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“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

So many bastards, so little time.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

Celebrate the fucking wins.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

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If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Let there be snark.

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Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

You are here: Home / Books / Breaking…Something

Breaking…Something

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The democracy-endangering antics of the wretched would-be influencers on the political desk have understandably alienated many former New York Times subscribers. But the erstwhile paper of record still does some things well, including obituaries, crossword puzzles and providing a high-profile platform for the excellent Michelle Goldberg. Also, some of the book reviews are amusing.

The latter is the subject of this post, specifically, a review of Jared Kushner’s “Breaking History,” which the NYT review headline describes as “soulless” and “very selective.” Dwight Garner drew the short straw for this assignment. A few choice lines:

  • Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one…
  • Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo. [Eww!]
  • A therapist might call these [a lengthy list of included quotes praising Kushner] cries for help.
  • Every political cliché gets a fresh shampooing… “Every day here is sand through an hourglass, and we have to make it count.” So true, for these are the days of our lives.

In a satisfactory way, Garner pisses all over Kushner’s smug disregard for the central role wealth and nepotism have played in his life so far, his bland corporatism, his gross name-dropping, his cathedral-sized self regard, his tragically (in the world-historical sense) misplaced confidence in his own abilities, etc.

Garner also intersperses Kushner’s accounts of events with allusions to the fate of other terrible Trump administration figures who were central to them. The impression is that at least grubby operatives like Lewandowski and Bannon earned the trip by riding the shaggy orange Beast to the White House. All Kushner had to do was shag the Beast’s favorite daughter.

Anyway, it sounds like a gross memoir of a grotesque fraction of a person, and I am grateful I’m not obligated to read it. But Garner’s ending was elegiac, at least for me, because it hits close to home:

It makes a kind of sense that Kushner is likely to remain exiled in Florida. “The whole peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret,” as Cynthia Ozick put it in “The Shawl.” “Everyone had left behind a real life.”

Sometimes you really can’t go home again.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

85Comments

  1. 1.

    Ken

    Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one

    A valuable reminder of the first rule of celebrity publishing: Keep on good terms with your ghost writer.

  2. 2.

    Jerzy Russian

    As I have noted before, I am grateful to Jared for making me aware of the word “gormless”.   That is about the most positive thing I can say on this topic.

  4. 4.

    JPL

    How does one forget about the cat licking the dog’s eye goo.   Asking for someone who read the review earlier.   Still queasy after reading the review, never mind the book.

  5. 5.

    lowtechcyclist

    All Kushner had to do was shag the Beast’s favorite daughter.

    Didn’t know mannequins had sex with each other.

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    @Ken: In fairness to the ghostwriter, it sounds like she absolutely nailed her client’s voice, which is what good ghostwriters do.

  7. 7.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Ken: considering the timing of the books release, August, in the middle of  another Trump scandal, sounds like Jared also irritated his publisher lol

  9. 9.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I thought, and said in the morning thread, that every word of that review was pitch-perfect.

    And I did love this line describing Jared: He’s a pair of dimples without a demographic.  Just … 😘

  11. 11.

    narya

    One of the small evil delights I get out of this whole saga: the knowledge that Javanka will never be a part of the social circles to which they so desperately want to belong. They were sorta kinda able to get in the door before, but the stank isn’t likely to wash off any time soon, and neither brings anything to the table. Some people get in because of what they know, some because of whom they know, and Javanka has neither type of knowledge at this point.

  12. 12.

    Scout211

    From the publisher blurb on Amazon:

    The marketing team deserves a bonus for this kind of BS.

    Jared Kushner was one of the most consequential presidential advisers in modern history. For the first time, he recounts what happened behind closed doors during the Trump presidency.

    Few White House advisors have had such an expansive portfolio or constant access to the president. From his office next to Trump, senior adviser Jared Kushner operated quietly behind the scenes, preferring to leave the turf wars and television sparring to others.

    Now, Kushner finally tells his story—a fast-paced and surprisingly candid account of how an earnest businessman with no political ambitions found himself pulled into a presidency that no one saw coming.

    Breaking History takes readers inside debates in the Oval Office, double-crosses at the United Nations, tense meetings in Arab palaces, high-stakes negotiations, and the daily barrage of leaks, false allegations, investigations, and West Wing infighting.

