Whatever Already, Take Seven

Who is Murray Waas? There is no profile of him on his blog, "Whatever Already," presumably because his audience -- he calls them "the five to seven regular readers of this blog" -- have no interest in seeing one.

The Huffington Post, another place where Waas's work regularly appears, provides a tiny picture of a somewhat dyspeptic looking individual with a slightly receding Bill Gates haircut managing a pained smile (the individual is smiling, not the haircut). His eyes are so deep set they look like two holes in the snow, and he might be any age between 25 and 45. The accompanying "bio," such as it is, tells us only that "Murray Waas is a sometimes-distempered Washington journalist" who "blogs at whatever already."

An unidentifiable website purported to contain "Murrey (sic) Waas's Resume" promises that this document is "Coming Soon," although judging from the proprietor's mis-spelling of his subject's name, "coming soon" means "Waiting for Godot."

So who is this mysterious "Washington-based" freelance journalist with too many vowels and not enough consonants in his last name? Since his credits include the New Yorker, the L.A. Times, and Salon.com, he's not a "complete unknown," to borrow a Bobism.

To judge from his work, he's an exemplar of the "monasticism," that author Morris Berman in "The Twilight of American Culture" recommends as an antidote to the mass consumer culture of McWorld. Berman's monastic individual is one devoted to an uncompromising search for truth, dedicated to work and study for their own sakes, and careless if not contemptuous of material reward. In other words, this hypothetical monastic person is a hard-core idealist, and as far as I can tell, that's who Murray Waas is.

For example, the thousands upon thousands of carefully documented words he has written on Plamegate and the Bush gang's fictional Saddam-Niger yellowcake uranium connection, which necessitated weeks worth of hours of research (at least), and which appear in several high-profile media such as the National Journal magazine and the aforementioned Huffington Post, have certainly added to his reputation. But he can't be doing this for the money.

And indeed, it takes a special kind of current events wonk just to read through all this stuff. Although well written, Waas's Plamegate and Yellowcakegate articles follow and document the details of these Byzantine affairs with almost painful attention to detail. He is, in short, performing a social service, which must be its own reward, because it also has to be a thankless task in many ways.

But Waas can also be lively and entertaining. He prefaces his complete reprinting of Ted Koppel's first column in the New York Times with the bland observation that he is probably violating copyright restrictions imposed by the "TimesSelect" pay service, whose articles and columns are only available to subscribers, then goes on to say:

"Probably the worst that would happen to me is that I would be ordered to take some remedial courses at night with a bunch of fiteeen year old girls who were caught illegally downloading Napster. And then, a la James Frey, I can tell all my friends that I did 85 days of hard time, and was visited by John Bolton everyday-- and then sell the book rights to Nan 'The Essential Truth' Talese.

"(No emails: I know that the Napster cultural reference is woefully out of date, that Napster is now a legitimate business, in partnership with the record industry... and that some other renegade service has replaced Napster or what-not... but I never claimed that this blog was written by some type of hipster or anything. This blog is very uncool.)"

Koppel's column turns out to be a bitter lament about the current state of television news, whose content, he says, is viewer-driven, resulting in the flood of what media critic David Barsamian calls "nuzak," rather than real news. Koppel is right, of course, and if you want real news you have to consult people like Murray Waas.

And Waas certainly shares Koppel's low opinion of contemporary television news, which tends to be factually deficient and emotionally overheated. In a January 4 blog piece, "America Mourns with Anderson Cooper," Waas details what happened in the wake of the Sago, West Virginia mine disaster when CNN's Cooper suddenly realized that he had just spent three hours erroneously reporting that the victims were still alive:

"Cooper may have been at a loss for words last night, but if his past on-air behavior is a guide, he will not be at a loss for tears tonight.

"America will once again mourn with Anderson Cooper.

"And then America will mourn with Geraldo Rivera.

"Earlier this morning, I watched Geraldo on Fox, already emoting; if he has no news to report, he does have his emotions to share with us all, until he is somewhere else soon emoting about something else. At the end of his brief segment, Fox’s anchor-of-the-moment thanked Geraldo for his 'truly heartbreaking words' before noting that Geraldo was the host of Fox’s own 'Geraldo At Large' program. No opportunity should ever be lost to promote the brand.

"And it will not be long, of course, before Bill O’Reilly screams at someone. Accountability at last!"

Waas is too good to ever get rich.

If you want stupid sentimentality, nuzak, and Hollywood entertainment updates, turn on the t.v. If you want integrity, truth, and the fruits of hard labor, turn off the t.v., go on line, and dial up "Whatever Already." It's one of the best.