself a Pulitzer Prize, a book deal, and, in time, the backing of a billionaire (that’s Pierre Omidyar) to start a muckraking, shit-stirring media empire (that’s First Look Media, home to the Intercept, though its ambitions have been downgraded over time). But he seems even more on his own since the election, just as the agitated left has regained the momentum it lost in the Obama years.
The reason is Russia. For the better part of two years, Greenwald has resisted the nagging bipartisan suspicion that Trumpworld is in one way or another compromised by a meddling foreign power. If there’s a conspiracy, he suspects, it’s one against the president; where others see collusion, he sees “McCarthyism.” Greenwald is predisposed to righteous posturing and contrarian eye-poking — and reflexively more skeptical of the U.S. intelligence community than of those it tells us to see as “enemies.”…
Thanks to this never-ending hot take, Greenwald has been excommunicated from the liberal salons that celebrated him in the Snowden era; anybody who questions the Russia consensus, he says, “becomes a blasphemer. Becomes a heretic. I think that’s what they see me as.” Greenwald is no longer invited on MSNBC, and he’s portrayed in the Twitter fever swamp as a leading villain of the self-styled Resistance. “I used to be really good friends with Rachel Maddow,” he says. “And I’ve seen her devolution from this really interesting, really smart, independent thinker into this utterly scripted, intellectually dishonest, partisan hack.” His view of the liberal online media is equally charitable. “Think about one interesting, creative, like, intellectually novel thing that [Vox’s] Matt Yglesias or Ezra Klein have said in like ten years,” he says. “In general, they’re just churning out Democratic Party agitprop every single day of the most superficial type.” (Reached for comment, none of these people would respond to Greenwald.)
All this has led to one of the less-anticipated developments of the Donald Trump presidency: Glenn Greenwald, Fox News darling. For his sins, Greenwald has been embraced by opportunistic #MAGA partisans seeking to discredit the Trump-Russia story. When alt-right ringleader Mike Cernovich sat for a 60 Minutes interview last year, he praised only one journalist: Greenwald. “My opinion of Glenn ten or 15 years ago was entirely negative,” says Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who now heralds him as one of the “clearest thinkers” in media.
This, by the way, is the reason we’re eating dinner so late on a Tuesday: Greenwald has to be at a TV studio in a few minutes to be interviewed by Carlson. We leave the restaurant and head across the street to the garage where he parked his Mitsubishi Outlander. Unexpectedly, the gate to the entrance has been shut and the attendant is missing. Mild panic sets in. Greenwald begins rattling the gate. Even if we catch a cab to the studio, his TV clothes are in the car, and he is currently wearing shorts and an old polo shirt. “How,” he frets, “can I go on Fox News dressed like this?”…
Greenwald’s home is located on a dead-end cobblestone street, under a thick canopy of trees, a few miles inland from Ipanema Beach. The grounds are large enough to comfortably accommodate Greenwald; his husband, David Miranda; their two recently adopted children; household staff; 24 formerly stray dogs; and some dog poop, which, when I visit the day before his appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight, I step in.Greenwald greets me in his cathedral-like living room dressed in his usual shorts and polo. When I joke that he lives in a gated community — a guard in a booth controls access to the street — he seems wounded and explains that he could afford the place only because the recent Brazilian recession had devastated Rio’s housing market. He plays coy when I ask him who owned the house previously. “I think it was some hedge-fund pig,” he says…
Greenwald grew up near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was closeted in high school and cultivated a rebel iconoclasm to cope. “One of the strategies you can develop is, I’m never going to be weak,” he says. “I’m always gonna be smarter and stronger and more aggressive.” Comparing himself to the titular character in the mockumentary American Vandal, he says he once prompted a schoolwide investigation by spray-painting the walls with “extremely offensive profanities about individual students and teachers.” “He was always warring with the administration, warring with teachers,” says his friend and former classmate Norman Fleisher. Instead of schoolwork, he devoted himself to the competitive-debate circuit and, in his senior year, to a failed bid for the Lauderdale Lakes City Council. He squeaked into George Washington University, where he majored in philosophy — Nietzsche — and again poured all his energy into debate…
[I wonder if he and Ted Cruz ever crossed paths on the competitive-debate circuit?]