    Jared Kushner was one of the most consequential presidential advisers in modern history. For the first time, he recounts what happened behind closed doors during the Trump presidency.

  16. 16.

    Barbara

    Dwight Garner is my favorite book reviewer in the Times. I always look at his list top 10 books for the year when trying to decide what to read.  It was through Garner that I found Jesmyn Ward’s “Men We Reaped,” a book you should read if you have not already.

  17. 17.

    eclare

    @narya:   I enjoy the fact that Anna will never ask them to the Met Gala again.

    And to be purely catty, one reason that I want to see Ivanka in prison is to see her real hair color.  Meow!

  19. 19.

    Ken

    @Kropacetic: Mommy, where do mannequins come from?

    Well, dear, let’s read John Collier’s “Evening Primrose”, and then watch the Twilight Zone episode “The After Hours”….

  20. 20.

    Kropacetic

    @Scout211: Few White House advisors have had such an expansive portfolio or constant access to the president.

    Translation: Too few competent adminis-traitors willing to work for Trump.  So rather than delegating these tasks normally, he gave them all to the nearest person he could find with no competencies whatsoever.

    @Ken: Well, dear, let’s read John Collier’s “Evening Primrose”, and then watch the Twilight Zone episode “The After Hours”…

    I love references I don’t get.  Gives me an unneeded excuse for unneeded media consumption.

  21. 21.

    Ken

    @Gin & Tonic: I will add this to the list of books I will never read.

    I expect it will end up in the RNC and CPAC gift bags, with a dozen other books no one will ever read.

  24. 24.

    Kropacetic

    @Ken: I expect it will end up in the RNC and CPAC gift bags, with a dozen other books no one will ever read.

    Right wing garbage novels aren’t there to be read.  They’re there to funnel money to right wing politicians and talking heads, to sit on shelves for virtue signalling purposes, and to marginally contribute to deforestation efforts.

  25. 25.

    Ken

    @Kropacetic: The Collier story was also made into a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. There was a broadcast version of it starring Anthony Perkins.

  26. 26.

    Math Guy

    It makes a kind of sense that Kushner is likely to remain exiled in Florida. “The whole peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret,” as Cynthia Ozick put it in “The Shawl.” “Everyone had left behind a real life.”

    In James Salter’s novel “Solo Faces” the main character is a mountaineer who loses his nerve and fails at the climax of his career. He ends up running a junk yard in Florida.

  27. 27.

    Ruckus

    The only reason to read a book on this subject is to hopefully find what makes shit able to breathe and talk.

    And I seriously doubt that would be revealed by reading this particular book.

    So I’m out.

  28. 28.

    Gravenstone

    Found this tweet posted over at TPM. This is hopeful and if it continues going forward, Republicans may well have caught the proverbial car only to suffer the most dire of consequences. If the link doesn’t work for some reason, basically new voter registration across multiple states is skewing heavily female, from +40% in KS down to +5-6% in multiple states.

  29. 29.

    Ohio Mom

    @narya: In 2003, a Johnson and Johnson scion in his early twenties made a documentary about his ultra wealthy peer group and Ivanka was included. The film is “Born Rich” and it is easily googleable. I watched it for free, probably on YouTube.

    One of the themes of the film was that by and large, these young people’s parents thought it best to not bring attention to their families; Jamie Johnson’s parents were not enthused about his project but I guess they felt beyond harm by things like the scene of the family meeting with the wealth retention advisor. Staying rich apparently is a shared, life-long task.

    Obviously the Trump family would be the exception to this but of course the Trumps are not the same type of money as the other families in the film. You can see that even then, Ivanka did not quite fit in.

    Now that the young people in the film are 19 years older, I am guessing they have seen the wisdom of their parents in laying low, out of the public eye. Which you don’t accomplish by being seen with the likes of Javanka.

  30. 30.

    Kropacetic

    @Gravenstone: This is hopeful and if it continues going forward, Republicans may well have caught the proverbial car only to suffer the most dire of consequences

    They caught the car only to find out it was, at the time, moving in reverse.

  35. 35.

    Elizabelle

    @Barbara:   Dwight Garner is a favorite.  A main reason for keeping the FTF NY Times sub.

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I will add this to the list of books I will never read.

    That is a personal rotating tag.

