Sublime

He could watch the Governor twist arms, offer incentives and drop, one by one, with matchless guile, the veils from in front of threats.

the journalistic errors examined in this book—the misreporting, fabrications, and distortions—were never the product of simple error. Nor were they solely the result of rogue reporters who took their journalistic fates into their own hands. Rather, they were the byproduct of a particular kind of system, a truth-producing machine that though built t

The suspicions of the press, which would normally have been aroused by the rumors of “deals” and involvement by high-level politicians in a program calling for a vast write-down by the taxpayers, were lulled by the fact that this program was being run by apolitical Robert Moses; his legend draped over Title I a comforting, concealing cloak.

debouched

For a President to preserve as a personal memento a photograph showing the notorious Box 13 in the possession of his political allies—a photograph which by implication proves that someone was indeed in a position to stuff it—is startling in itself. For him to display the photograph to a hostile journalist is evidence of a psychological need so deep

• Assign responsibility.

jeremiad

As Burke said in describing his early years in Albany, “Murphy delegates to the point of anarchy.”7