… In 2014, Omidyar, the founder of eBay, poured $250 million into a news organization called First Look Media and handed Greenwald the keys. One of Greenwald’s collaborators on the Snowden story, the documentarian Laura Poitras, made a movie about the experience, Citizenfour, in which Greenwald was something of a second star. In 2015, it won the Oscar for Best Documentary, which Greenwald says he could not enjoy because host Neil Patrick Harris joked that “Snowden couldn’t be here for some treason.” At an after-party that night, a BuzzFeed reporter asked him about it. “I’m like, ‘I’m really trying hard not to say anything about it,’ ” Greenwald recalls. “And they’re like, ‘No, but you must have an opinion on it,’ and I was like, ‘Neil Patrick Harris is a fucking moron, and that joke was completely idiotic and offensive.’ ” (For the record, Snowden thought it was funny.)…
The week I visit Greenwald in Rio, the news out of the D.C.-Moscow gyre is the indictment of three Trump-campaign aides: Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, and Manafort. Sitting at Greenwald’s dining-room table, as a little dog named Kane molests a bigger dog named Enzo, I make the mistake of suggesting this is a “huge” development. Greenwald is ready for me before I finish my sentence.
“Have they been huge?” he pounces, answering his own question. “I mean, I guess they’ve been huge in the sense that Donald Trump’s former campaign manager was indicted on multiple felony charges, right? That’s inherently huge, but it’s not particularly huge for the Russia story, because all the charges leveled against Manafort were unrelated to questions of collusion with the Russians.” Fair enough, but Papadopoulos’s arrest was in fact related to the question of collusion. Greenwald waves this away. “They had all these kind of losers who weren’t even in the Trump campaign,” he says. “You know, these charlatans who were constantly puffing up their résumés, who come from the shittiest schools and have no significant experience.” He continues: “What happened this week, for me, is exactly what I’ve been expecting all along.”…
Greenwald’s half-a-million-dollar Intercept salary reflects his role as the founder and figurehead of the organization. But since the Snowden revelations, Greenwald hasn’t done much original reporting, and he has lately repositioned himself as a bomb-throwing media critic. This is in some ways a natural role for him, one that harks back to his early blogging days. “His general default position is that we shouldn’t believe anything the elite Establishment politicians are saying without fact-checking them,” says Jeremy Scahill, his Intercept co-founder. “We certainly shouldn’t believe the anonymous proclamations of CIA, NSA, FBI officials.”…
To listen to intelligence veterans, there is also a defensive aspect to Greenwald’s collusion skepticism. “You really cannot dismiss as part of his motivation the way in which this new story is undermining the very things that he made his reputation on,” says cybersecurity expert Stewart Baker, a former NSA general counsel. “Which is: embracing WikiLeaks and Snowden and a hostility to the idea that there are national-security threats the U.S. has to respond to.”…
Which makes his lack of interest in a report the Intercept itself produced all the more curious. In June, it published an explosive story that Russia had attempted to infiltrate voter-registration systems days before the election by sending phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials. The information came from a leaked NSA report; shortly before the Intercept published its story, a Georgia NSA employee named Reality Winner was arrested on espionage charges. Almost immediately, the Intercept was accused of exposing Winner with its own sloppy methods. But the scoop itself represented one of the first credible claims that, more than trying to influence American voters, Russia may have been directly targeting election technology. Greenwald distanced himself from the bungled leak at the time and now says he doesn’t buy the story outright. “I never liked the story. I thought it was bullshit and knew it was going to be huge in a way that was totally unjustified in what it actually revealed,” he says. “I think it tried to overstate the importance of what that document was.”…
To be catty: Glenn Greenwald has a vast sympathy for willowy young men with sensitive mouths. Square-jawed frauleins in hiking boots, not so much. (To be fair, many extremely heterosexual civil-libertarian men tend to prefer the company of their brothers — misogyny is gender-neutral, in that sense.)
But regardless of how soon or how thoroughly his hand-waving dismissals of Russian election tampering are debunked, this profile makes it seem like Greenwald will never return to the United States. He’s got a nice life and a happy family in his walled compound, and presumably he’s tucking a chunk of those Omidyar dollars away against a change in the prevailing political winds. And as a libertarian, isn’t that all he really ever wanted?
Betteridge's law of headlines definitely at play here. ?? pic.twitter.com/YeiXeREYei
— Smelodies (@SmelOdiesOG) January 21, 2018
Betteridge’s law of headlines is one name for an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist, although the principle is much older.
Patricia Kayden
Glad that Greenwald is no longer invited to be on MSNBC. Thank goodness for small mercies. He’s obnoxious and his Russia apologia is pathetic. Will be fun to watch his reaction to Mueller’s findings though.
