NYT: Why we're obsessed with celebrities bookcases

[Renew Deal]

[ancianita]

1. No. Not why. And we're NOT "obsessed." Amanda Hess and NYT, late to the party, try to UP their own

credibility by downing professionals' credibility in general. New York Times editors either need filler or leverage for their own credibility, by confusing any audience it can get about who else actually has credibility.

I'm casting doubt here about media as doubt fomenters. We've seen this NYT shade casting by proxy before. Videos are much more filler and props for sale than are books, which have much longer shelf life. In the market place of ideas, those that help advance us last longest.

These celebrities' bookcases -- Check their education backgrounds -- ARE their own books.
NOT props.

Readers DO have more credibility than non-readers, hearers and watchers. Readers actually do know more information than non-readers.

The status quo SHOULD be about reading, books, thinking about others' thinking, and the analyses of readers.

This message tries to confound visual PR fakery with actual reading backgrounds of professionals. Conflating the two is unethical and unprofessional. That's Amanda Hess.

Amanda Hess is a child of privilege, with no other work background but going to school, and peddling salable clever-by-half ideas.

The "credibility bookcase," has been a shiny topic for weeks. Weeks. Now it's her "shiny new thing du jour." NYT gives her a saddle to fluff herself on.

Her fluff implications: Posers are fake, Professionals can be posing and faking; professionals are no more believable than the fakes. Sure, there really is PR background, and there really is real background, but she tries to foment doubt in us about our ability to know the difference.

Standards of political credibility exist. And so do standards of scientific and other professional credibility. Books are not professionals' "show" any more than one's kitchen is during newscasts.

Haven't we seen all these doubt claims in our political arena? Everyone's some "counterfeit hoax participant" until what, a leader likes them?

Doubt sells. I don't buy her doubt casting. Common sense, even, is too smart to give her any traction.

Far as I'm concerned, Hess is a cog in the Doubt Machine's goal of lowering Americans' trust in their own judgment, and worse, their self esteem.


These small moves are what make a country doubt truth and fact.

Hess and the NYT can can go suck it.

[Harker]

2. Aside from clips on DU, I don't watch television.

Having worked in bookshops most of my life, I do look to see what books are on the shelves in everything from interview clips to catalogue ads.

I've had interior designers say, "I need 20 ft. of leather bound books", and "it doesn't matter what the books are, so long as they're old", so I tend not to make assumptions about what books are displayed.

Schopenhauer said something about the dangers in confusing the acquisition of books with the understanding of their contents.