{"id":6880,"date":"2013-03-12T13:18:33","date_gmt":"2013-03-12T17:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=6880"},"modified":"2013-03-12T13:19:02","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T17:19:02","slug":"the-troubling-things-i-learned-when-i-re-reported-bob-woodwards-book-on-john-belushi-tanner-colby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2013\/03\/the-troubling-things-i-learned-when-i-re-reported-bob-woodwards-book-on-john-belushi-tanner-colby.html","title":{"rendered":"“The Troubling Things I Learned When I Re-Reported Bob Woodward’s Book on John Belushi”: Tanner Colby"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

in Slate; via Jesse Walker<\/a>; totally worth your time:<\/p>\n

\u2026Of course, John Belushi did do all of those drugs, and there\u2019s little doubt that the drug stories Woodward uses actually happened. But he just goes around piling up these stories with no regard for what is actually relevant. Just to compare and contrast: At one point, Woodward stops the narrative cold to document a single 24-hour coke binge for the better part of eight pages. Nothing much happens in these eight pages except for Belushi going around L.A. doing a bunch of coke; it\u2019s not a key moment in Belushi\u2019s life, but it takes on an outsized weight in Wired<\/em>\u2019s narrative simply because Woodward happened to find the limo driver who drove Belushi around and witnessed the whole thing, providing him with a lot of juicy if not particularly important information. Meanwhile, the funeral of Belushi\u2019s grandmother\u2014which was the pivotal moment when he hit bottom, resolved to get clean, and kicked off his year of hard-fought sobriety\u2014that event is glossed over in a mere 42 words, and a quarter of those words are dedicated to the cost of the plane tickets to fly to the funeral ($4,066, per Woodward, as if it matters to the story).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Whenever people ask me about John Belushi and the subject of Wired<\/em> comes up, I say it\u2019s like someone wrote a biography of Michael Jordan in which all the stats and scores are correct, but you come away with the impression that Michael Jordan wasn\u2019t very good at playing basketball.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

in Slate; via Jesse Walker; totally worth your time: \u2026Of course, John Belushi did do all of those drugs, and there\u2019s little doubt that the drug stories Woodward uses actually happened. But he just goes around piling up these stories with no regard for what is actually relevant. Just to compare and contrast: At one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,177],"tags":[61,50,54,80,79],"class_list":["post-6880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-too-much-is-never-enough","tag-california-dreamin","tag-five-star-final","tag-how-to-stop-time","tag-memories-are-films-about-ghosts","tag-moral-memories-of-the-past"],"yoast_head":"\n"The Troubling Things I Learned When I Re-Reported Bob Woodward's Book on John Belushi": Tanner Colby<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"in Slate; via Jesse Walker; totally worth your time: ...Of course, John Belushi did do all of those drugs, and there\u2019s little doubt that the drug stories\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2013\/03\/the-troubling-things-i-learned-when-i-re-reported-bob-woodwards-book-on-john-belushi-tanner-colby.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""The Troubling Things I Learned When I Re-Reported Bob Woodward's Book on John Belushi": Tanner Colby\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"in Slate; 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