Mike J
“I thought you were going to say this was one of the most beautiful girls. What about these others?”
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4710759/senate-hot-mic
Aleta
in Ipanema ?
Ipanema sounds like an anti-euphoric medication to me now.
sharl
LOL, I want a refund of the time I spent reading that piece. Nothing new or worthwhile in it. Greenwald loved the piece, but hated the title; neither is surprising.
The title doesn’t match the content at all. Was the editor who titled it thinking of maximizing hate clicks? Or maybe protesting the piece’s content? Who knows??? I first thought it would be a hit piece based on that title, but as you noted, Betteridge’s Law of Headlines and all that… In any event, it’s way past time for Glennzilla to fade into obscurity.
Redshift
Christ, what an asshole.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Griftwalds = White Supremacist
Who represents Nazis for 5 years for free. Especially someone as greedy as Griftwald. (link)
KickBoxBanana
I don’t understand why you people never seem to get it.
When these grifters are always heading in the most lucrative direction of the poltical winds don’t you think that is a huge red flag? Anyone who now thinks J Rubin is awesome and who might still think Griftwald is awesome (or ever was) is a fool! These people are grifters. Nothing more.
Corner Stone
Wait a second. Greenwald is 50?! That’s it. I’m taking my willowy body and sensitive mouth to greener pastures!
JR
In our French Revolution timeline, is Greenwald the Comte de Mirabeau? He’s nowhere near the speechifier. Did the Austrians have trolls back then?
geg6
I read this and found the underlying tone pretty hilarious. Really exposes him for the privileged fucking asshole that he is. Arrogant, hypocritical and narcissistic. I laughed and laughed.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
foh with that bullshit, Glenn
Aardvark Cheeselog
Greenwald is a total dick. The world would be a better place if everyone emulated Maddow, Klein et. al and just ignored him.
mad citizen
I was reading this and had to quit from boredom 4-5 paragraphs in. How is this dude “in the arena” from Argentina?
SiubhanDuinne
I so want him to be
subjected toplagued by a DOS attack.cmorenc
@Patricia Kayden:
Most of us won’t give a shit what deflections / denials / apologia Greenwald spins out of pure shit in reaction to the eventual release of Mueller’s findings. Greenwald exemplifies Upton Sinclair’s famous maxim: ““It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – and what exactly is Greenwald’s billionaire backer for Greenwald’s publication paying him to understand or not about Mueller?
chopper
dude it’s fox. you can go on camera wearing a garbage bag as long as you tell them what they want to hear.
opiejeanne
@Redshift: Well said.
The comment just under yours informs/reminds us just how awful he really is.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Patricia Kayden: why was he banned from msnbc?
Mnemosyne
Wonkette’s take is pretty hilarious.
Omnes Omnibus
@mad citizen: Argentina and Brazil are not the same place.
Gin & Tonic
He makes a half-mil for that crap? There truly is no justice.
Mary G
@geg6: I agree, I was thinking whole time, what an asshole, doesn’t he see how he’s going to come across? I read somewhere that GG thought the whole article was a hit job, and that seemed right to me. He lives in a “hedge-fund pig’s” house, that makes him a pig.
Also, too, nobody there picks up the poop from 24 dogs. That’s just gross. They have a whole “household staff,” surely there’s enough money and room to hire some poor person to do the dooty,
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: But they share a border. Take that, smart guy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: I know enough about futbol to make sure I don’t confuzzle them.
Yarrow
@Mary G: With 24 dogs I could imagine that even if some staff members are given poop scooper duties that a few piles of dog poop could be missed. That would be a lot to keep up with.
randy khan
I know that Greenwald moved to Brazil because his partner was unable to emigrate to the U.S. in the days when it was hard for gay people to get green cards, and so I have some empathy for his decision to keep living there. But I do think that the distance and, well, isolation, makes it easier for him to build a theoretical U.S. based on his preconceived notions, rather than on what’s actually happening here.
Also, he’s extraordinarily invested in his own self-regard. Okay, that’s probably the dominant factor.
Adam L Silverman
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Especially someone who is both Jewish and gay, both of which are abhorrent to American neo-NAZIs.
opiejeanne
@Mary G: 24 dogs, maybe the staff just hadn’t caught up with all of the poop produced overnight.
Patricia Kayden
Not sure. I’m going by the highlighted article where he makes that claim. He certainly seems to hate Rachel Maddow and others from that network so it would probably be awkward for him to be on any of the MSNBC shows where the Russian investigation is taken seriously.
