Ded now


Can’t go on. I’ve been laid low by an irony cannonball in the Second American Civil War. Tell my family I was thinking of them as I bled out in the hedgerow.

(The Keen Report, as is obvious from the context, is a Trumpian Maga-lovin’ Twitter account. Tony Schwartz is…the ghost-writer who actually wrote The Art of the Deal.)

Comments

  1. daved says

    Tony Schwartz even was able to put his name on the cover of “The Art of The Deal,” extremely unusual for a ghost writer. Trump’s lousy negotiating skills made it possible, along with the unusually large cut of the profits that Schwartz got for the book. Schwartz got his name on the cover, half the advance for the book, and half of the royalties. Unheard of.

  2. gijoel says

    Is this the war where we’re all nice to each other, or the one where we are civil to the Trumpites?

  3. hemidactylus says

    @3- gijoel

    [sarcasm] We have to be civil to the Trumpsters. Otherwise they win. [end sarcasm]

    There is a free speech warrior who thinks the regressive “Control-Left” should stand down and that civil rights era protest is defined by the tactics of overly polite MLK. So much for the Overton window argument (out the window). The Left should hamstring itself with polite dialogue with the batshit far right (maybe follow example of Harris v Peterson, Vancouver), especially under unprecedented circumstances.

    Oh and Pruitt’s nads. Tsk, tsk.

  4. John Harshman says

    It’s like that scene in Annie Hall:

    Woody: I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here.
    Movie Line asshole: Ha! McLuhan knows nothing about McLuhan’s theories. I win!

  5. says

    Reminds me of the time when a beginning C programmer on comp.lang.c replied to dmr@alice.uucp with a posting that started “what do YOU know about C programming…”

    I wonder if that guy’s still around somewhere or if he changed his name and found another field…

  6. Crudely Wrott says

    MMMMM, mmmmmm.
    That sure was some tasty schadenfreude, now wasn’t it?
    The Keen Report didn’t heed Yogurt’s words. The Schwartz was most definitely not with them.
    And here I’ve been thinking for years that ‘keen’ meant things like ‘sharp’, ‘cutting’, ‘incisive’ ‘perceptive’ and ‘well honed’.
    Also, another shout-out to the #SecondCivilWarLetters. Pure gold.

  7. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    I don’t understand the argument “The book writings is a dead match for Trump’s speech mannerisms” in favor of Trump’s ability to write. Given Trump barely speaks full sentences, and speaks run-ons and strings random subjects together with no coherence, how can that be the speech mannerisms of a competent writer?
    Oh, maybe they’re saying the book was a piece o’ dung itself. (?)
    This Keene argument is itself incomprehensible, must be too keen for me.
    oh well
    ?

  8. emergence says

    Is this guy just flat-out denying that Schwartz ghost-wrote Art of the Deal, or is he just deeply ignorant?

  9. ck, the Irate Lump says

    Have those antifa super soldiers shown up yet? I’ve been waiting forever for them to show up.

  10. zetopan says

    “Is this guy just flat-out denying that Schwartz ghost-wrote Art of the Deal, or is he just deeply ignorant?”

    Yes or Yes, respectively.

  11. mcfrank0 says

    More Woody — this time from “Sleeper”

    Luna Schlosser: Oh, it’s keen! It-it’s pure keen! No No, it’s greater than keen… it’s ‘Cugat’!

    [keen/Keane — whatever ]

  12. says

    Yeah, Trump “wrote” that book in the same sense that the person that directed the 50 Shades movie (and the people that wrote the script for it), where the “same people” that wrote the childish, strange, really, really, screwy, dialog and prose in the original book they used as a basis. Its kind of like distilling a pot of sewer water – it might, if you do it right, become more or less drinkable, but it doesn’t change what it was, or where it came from, to start with, not make the rest of the water in the plant similarly drinkable by association.

  13. robro says

    I did some googling for “keen report schwartz tweets” or something like that, and found the thread. The Keen Report tweets continued to insist that Trump wrote the book, that Schwartz didn’t know what he’s talking about, and even asking Schwartz if he knows what a “ghost writer” does…basically edits the work of the real writer…to a ghost writer! Jeez, are people stupid.