Worthwhile Canadian Initiatives
Subject: Weisberg Misreads Our Book
Date: Mon May 22 11:54 p.m.
We are the authors of American Pharaoh. We've been reading "The Book Club," and we have to say: The book Jacob Weisberg describes bears little relation to the one that we wrote.
The authors "never really tell us," Jacob Weisberg asserts, what they think of Richard J. Daley. Jeez. The book is entitled American Pharaoh, and we state plainly in the introduction why we call Daley that. We say that he did a tremendous amount to build Chicago up into the successful city it is today (Pharaoh as builder). And we say that he did it at the expense of blacks, by building racial segregation into the very concrete of the city (Pharaoh as oppressor). That seems like a pretty clear take on Daley. And, ultimately, a deeply critical one.
Weisberg also seems to subscribe to the fashionable but wrong view that if you disclose a conflict of interest it isn't a conflict. In fact, that his mother is closely aligned with Richard M. Daley—and draws a paycheck from him—is the sort of thing that might well affect his take on our book. American Pharaoh is very tough on Mrs. Weisberg's boss's father—and on her boss himself. (We recount, for example, how Daley Jr. benefited from questionable court appointments handed out by machine judges.) Does Slate have any rules at all about conflict of interest? And was there really no one without a parent working in Chicago City Hall available to participate in this discussion?
[To reply, click here.To read Weisberg's reply, see Wednesday's entry.Scroll down to the bottom of that page to see an unedited version of Cohen and Taylor's letter, as well as reader responses to it.]
Subject: Michael Ovitz, Savvy Publicity Hound