Mnemosyne
I’m not the only one who suspects that the “hedge-fund pig” who sold the house at such a bargain price will turn out to be a Russian oligarch, right?
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Mary G: I hope they’re all vaccinated, at least.
Then again, maybe not.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Not the only one. Seems like that wouldn’t be that difficult of a detail to track down.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Drug dealer.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: Heh. I was just about to go digging for that.
Patricia Kayden
@Mnemosyne: That would explain Greenwakd’s pro-Russia stance even in the face of overwhelming evidence of its interference with our presidential election. Dying for him to be exposed. Then he can go away.
opiejeanne
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: He may not be banned, exactly. Just not invited because why would they want to?
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
They tend to hide behind a bunch of legal red tape, so it would probably be difficult for an American reporter to uncover. I hope some enterprising Brazilian journalist gets curious enough to look into it.
@Adam L Silverman:
Also possible, particularly since Greenwald seems (at best) naive about exactly what types of people own those homes in places like Brazil.
Adam L Silverman
Oopsie!
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Mnemosyne: I used to think he was just an useful idiot, but when out of the blue he started attacking Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, who the Putin hates so much he banned her from entering russia, I started to think he’s following orders, and not simply a fellow traveler.
Ben Cisco
To hell with Griftwald, that racist, misogynist sack of crap.
efgoldman
Why the fuck does anyone give a flying fuck what Putin’s puppet Greenwald thinks about any goddamned thing?
He moves no votes. The leftier-than-thous over whom he may have influence don’t vote, and don’t care or give a shit about winning elections. If his magazine were made from dead trees instead of pixels it would properly go straight to the recycle bin.
Fuckem
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: With the right incentives, such information can be found. Brazil is kind of struggling, so I don’t know how things are going there. Some neighbors were working there for a several years and moved back. Said it had gotten dangerous in Rio.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: How do you really feel?
ruemara
His lovely husband. Whom he started dating when said husband was 19 and he was 38. Squick. Moves like Woody Allen.
Omnes Omnibus
@ruemara: George Clooney is 18 years older than his wife.
eemom
Would be awesome if he showed up now to smite us all with his mighty wrath, like he’s done in past threads of which he was the subject. Is there some way to “tag” him?
ruemara
@Omnes Omnibus: Did he start dating her when she was 19?
@eemom: Ugh, please dear goddes no.
Jay
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Freeland has “issues”. Her “Gramps” was not a “anti-Nazi Cold War Refugee”, as she claimed, but instead, a UAN-UPO member, organizer, who when the war in Ukraine got hot, relocated to Occupied Poland where he made his living publishing a Nazi Rag and railing on about “The Jews”.
As we saw most publically with the Croat refugee community during the Yugoslav break up, a lot of the post war Refugee’s Canada took in, based on their anti-Communism, never left their Nazism behind.
No Drought No More
At this point, God alone knows how many Americans have been corrupted by Russia.
That is, beyond the number now employed in the White House, and the precise number of republicans in congress so compromised (it being likely both God and Mueller’s investigators each know that tally).
Greenwald is a base turncoat to be spewing such un-American rubbish. His reputation as a fool and tool can never be rehabilitated now. Barring a confession from the idiot (of having committed an egregious error of judgement), he will hereafter be remembered, if at all, as a genuine American villain. My best advice to all those annoyed by his ugly schtick is all too self evident: tune him out, he’s not worth the aggravation. Remember life before you ever heard of the miserable fuck, and then ask yourself: why on earth did you ever begin to care in the first place?
Amaranthine RBG
Why don’t you just call him a faggot?
opiejeanne
@eemom: Greenwald? Here?
David Fud
I used to think Greenwald was interesting. Not sure where that guy went. Wasn’t that him that left a huge angry skid mark across the comments in this blog? People make jokes about Soros bucks, but Greenwald hit it big with Omidyar. I wonder where one has to surrender their integrity to cash in on that revenue stream.
Amaranthine RBG
The ACLU, for one.
danielx
That would probably be prudent on Greenwald’s part.
Mnemosyne
@Jay:
So what does Greenwald have against her? He has a long history of defending neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
danielx
@David Fud:
Been searching for it for years; I’m not cheap but I can be had.
Bailey
@Patricia Kayden:
He has to be skeptical of the Russia story. Aside from being an Assange cheerleader, his entire claim to fame is Snowden–if it turns out that Snowden is nothing but a stooge for Putin (He is, but, I’m sure there are still some who worship him)–and the Russia story comes crashing down, Greenwald is done. Of course he downplays it.
