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Barack Obama: "Unlike some people *cough*Michelle Obama*cough*...

theprestige

Penultimate Amazing
theprestige
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... I write my own books."

Not a direct quote.

The writing has been going more slowly than he’d expected, and according to several people who have spoken with him, the 44th president is feeling competitive with his wife, whose own book, Becoming, was the biggest release of 2018 and is on track to be the best-selling memoir in history. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others in this story, these sources note he’ll occasionally say in conversation that he’s writing this book himself, while Michelle used a ghostwriter.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/05/obama-2020-election/590056/​

Now, this is all anonymous hearsay, and the Atlantic is not your friend. So while this may be an amusing (or annoying) bit of gossip, I'd recommend taking it with a grain of salt.
 
theprestige said:
... I write my own books."

Not a direct quote.

The writing has been going more slowly than he’d expected, and according to several people who have spoken with him, the 44th president is feeling competitive with his wife, whose own book, Becoming, was the biggest release of 2018 and is on track to be the best-selling memoir in history. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others in this story, these sources note he’ll occasionally say in conversation that he’s writing this book himself, while Michelle used a ghostwriter.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/05/obama-2020-election/590056/​

Now, this is all anonymous hearsay, and the Atlantic is not your friend. So while this may be an amusing (or annoying) bit of gossip, I'd recommend taking it with a grain of salt.
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So, why did you start the thread?
 
Jungle Jim said:
So, why did you start the thread?
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First, because it's an amusing bit of gossip, and it amuses me to pass it along.

Second, because it's amusing to me to see how the double standard of anonymous sources in the media plays out from topic to topic.

Third, because it's a good opportunity to repeat the important idea that the media is not your friend.

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I came across the story on a conservative blog, where it was all about pointing and laughing at Barack the Douchebag. I was tempted to go along, but figured I'd track down the original report first. The Atlantic article is what I found.

So now you've gotten a similar experience: The hate-bait headline, followed by the lackluster true story. I skipped over the pointing and laughing bit, because really, who cares? Did Michelle Obama use a ghost writer? I don't know. More importantly, I don't care. I think it's perfectly cromulent for someone with a story to tell to team up with someone who is good at telling stories. I wish publishers and "authors" were more transparent about the collaboration, but this is mostly an industry problem in my opinion. I might wish Michelle had been integreous enough to insist on it in this case, but that's such a minor peeve I'd feel stupid pushing it.

Does Barack Obama really care that his wife is having success with her (possibly ghost-written) memoir, and that he somehow needs to compete with her or outperform her? I don't know. Certainly the Atlantic article doesn't impart that knowledge. More importantly, I don't really care. People are complex, and it's normal for spouses to have mixed feelings about each other. Whatever the Atlantic is alleging, it sounds within the mainstream of married life, filtered through sensationalist journalism, to me.

What I do care about, and what I do know, is that the Atlantic is not your friend. This passage, with its anonymous sources "close to" the subject, is sensationalist crap. Which is to say it's sensationalist, and also crap. If your takeaway from this is, "man, **** the Atlantic, and **** their editorial policies", then my work is done.
 
Baylor said:
I know a New Zealand guy on this forum is a fan of Michelle Obama and thinks she should be president. (yes, he really said that)
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That has nothing to do with the question, or the thread. Please take your personal observations about other members somewhere else. AAH, preferably. It's not my decision, of course, but let me know if you'd like me to put in a word.
 
Baylor said:
I know a New Zealand guy on this forum is a fan of Michelle Obama and thinks she should be president. (yes, he really said that)
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Sounds okay. Certainly a step up from what America is lumbered with at the moment.
 
So The Atlantic isn't theprestige's friend - I think that we were already aware of that - except in cases like this one where it obviously is.
 
I thought this was going to be in reference to a certain "Art of the Deal" which by now I am sure Trump believes he actually wrote himself and that it was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
 
It took me 2 dictionaries and a brief battle with autocorrect to confirm that "integrous" was indeed a word. The OP is a TLA winner, who has a way with the written word and clearly added the superfluous "e" for style.

Point being, thanks for the vocabulary lesson.

integrous
Adjective
(comparative more integrous, superlative most integrous)

(rare) Having or characterized by integrity.
Usage notes
In common usage, integrity is much more common than its adjectival form, integrous. Most speakers and writers opt for an etymologically unrelated synonym — such as honest, decent, or virtuous — when trying to express an adjectival equivalent of integrity.
Origin
Integr- (the root of integr(ity)) + -ous (adjectival suffix: “full of, characterised by, possessing”).
 
Parsman said:
I thought this was going to be in reference to a certain "Art of the Deal" which by now I am sure Trump believes he actually wrote himself and that it was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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You misspelled "Noball" there.
 
theprestige said:
What I do care about, and what I do know, is that the Atlantic is not your friend. This passage, with its anonymous sources "close to" the subject, is sensationalist crap. Which is to say it's sensationalist, and also crap. If your takeaway from this is, "man, **** the Atlantic, and **** their editorial policies", then my work is done.
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Except that isn't the takeaway for me. Anonymous sources are, and have been, a major source for newspapers for as long as they've existed. Sure, they can be abused, but so can everything else in life. This recent obsession with anonymous sources is nothing more than pandering to the Trumpian Hordes, who've bought into the "The press is the enemy of the people" nonsense.
 
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