    FWIW, I cannot abide any books about Trump.  It’s just too painful.  I have Mary Trump’s book; glad to have helped make it a bestseller but … just cannot devote that amount of attention to this awful man.

    He demands so much of our attention, whether we wish to give it or not. Enough.

    I wonder if the book was published now because Jared needs the $$, and the market for Trump related books will get saturated very easily.

  36. 36.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Will ask forgiveness in advance for (a) tooting my own horn, and (b) repeating something from a few years ago, but this is unexpectedly relevant:

    Sometime midway through TFG’s administration, I wrote parodies of Edward Arlington Robinson’s two best-known poems, only my versions were about the Jarvanka instead of Miniver Cheevy (Ivanka) and Richard Cory (Jared).

    Anyhow, I just looked up the one about Jared, and IMNSHO it has stood the test of time tolerably well, and I thought some of you might enjoy seeing it again. So here it is:

    Whenever Jared Kushner went abroad,
    We people in the U. S. laughed at him:
    He was a charlatan (ask House of Saud):
    Quite unprepared, imperially dim.

    And he was always skeevily arrayed
    In awkward-fitting suit and too-long tie,
    But still, he fluttered pulses when he said
    “Good day” (but since his lips moved, ‘twas a lie).

    And he was broke! Yes, broker than a Trump,
    But admirably schooled in Deutsche Bank.
    In fine, we thought a timely market slump
    Would cause all of his real estate to tank.

    And so we shrugged, and waited for the light,
    And went without the meat, and gave no fucks;
    And Jared Kushner, one calm summer night,
    Went home, and made another million bucks.

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    @Immanentize:   And, FWIW, Snoop is branching into Snoop Loopz.  Breakfast cereal.  Apparently with mushrooms marshmallows (the confectionary kind).  Wine for the parents, cereal for the littles.

    CNN link.

  45. 45.

    Elizabelle

    @rikyrah:   Stuart Stevens.  He also said Liz Cheney was too bright to get caught up with Andrew Yang’s Forward.  What a vanity project.

  47. 47.

    Anonymous At Work

    Did the reviewer actually draw the short straw, gett caught stealing from the editor’s booze stash, or accidentally make a pass at his boss’s wife?  That would add to the review.  Otherwise, only Chuck Pierce or Andy Borowitz can add to it.

  52. 52.

    narya

    @Ohio Mom: And I suspect that, for awhile, they could get away with hanging with the truly rich people–go to the schools, wear the clothes, donate to the charities, etc.–and may even have realized that you can’t just grift the charities, you actually have to sign a check here and there. But there was no real wealth, so that means they can’t buy their way back into people’s good graces with a wing of a museum or something. They’re broke (relatively speaking), and trashy, and they have TFG stank on them. The part that truly annoys me is the notion that either of them have ten cents worth of knowledge or brains or usefulness of any kind.

  53. 53.

    Ken

    Anyone else think it’s almost inevitable that sometime in the next few days Trump’s lawyers will be trying to get a restraining order against release of Jared’s book, because someone’s noticed that it talks about TFG sharing classified documents with the Russian ambassador, or showing them to his Saudi business partners?

  54. 54.

    cmorenc

    @Scout211:

    [The marketing team deserves a bonus for this kind of BS.]

    Jared Kushner was one of the most consequential presidential advisers in modern history.

    “Consequential” is a measure of influential impact, and not quality on the influence or results.  Donald Rumsfeld is a perfect example of the difference, as is Dick Cheney.  That said, it’s less clear how much actual impact Kushner’s brand of “griftplomacy” (diplomacy as a tool for grifting) actually had beyond well, exchanges that benefitted Trump family grifting, e.g. bailing Kushner out of a $2Billion bad real estate deal that could have bankrupted him.

  57. 57.

    PPCLI

    Jared Kushner was one of the most consequential presidential advisers in modern history.

    Indeed. Right up there with H.R. Haldeman and Albert Bacon Fall.

  58. 58.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Skepticat:

    Thank you. I don’t think this holds up quite as well, but since you kindly asked:

    Ivanka Kushner, child of Trump,
    Grew rich while she ripped off the nation;
    She smirked that she was not a frump,
    In her high station.

    Ivanka loved the days of old
    When cloth was cheap and labour cheaper:
    The vision of sham phony gold
    Set off her beeper.