I’d be curious to know what Matt Tiabi’s hangup is on the matter, though.
Omnes Omnibus
@ruemara: GG and his spouse were both legal adults. I won’t attack him on those grounds.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
White dudebros gotta stick together, eh, comrade?
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
She took to the gate against Russia and the Russian-Ukrainians in the Ukraine from day one.
Purity trolls don’t do nuance, or history, or economics.
Freeland and Greenwald are on opposite extremes on the issues there.
MomSense
@Bailey:
Taibbi spent some drug and sex fueled time in Russia. I’d link to his article about it but once through that sexist, juvenile mess was enough for me.
Jay
@Bailey:
I still give Snowden the benifit of the doubt, ( Bush Years), but Assange has shown himself for whom he is.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: Snowden was a planned Russian op.
Mnemosyne
@Jay:
Yeah, I suspected it would be over Ukraine.
Adam L Silverman
And look who has decided to run interference for Ms. Manning:
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Jay: Freeland is an extremist for opposing Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Are you saying Griftwald supported that?
Matt McIrvin
@efgoldman: I know Democratic-voting liberals who are just now starting to realize that Greenwald and Julian Assange might not be worth listening to.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Maybe, maybe not.
Snowdon’s principal damage was to the US’s “Shining City on the Hill” mythology,
Not dead spies, blown ops, NSA/CIA cryptosabotage tools released into the wilds.
The only difference between Snowdon and Winner is how Glen treated them, one he helped escape, the other, he betrayed.
FlipYrWhig
I love how the guy whose whole shtick is the most smug, tired Holden Caulfield-esque “everyone’s a phony but me because I have principles, interesting ones!” an act seen in politics repeatedly for decades (e.g. Nat Hentoff, Christopher Hitchens, Alexander Cockburn) if not centuries, nonetheless thinks he’s brash, unconventional, and unique.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Drumpf repeatedly called for Snowden’s “execution” and yet he was offering his support for Putin’s candidate. What a coincidence.
chris
@Mnemosyne:
She likes Russia and speaks the language, she does not like Putin at all.
Adria McDowell
GG is the epitome of a BernieBro.
@Adam L Silverman: LOL, sure she did.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: What new illegal activities did Snowden expose?
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: You are wrong. I will provide open source news reporting on this. Beyond that I will say no more. Do not ask me to.
https://www.geekwire.com/2016/edward-snowden-boss-steven-bay-speaks/
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/intel-heads-edward-snowden-profound-damage-us-security/story?id=22285388
Adria McDowell
“Confronting”? SureJan.gif
https://mobile.twitter.com/yashar/status/955169542757666816
PJ
@FlipYrWhig: I’m not sure about Hentoff, I don’t recall him talking about himself, and I never read Cockburn, but what Greenwald and Hitchens have in common is their devotion to their massive egos above all else.
Jay
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Freeland wasn’t in office when Russia aided the Novarussian’s against the Kiev Coup.
But, shortly after coming into office, she promoted Russian Sanctions, ( good), and arming and training Nazi’s, ( bad).
Not the Ukrainian Army, the Nazi groups.
During the last Nazi resurgence in Canada, (80’s and ’90’s), Croatian Social Clubs and Churchs, became a hotbed of Nazi reorganizing and promotion. During the dissolution of Yugoslavia, they held fundraisers to buy weapons for the Croat Nationalists, to kill Canadian Peacekeepers, supplied many of the most extremist Croat leaders, ( 27 convicted war criminals).
Aleta
@Omnes Omnibus:
Legal adults, yes. A definition that depends on where you are. Fwiw: Some newer ideas about the brains of adults vs teens:
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=3051
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s pretty much the schtick of white libertarians everywhere. I’m so hip and edgy that I make racist jokes that Henny Youngman would have found old-fashioned!
Mandalay
@Adam L Silverman: You are offering Clapper as a reliable source of information?! Not sure if serious.
Bailey
@Jay:
I don’t. The dude went straight to Russia and then participated in some truly ghastly Putin dog and pony shows. They’re not keeping him there for his charming personality.
Adam L Silverman
@Mandalay: I am very serious.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Way too much political posturing in public statements by Administrations in the US. I don’t have access to the “non-public” records, ( might if I live another 50-100 years), but history shows that one takes many “real time” “US Official Claims”, with a couple of cups of salt. Too many “Team B’s”, and now that so much of the US Intelligence “network” is subcontracted to Corporations, more so.
