Alt.Snowden

Image via Pastor Chris Owens.

Woke up with an alternative narrative designed—I'll be up front about this—to maintain my preconceptions intact, to keep my eyes jaundiced in the way they were before: the Le Carré version, in which the young and caring are abused by the careerist game-players.

1. The question about Greenwald isn't, Is he a journalist? It's, Since when did he become a reporter? Of course he's a journalist if he wants to be, and a very skilled one in many ways, but what he wants to be is a journalist in a movie, with the international intrigue and romance, dead drops and car chases, vast plutocrat conspiracies swirling around him: he wants to be a kind of public spook, running his joes in the public eye.

2. The question about Snowden is, How did somebody so smart get to be so stupid? Why does he act like a brave and silly 16-year-old, happy to go to jail for the sake of suffering humanity until they tell him he can't take his laptop with him? Why does he think somebody's self-serving PowerPoint presentation is a literal representation of the truth? Why does he think the Chinese government in Hong Kong or the Russian government at Sheremetyevo would be spying on him less than the NSA in Honolulu? Well, that's libertarianism for you—delay in growing out of adolescent solipsism.

3. The question about Obama is, How cynical is he? I can't digest the picture of Obama talking like a hippie to make everybody vote for him while he's really Nixon in his heart, because talking like a hippie to make everybody vote for you doesn't work. Just ask President Kucinich. I think the right is halfway right about Obama: he's a socialist, but a real Fabian, building it 50 years from now and unable to brook criticism from the left precisely because we're the ones who ought to understand that it can't be done any faster. (But Mr. P, you're really not giving us much to work with on the security side of the picture.)

In this story, Snowden has been used, his yearning to be a hero, his techie cleverness, his relaxed and reassuring presence. It was a crappy, undercooked plan. The information it collected wasn't all that devastating, merely evidence of what everybody already knew (however shocked-shocked the diplomatic world may be); and it left poor Edward under the bus. I like him—he reminds my of my own 16-year-old, actually—like I like Bradley Manning, but I think Greenwald, and Assange, are a little bit careless.

Martha Vickers as Daisy in George Cukor's imaginary film of The Great Gatsby.