    Ivanka sighed for bough and bower,
    And planned and schemed like a virago;
    She dreamt of evenings at Trump Tower,
    And Mar-A-Lago.

    Ivanka cursed the commonplace
    (Vogue and Elle and Glamour fester!)
    She missed the 1980s grace
    Of polyester.

    Ivanka Kushner, born too rich,
    From one thing to another drifting;
    Ivanka smirked, designed more kitsch,
    And kept on grifting.

  59. 59.

    Poe Larity

    @cmorenc: RE bailout AND $2B for his Saudi Fund. And they bought “peace” in the ME by getting the Arab states to throw the Palestinians under the bus. So there’s a long-term FP impact that Dems don’t seem too broken up about.

  60. 60.

    RaflW

    Saw last night that JKush’s book had zero dust-jacket blurbs.
    No one, not one person was willing to read and advance copy an say nice things? Arrogant, aloof Kush didn’t think anyone needed to praise him because his brilliance is so self-evident? (and I use that term very specifically)

  62. 62.

    Geminid

    @Poe Larity: The normalization of relations between Israel and Bahrain, the UAE, and Morocco was ready to happen anyway. I think it would have happened if Clinton were the President.

  66. 66.

    patrick II

    I was surprised that Kushner would name his book “Breaking History” and am very sure he is too narcissistic to think of the broader and negative thoughts I have when reading that title from a book by someone named Jared Kushner.

  68. 68.

    Kropacetic

    @prostratedragon: Definitely unintended.  I have not seen any productions of Conan, myself.  I wasn’t even sure your comment was directed toward what I was saying or what I was responding to or even ironically toward Kushner’s drivel.

  69. 69.

    Paul in KY

    @rikyrah: ‘Dark Brandon, Dark Brandon, running into history.

    The MAGA loons will have to get out of  his way.

    Dark Brandon, The media’s been after you

    When will they learn that they never can bring you down…’

  70. 70.

    Redshift

    @patrick II:

    I was surprised that Kushner would name his book “Breaking History” and am very sure he is too narcissistic to think of the broader and negative thoughts I have when reading that title from a book by someone named Jared Kushner.

    Yeah, my reaction to that is that his editor hates him (and he’s too obtuse to get it.) That’s in addition to the content revealing that his ghostwriter hates him.

  71. 71.

    Redshift

    My favorite of the excerpts I saw on Twitter is his story about how his father is “a good person who made some mistakes” and Chris Christie was a big meanie for prosecuting him.

  78. 78.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    • Every day here is sand through an hourglass, and we have to make it count.” So true, for these are the days of our lives.

    I love that line

  79. 79.

    Barbara

    @RedDirtGirl: It starts a bit slowly, like any normal person’s memories of their childhood, and then, I don’t remember which chapter, it just builds into something that feels overwhelmingly sad.  I just ached for the author and her family.

  80. 80.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    from the review:
    If Kushner can recall a professor or a book that influenced him while in Cambridge, he doesn’t say. Instead, he recalls doing his first real estate deals while there

    I love that Jared calls buying a couple apartment buildings with his trust fund as “doing deals”. I don’t know if Matt Yglesias was joking or not when he says he members Jared calling a plumber from a classroom

  81. 81.

    prostratedragon

    @Kropacetic:  Works pretty well as a summation of the descent from the barbarism of old to today’s, as you so aptly describe, drivel.

  82. 82.

    opiejeanne

    That review was beautiful,  including the line about the cat licking the dog’s eye goo.

  83. 83.

    Dangerman

    It might be worth the 99 cents when it goes to the discount bin; can never have enough kindling (or toilet paper, in a true emergency)

  84. 84.

    lowtechcyclist

    @rikyrah:

    Folks, we’ve basically got the media grousing at the fact that Joe Biden is the Roadrunner and they are Wile E. Coyote, mad as shit wondering how the hell they keep falling off of the cliff.

    They must’ve come down with a bad case of acme.

  85. 85.

    lee

    @narya:

    One of the small evil delights I get out of this whole saga: the knowledge that Javanka will never be a part of the social circles to which they so desperately want to belong.

    That is one of the few joys I have of the Trump Administration. The entire family is going to be exiled to the swamp of Florida (apologies to Betty Cracker).

    The New York social circle now will forever be out of their reach.

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