Glenn and Julien have clearly exposed themselves, IMHO, for me, the “book” is still out on Snowdon.
Omnes Omnibus
@Aleta: Gosh, you are right. What a shit GG is.
Everyone is different. I won’t attack him on this front. You can do what you want. Judge me if you choose.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: Going to need more than this.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
US and 5Eyes survelliance of pretty much everything, went far beyond what was legally authorized.
Anne Laurie
@Bailey:
FWIW, there are commentors to the NYMag article positing that Greenwald is being ‘blackmailed’ into supporting Russia because Putin’s holding Snowden hostage. Which would’ve been believable, somewhat, back around 2014…
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: I don’t mean to seem rude here, but you are aware of what I do for a living?
Jay
@Bailey:
Nope, they arn’t, but he wasn’t supposed to wind up in Russia.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I can no longer tell when you’re joking, trolling, or being serious.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Yes.
I am also aware that if you provided what you have access to, to try to prove your point, you would go to jail.
I am also aware that “people like you”, also don’t get to see everything.
Team B dude, 3 times.
patroclus
My opinion of what Dear Leader Greenwald thinks, says and writes (since 2007ish) is not positive at all, but I will admit that he was on fire from roughly 2005 to 2007 and I think he did earn that Pulitzer. And I’m not all that inclined to gratuitously insult him (although mocking his opinions is fun). What I remember especially about GG is all the food fights he spawned on this very blog back when Cole was one of his biggest fanbois. Cole knew that Dear Leader’s very name could almost always trigger a clickbaiting TBogg and he routinely trolled his own blog. Fun times!
Now, I could not care less about the Dear Leader and I expect that he’ll grift away and then fade away into obscurity. I think David Horowitz is the best comparison – as a kid, I loved Ramparts. Since roughly 1980, he’s been mostly worthless.
Mandalay
@Aleta: You’re citing something with no author which was reviewed by a RN and an MD? Perhaps you should let GG and his partner know that their loving relationship for the past 12 years has been a mistake!
Your post says way more about you than it does about GG.
Jay
@Anne Laurie:
nope, Glen only cares about Glen.
eemom
@opiejeanne:
Yup. He used to be friends with Cole. (Maybe still is for all I know.)
It was hilarious. He is no less than Trumpian in his all encompassing self adoration, paper thin skin, and furious invective hurled at anyone who doesn’t kiss his ass.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Sources?
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: He was. He wasn’t supposed to wind up anywhere else.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/report-snowden-stayed-at-russian-consulate-while-in-hong-kong/2013/08/26/8237cf9a-0e39-11e3-a2b3-5e107edf9897_story.html?utm_term=.e01e17e2bde7
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Try wiki
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: Perhaps you’ll take the word of former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin?
https://venturebeat.com/2014/05/22/former-kgb-general-snowden-is-cooperating-with-russian-intelligence/
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Darling boy, you are making claims. I am asking you to support them. Can you?
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Define friends.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
What am I, a philosopher?
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: No, you tend to be an asshole.
JerryRich
@ruemara: If he did, so what?
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Adam, I love what you write here, it’s one of the reason’s I hit several times a day, but I also read a lot, from Emptywheel, through Digby, and the Rectification of Names.
I’m also old. I remember the Pentagon Papers, and not as history.
I was also one of the Fulda Gap “guys”, because I had passible Russian, German and Polish.
For now, Snowden’s in the “unconfirmed file”, including the category of “Usefull Idiot”,
Funny thing is, so am I. Environmental activism in the 80’s and ’90’s really garnered some “weird” National Security claims. All I wanted was clean drinking water and some old trees to look at.
For now, lot’s of salt in the diet.
Adam L Silverman
That was you?
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: In my experience, Fulda Gap guys were guns and armor. Pony up.
mike in dc
Any evidence Mueller uses for indictments is going to be thoroughly vetted, verified and corroborated. So the likelihood of evidence of Russian interference or collaboration with Trump being “manufactured” is going to be pretty close to nil. But, so long as those indictments haven’t happened yet, GG is free to be skeptical, even where such skepticism is highly unwarranted.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Yup, 25 years of applying for Government jobs, wasted.
Did well enough in the Private Sector, away from Goverment contracts.
Funny thing was, my Dad was RCMP, so I knew most of my survelliance squads from family BBQ’s, birthdays, etc.
