Word: banquetting
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Journalists enjoy gaffes as a slight taste of human reality at the banquet of artifice where they sup. But a small secret is that journalists don't mind spin either. A politician's ability to spin is a measure of his or her professionalism, which journalists respect. Furthermore, spin needs to be interpreted, which is the journalist's job. If politicians were totally truthful, political journalists would be out of business...
Permission to attend a dinner at the Iranian embassy is not exactly commonplace for American journalists in Damascus. So neither I, nor my friend Andrew Tabler, editor of Syria Today magazine, hesitated when we were cleared to attend a banquet celebrating the 28th anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution...
...Outside the banquet hall, we had a backslapping session with the embassy's senior staff. An aide kept repeating, "I'm so glad you came." Not to be outdone, another senior aide asked us if we'd like to visit his country. Andrew and I, aware that an Iranian journalist visa is the Holy Grail of American Middle East correspondents, un-holstered our passports faster than six-shooters. "If American leaders want to talk to Iranian leaders, there will be no problem," he said, when we asked about re-establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. "Our leaders are logical...
...Spin constitutes most of what's said in politics and other areas of public life (like Hollywood), and if it's not spin, it's a gaffe. Journalists enjoy gaffes as a slight taste of human reality at the banquet of artifice where they sup. They also enjoy the power of the gaffe to generate stories. Like stone soup, a gaffe can provide days of nourishment from almost nothing. A gaffe offers more stages of grief than Elisabeth K?bler-Ross: denial, quibbling, refusal to apologize, qualified apology, slavish apology...
...book's title comes from one of Mao's poems, which Nixon quoted in his banquet toast on the day he met the Chairman: "Time passes. Ten thousand years are too long. Seize the day, seize the hour." With intelligence and verve, Margaret MacMillan has seized the true spirit and significance of "Nixon in China...