Narratology: A Real Whistleblower

 

Part I

Part II

Extraordinary new story that I thought needed a little narratological juice

For the Record: Whistleblower

Everybody knows the origin. An anonymous whistleblower, relying on the protection of the law, made a complaint addressed to the chairs of House and Senate intelligence committees and submitted it correctly to the ICIG, who agreed that it was serious and important...

— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 31, 2020

We should all be glad that the rule of law obtained against Maguire and whoever was giving him orders to block this urgent complaint. Bringing it to light saved President Zelenskyy from the need to accept President Trump's extortion attempt and got Ukraine its funding. Period.

— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 31, 2020

The only relevant thing is that the complaint arrived, after some illegal stonewalling attempts, at its destination and the American people have been informed and one of President Trump's illegal dealings has been stopped. It's all good.

— Good With Rockets (@Yastreblyansky) January 31, 2020

If the whistleblower violated some article of White House protocol to get the document to the place IG Atkinson agreed it needed, urgently, to go, that's a good thing! If he hadn't done it, Zelenskyy would have gone on CNN on schedule, humiliated himself and disheartened his voters (and the rest of the world) by announcing his imaginary investigations of an imaginary crime (and Trump might have gone on holding the aid, as I suppose Putin asked him to do in the secret 31 July phone call, but you don't have to pay any attention to that). It was a win for the rule of law!

Or is somebody claiming that IG Atkinson was wrong about whether or not the complaint was credible and urgent? I don't hear Trump and his lawyers doing that. I hear Trump and his lawyers making fitful attempts to stop us from thinking about it altogether, kicking up the identity of the whistleblower like sand in our eyes. Which is kind of their only alternative, but please don't let yourself be affected by it.

While I'm up, a weird and distasteful thread on Biden and his press problems, beginning with the great Elizabeth Drew weighing in with her opinion:

The curious case of the penitent president. I

I have the funniest feeling President Obama has suddenly remembered us—the loyal imposition, you know, who don't have any objection to a bit of socialism, or to Reverend Wright and Bill Ayres (in his post-terrorist aspect), or to spending a few years per century without a war being on—and is sending us faint signals from his Fortress of Solitude, if we listen carefully.

Playground superhero. From Whiskywords.

One of these was last Wednesday's Times article (by Scott Shane and Charlie Savage) trying to explain how the Obama administration found itself prosecuting six different cases of leaks under the Espionage Act, which, as you've heard, is twice as many as the number of prosecutions under all previous US presidents put together. In the first place Obama is said to have had nothing to do with it: [jump]