Black Comedy in many regards, you know, except for my pension, etc.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
LMFAO
Yarrow
I guess Glenn feels he’s safe from this kind of violence in his gated community.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fuck you, nouveau-psycho.
sharl
@Jay: I’ve been lurking in these comments, trying to put together the bits-&-pieces you’ve offered here about your life. If any of this is written anywhere, and you wouldn’t mind sharing its whereabouts, I for one would read the hell out of it.
different-church-lady
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
SHOULDA PICKED SACHS, YOU FUCKING MORON.
different-church-lady
@Anne Laurie:
Well, that makes it all better then, doesn’t it? Let us endeavor to ensure his hot-takes continue driving
knee-jerk reactionsthinking amongst our progressive betterers. /sJay
@sharl:
Yeah, hell no.
Back in the ’90’s, you could actually try to have a “conversation” on social media,
In the ‘aughts, RW Trolls perfected the “circular” argument.
Now, social media is even in the “best of places” a swamp.
While you arn’t “anon” on the web to way to many “many”, now, you open yourself up to everything from death threats to identity theft.
Those who post public details have way more balls than me.
sharl
@Jay: Understandable and logical; thank you for the response. Best wishes for as long and satisfying a life as you can attain.
cokane
read that profile yesterday and despite the misleading headline it’s a great article. the line about Greenwald’s lack of original reporting, late in the story, is absolutely devastating and spot on
NobodySpecial
Greenwald’s biggest sin and most easy trigger is pride. He doesn’t admit being wrong because his entire self-identity is about being right and the smartest guy in the room. Combine that with a lavish lifestyle and you get an easy tool.
That said, anyone throwing shade on his relationship can go fuck a dead goat. That’s bullshit no matter who you’re slinging it at.
different-church-lady
DAMMIT, PEOPLE, LGM still gets a TBogg out of GG post. What the hell has happened to this joint?
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
With Trump, we got Sachs, too — win/win! //
different-church-lady
@NobodySpecial:
Sounds… familiar, somehow…
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
Not enough people here give a shit about him anymore. He’s beclowned himself too much.
Dmbeaster
@opiejeanne: heh, you should read the whole article that is linked. Plenty of other damning info.
Anne Laurie
@different-church-lady:
Obviously I don’t agree with them — one reason I didn’t put those comments in my post — but people *are* telling each other the story they want to hear. ‘Glenn’s not mislead, he’s just under pressure from the Deep State(tm)!
Anne Laurie
@NobodySpecial:
Yep, like Ted Cruz, but gay. Ergo, without the easy pipeline to right-wing Christianist/Dominionist funding, starting during high school / college.
Not gonna dissect his personal relationships, but being not-heterosexual has obviously had an influence on Greenwald’s career, in ways both useful and otherwise. You really think he’d have been so sympathetic to Edward Snowden or (then) Bradley Manning if they’d looked like, say, Jonah Goldberg? Much less Reality Winner? Because I don’t. (And if Snowden was indeed a Russian plant, I’m sure his handlers would’ve made sure to pick a ‘honeypot’ that Greenwald would find attractive.)
Skippy-san
@chopper: Awesome snark!
NobodySpecial
Possibly. Possibly not. My take is that he’s a useful idiot with an axe to grind against government in general.
My pique with the whole angle of attack on his marriage is that it’s much too close to the ‘gay=pedo’ framing to start clucking about how young his husband is, especially when we give a pass to people on our side if the social issues, as someone else noted above. It’s historically been hard enough for consenting gay men to even look for love to use Republican framing when we don’t like them.
Chet Murthy
@Adam L Silverman: Adam, here’s the problem: how do we distinguish Clapper, from the cast of _The Best and the Brightest_? I just got thru reading that, and I gotta tellya, it was shocking how far those guys got up their own butts, prosecuting the Vietnam War. I’m not saying you’re wrong — just that, we’ve learned that taking the word of the intelligence community at face value even when they’re not suborned by malefactors like Cheney is unwise.
I’m somewhat open to the argument that Snowden was a Russian op. But only somewhat open. Why? B/c without him, we’d be so much more in-the-dark about the things our government is doing to us. And that would be to our collective detriment
It is very, very, very difficult to take anything seriously, from folks who want to leave us all open to every cyber-criminal on Earth. Who clearly don’t care about our civil liberties. As they clearly did with Heartbleed, for instance. Kinda takes the sheen of “I’m an honest man” off ’em. And then there’s the clear violations. Recall during Occupy, that activists were targeted by Homeland Security — COINTELPRO all over again.
