: Unspeakable…Pomo illusions…
Michael Wolff finds a moment of clarity in his column about political reversals:
We–the people who cover politics, and the people who pay attention to politics (not a large group)–are literalists. We believe, unimaginatively and credulously, with a deep lack of humor and irony, in what we write and what we read (partly because we write it and are among the relative few to truly read it). We believe that the news of the day is real.
Politicians, on the other hand, and even more so, the people whose business is politics–pollsters, and managers, and communications directors, and media consultants–are illusionists. They are engaged in a perceptual act designed to wow the literalists.
A further complicating factor is that we literalists know we are being manipulated. But there is no real way to make the act of manipulation the news. You can
