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Letter from Q Street NW

What a week of provocations we’ve had! Did it surprise anybody to learn that our 45th president gave a Russian tyrant and fellow germaphobe rare COVID-19 test kits during the pandemic? Will a fickle 13 percent of the electorate care that he kept crushing on Vladimir Putin after leaving office?

Let’s not be kidding. Revelations from War—the new book by 81-year-old dish factory Bob Woodward—blew by at hurricane speed. There are already a million previous outrages to digest, and the fundamental lousiness of Donald J. Trump was baked in long ago. What could jolt the jaded public at this point?

Not more inside-the-beltway dirt from Woodward. Not The Apprentice, the creepy Trump origin story from Ali Abbasi and Wag Gabriel Sherman, now in select theaters (despite cease-and-desist letters from you-know-who). We’re past the point where analog culture transcends apathy and partisanship.

Once, Woodward’s reporting might have constituted an October Surprise. That requires a public that is both literate and capable of being surprised. Trump understands that Americans can’t sit still for that long. The risk to his political future isn’t some startling disclosure, but the possibility voters are exhausted by these shenanigans.

A moment for Woodward. He persists as a methodical reporter in a sloppy age. Georgetown salon lizards still cough up the goods when he calls. In the process, they reveal a bit about themselves. Such as: How easy it is to stroke an ego (Bob Woodward called me!) and how mundane it is to hate the boss. The doorstops he cranks out are not read so much as mined by the media class for anecdotes. It’s been that way for a half-century.

For such revelations to truly matter, there must be a precondition called innocence. One has to believe in a system, at least a little, to be scandalized by its hidden depravity. Woodward helped take the scales from our eyes decades ago.

You can draw a more or less straight line between Woodward and Bernstein, who helped bring down a presidency, to the Trumpian age. If Watergate was a halcyon moment for American political journalism, powerful interests absorbed the lessons and adapted. Nobody bothers slapping the suffix gate at the end of a scandal anymore.

The Big Washington Scoop is now just another competing narrative, to be shredded in a fragmented media ecosystem and dismissed by the feckless public. The News is no longer idealistically presented as a foundational set of facts but a swirl of arguments. This even extends to the weather. Gravity may be next.

If Woodward and Bernstein became heroes for the Fourth Estate, Roger Ailes rewrote the rules of the game, and the information revolution shattered it. Our new media overlords see the ROI in perennial agitation but are contemptuous of journalism. A.I. threatens to crank up their firehose of distortions.

Call it Nixon’s Revenge. Instead of holding the powerful to account, immersive media induces bitchy paralysis. The attention industrial complex turns fear and disgust into algorithmic fuel. If Trump weren’t around to lap up the rewards, social media would have invented him for the clicks. In the future, it will crank out his successors.

Trump is the great innovator of American dishonesty, impervious to the conventional exposé. He came into political life telling preposterous falsehoods and will exit the same way. Fans digest these distortions not as literal truths but as metaphoric weapons against a hated establishment, and all’s fair in a culture war. The establishment marshals the likes of Bob Woodward in response. It’s not a fair fight. Keeping a running tally of misbehavior hasn’t been broadly persuasive.

To borrow from Mary McCarthy, everything Trump says is a lie, including And, and The. Scandal attaches to him like barnacles, which harden to armor. The expectation is that he will say anything to gain a momentary advantage over those his papa called suckers and losers. When endlessly repeated, these lies do not become the truth, but an avalanche of bullshit will deaden the soul.

If that’s where we are, marvel at the fact that Woodward and others keep digging. The work requires a stubborn belief in the power of history. Whatever happens in the short term, a record will be kept. It won’t be kind to liars.

Yours Ever,

Joe Frady

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Secrets and Lies

Disclaimer (Apple TV+). We wouldn’t blame you for being suspicious of another lavishly mounted streaming series, but Alfonso Cuarón’s lush thriller based on Renée Knight's 2015 novel is a cut above the rest. Cate Blanchett stars as a famous investigative journalist who discovers she’s the subject of a book that may expose her dark secrets. Sascha Baron Cohen, Kevin Kline, and, Lesley Manville are swept up in classy intrigue. The powerhouse cast, plus all the twists and turns, wowed our team at the Venice Film Festival. Give it a go.—Dan Gallagher

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Get Over the Subtitles

La Maison (Apple TV +). Catch up to this Gallic import from José Caltagirone and Valentine Milville. Produced by Alex Berger (The Bureau), the story of the house of Ledu, a venerable Paris fashion label that’s run by an epically dysfunctional family. When designer and scion Vincent (Lambert Wilson), is caught in a race flap, the house is plunged into a crisis. To save the company from being gobbled up by a rival dynasty headed up by chilly Carole Bouquet, a refresh is in order. Enter young gun Paloma (Zita Hanrot), a telegenic designer who projects a multicultural image. The result is Succession in the French fashion business. Amira Casar shines as a former model who becomes the brains of Ledu’s operation.—Simone Lowenthal

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