[So one might ask: why do we trust the IC to even protect us against Trump? For me, it’s b/c the IC is the weapon of the “sane beillionaires”. [In Mancur Olson’s terms, “stationary bandits”.] And they aren’t about to give up their possession (the USA) to Russia. That doesn’t mean that those “sane billionaires” will give us freedom, or anything else. I just don’t think they’re going to roll over for a bunch of insane billionaires and roving bandits.]
Kathleen
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: He also referred to the plaintiffs as odious and repugnant.
Chet Murthy
@Chet Murthy: The … “good faith” of our IC leaders when it comes to proper oversight by the people (who are after all sovereign) is difficult to accept, when we remember what happened to Thomas Drake. And that the Obama administration (yes, we -can- walk and chew gum at the same time) has been remarkably aggressive in prosecuting whistleblowers.
Kathleen
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: So GG and Maddow were buddies. I knew there was a reason I didn’t like her.
Kathleen
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: His Snowden escapade revealed him to be someone who actively sought to undermine Obama and US. And he won a Pulitzer, as did Maureen Dowd.
Kathleen
@efgoldman: You, Sir, have been on fire! I always want a cigarette after I read your comments!
J R in WV
@Amaranthine RBG:
If you can’t see the difference between the ACLU and Glenn Greenwald, you must be…
A Troll !!!
J R in WV
@NobodySpecial:
When I graduated from HS at 17 I was sure that I was the smartest guy in the room. And at (rare) times I was back then. But as an adult I have worked with some truly intelligent folks, and long ago learned that I was not always the smartest guy in the room.
Anyone who at 50 still even suspects they are the smartest guy in the room is at least unobservant, and more likely not nearly as smart as the believe they are.
matt
@Amaranthine RBG: They don’t really, sorry.
different-church-lady
@Anne Laurie: Sorry, I was late night posting without good judgement, and the snark tag was probably too subtle — snark not aimed at you.
NCSteve
So, I’m late to this party, but one significant fact about Greenwald that, in turn, bears on the “actively cooperating asset or dupe” question has become clear and, in hindsight, was always clear. Greenwald and Trump have at least one thing in common: both of them have a severe case of Narcissistic Personality Syndrome. Trump is what NPD looks like in a stupid guy who was born rich, Greenwald is what it looks like in a very smart guy who was not born rich, but they both have it. Both of them have the same endless self-regard and lash out at anyone who dares gainsay them or take issue with anything they said in the smallest regard because they suffer the same psychic wound from it that a normal person would feel upon discovering their S.O. shagging their best friend.
It only became clear–to me, at least–because of the awareness of NPD Trump has forced upon us. But even back in his Salon days, when I read Greenwald’s knifework on the Bushies with delight, I was repeatedly unnerved by the way he would dive deep into the comments on his story and viciously heap vitriol and abuse on commentators who made even the slightest criticism of his pieces. Even then, I’d see him do that–or go off on some very personal rant against someone who criticized him in the press in his daily two or three updates to his initial piece–and get that “dang, there’s something kind of wrong with this guy.” His personal beefs with other media figures are, at this site of course, notorious. His inability to let go of an injury or slight. The way Obama instantly got under his skin by earning the admiration and devotion that were rightfully his. The way people who work with him so often find themselves screwed over. The way he basks in the cultish devotion of people who have willed themselves to believe in him as perfect and infallible.
Sounding familiar?
And I point this out, because narcissism, if not NPD, seems to be to foreign intelligence services like honey is to flies. It’s a huge lever. John Walker and Robert Hanssen, at least, seem to have been motivated by ego more than the money, which was just a token of their great value and appreciation (Hannsen even more than Walker, who at least spent the money rather than hoarding it up under the floorboards of his house). It would, to coin a phrase, be sooo easy to recruit someone with some simmering bundle of resentments and slights and unrequited thirst for vengence against those who failed to appreciate his genius generated by NPD.
Doesn’t mean that Greenwald or Trump are Russian assets. But if not, it’s difficult to believe it was for lack of trying.
raptusregaliter
The easiest thing in the world to be is a douchebag contrarian. Sounds like Greenwald has nailed it.
InternetDragons
@Amaranthine RBG: Yep. I detest Greenwald, but choosing this frame of attack (“a vast sympathy for willowy young men with sensitive mouths” — really??) isn’t “catty” – it’s just plain offensive. The fact that he’s an asshole doesn’t excuse it.