{"id":66522,"date":"2013-04-28T21:06:51","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T01:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=66522"},"modified":"2013-04-28T21:11:23","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T01:11:23","slug":"regrettable-the-troubling-things-i-learned-when-i-re-reported-bob-woodwards-book-on-john-belushi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/regrettable-the-troubling-things-i-learned-when-i-re-reported-bob-woodwards-book-on-john-belushi\/","title":{"rendered":"Regrettable: The troubling things I learned when I re-reported Bob Woodward\u2019s book on John Belushi"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tanner Colby<\/strong> Slate Magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[Bob Woodward is one of the most respected journalists in the United States, though there is increasing evidence that he’s become as corrupt as the president he helped take down. This is a deeply troubling article from Slate, distributed by our Political Waves list. The article was originally published in mid-March. — efc]<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Belushi on the set of Animal House, 1978. This shirt should be in the Smithsonian.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A little more than a week ago, during an interview with Politico, Bob Woodward came forward to claim he\u2019d been threatened in an email by a \u201csenior White House official\u201d for daring to reveal certain details about the negotiations over the budget sequester. The White House responded by releasing the email exchange Woodward was referring to, which turned out to be nothing more than a cordial exchange between the reporter and Obama\u2019s economic adviser, Gene Sperling, who was clearly implying nothing more than that Woodward would \u201cregret\u201d taking a position that would soon be shown to be false.<\/p>\n

A rather trivial scandal, but the incident did manage to raise important questions about Woodward\u2019s behavior. Was he cynically trumping up the administration\u2019s \u201cthreat,\u201d or does he just not know how to read an email? Pretty soon, those questions tipped over into the standard Beltway discussion that transpires anytime Woodward does anything. How accurate is his reporting? Does he deserve his legendary status?<\/p>\n

I believe I can offer some interesting answers to those questions. Thirty-one years ago, on March 5, 1982, Saturday Night Live and Animal House star John Belushi died of a drug overdose at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles\u2014which, bear with me a moment, has more to do with the current coverage of the budget sequester than you might initially think.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Two years after Belushi died, Bob Woodward published Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi. While the Watergate sleuth might seem an odd choice to tackle such a subject, the book came about because both he and Belushi grew up in the same small town of Wheaton, Ill. They had friends in common. Belushi, who despised Richard Nixon, was a big Woodward fan, and after he died, his widow, Judy Belushi, approached Woodward in his role as a reporter for the Washington Post. She had questions about the LAPD\u2019s handling of Belushi\u2019s death and asked Woodward to look into it. He took the access she offered and used it to write a scathing, lurid account of Belushi\u2019s drug use and death.<\/p>\n

When Wired came out, many of Belushi\u2019s friends and family denounced it as biased and riddled with factual errors. \u201cExploitative, pulp trash,\u201d in the words of Dan Aykroyd. Wired was so wrong, Belushi\u2019s manager said, it made you think Nixon might be innocent. Woodward insisted the book was balanced and accurate. \u201cI reported this story thoroughly,\u201d he told Rolling Stone. Of the book\u2019s critics, he said, \u201cI think they wish I had created a portrait of someone who was larger than life, larger than he was, and that, somehow, this portrait would all come out different. But that\u2019s a fantasy, not journalism.\u201d Woodward being Woodward, he was given the benefit of the doubt. Belushi\u2019s reputation never recovered.<\/p>\n

Twenty years later, in 2004, Judy Belushi hired me, then an aspiring comedy writer, to help her with a new biography of John, this one titled Belushi: A Biography. As her coauthor, I handled most of the legwork, including all of the interviews and most of the research. What started as a fun project turned out to be a rather fascinating and unique experiment. Over the course of a year, page by page, source by source, I re-reported and rewrote one of Bob Woodward\u2019s books. As far as I know, it\u2019s the only time that\u2019s ever been done.<\/p>\n

Read more in Slate Magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tanner Colby Slate Magazine [Bob Woodward is one of the most respected journalists in the United States, though there is increasing evidence that he’s become as corrupt as the president he helped take down. This is a deeply troubling article from Slate, distributed by our Political Waves list. The article was originally published in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}