FISA Scandal Highlights Joe Klein's "Sheer Journalistic Hubris"
When Joe Klein signed up with Time magazine as a political columnist in 2003, he turned to this quote from Teddy Roosevelt for the name of his weekly dispatch, which he dubbed "In the Arena": "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. ... The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood ... and who, at worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly."
Klein has written that he intended the reference as a sort of self-effacing rebuke, a constant reminder that he is but a humble critic who chronicles the doings of deeds. But to believe that interpretation, one must ignore the fact that Klein's body of work amounts to little more than a festival of projection and poorly disguised vanity. This is the man, after all, who, unsatisfied with writing about Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign as a mere critic, rather famously refashioned himself into a central player in that campaign in his 1994 novel, Primary Colors. If Joe Klein is contemplating a man in an arena, his face marred by dust and sweat and blood, daring greatly, you can rest assured that the man he is contemplating is Joe Klein.
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Radar | John Cook | December 5, 2007 05:03 PM