Some Notes on This Blog
Posted on December 11th, 2014 in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
Yes, I am on Twitter: RPBradley1.
Someone else—a jeweler, I think—took RichardBradley. My bad for not being an early adopter.
For those of you who are new to the blog, one small point about commenting: I’m a pretty light moderator. Steer clear of meanness and you can say pretty much whatever you want.
And if you include a link, I have to “approve” the comment before it appears. That’s to avoid spam comments, of which I used to get a ton. So don’t worry if your comment doesn’t instantly appear.
I first started writing this blog back in 2005 to help promote and discuss a book I had just written, “Harvard Rules,” which was about Lawrence Summer’s failed presidency at Harvard. (Still available—cheap!—on Amazon.)
I still write often on Harvard-related issues, but I’ve broadened the blog into a forum for discussion of culture, sports (Yankees good/Red Sox boo), politics and pop music, usually from the 1980s.
I have covered the issue of sexual assault on campus, as well as bogus journalism, fairly consistently over the past few years. I defended Woody Allen and Patrick Witt; not so much Nicholas Kristof. And, if I were to write about him, I would certainly not defend Bill Cosby.
So you may actually see some posts from time to time that have nothing to do with Sabrina Rubin Erdley, Jackie or Rolling Stone.
8 Responses
12/11/2023 10:31 am
Love your blog! I am definitely on board. Read a little bit of American Son on Amazon. Can’t wait to get it and read the whole thing. I’ll admit, I am still looking for Camelot. As for Jackie, RS, the whole nine yards I am done. I don’t even know what catfishing is.
Ugh. I believed it. Duped.
poster formerly known as 77
12/11/2023 10:33 am
Thanks, ST. Let me know what you think of American Son! I’m told it’s a quick read…
12/11/2023 10:53 am
In my previous life as a financial blogger I wrote quite a bit about Larry Summers and his gargantuan fucking of the Harvard Endowment.
Good times.
12/11/2023 11:49 am
your words like violence broke the silence and came crashing into rolling stone’s little world
12/11/2023 11:55 am
Okay, HL, that was brilliant. Made me laugh out loud.
But seriously-talk about “words like violence…”
12/11/2023 12:04 pm
Richard,
Did you read “The Sex-Abuse Scandal Plaguing USA Swimming” in Outside last month? I’m wondering what you think of the reporting.
The only reason I ask is because I saw some banter on Twitter between one of the accused and a different Outside contributor. The accused was complaining that he was not contacted for the story and the contributor defended the publication’s rigorous fact checking. (Which brings us back to a point you made in a previous post that journalists are often quick defend one another.)
I guess I should re-read the story. At the time it seemed well reported, but it is another highly sensitive piece. Sometimes I beat myself up for not writing about more important issues, but right now outdoor adventure seems like the perfect beat.
-MP
12/11/2023 12:15 pm
RB,
Will do. Just called the library. They don’t have it. (I live in a rural area, so to be expected) Will have to order it.
The Amazon sneak peak includes the scene of Kennedy rowing across the water at night. That seems to capture it all already. I am trying to remember who it was that said when John Jr. died that they were glad, for the first time, since Jackie Kennedy died, that she was already gone, too, so that she, and the nation, did not go through another heartbreaking burial of a Kennedy. (I don’t remember who it was, but that captures much of the sentiment of many)
I was in second grade when JFK was assassinated. The teacher told us to put our heads down on our desks, and the entire Dallas nightmare began to play out on the intercom system. We were terrified, as were the adults, and heartbroken. We mourned Kennedy in my house, as if he were a family member, and we were in the minority in our community, as most people were not Democrats.
It was definitely one of the defining moments of my early life, and I guess, we all have our place in time, don’t we?
Anyway, thrilled to find the blog and will order the book.
12/12/2023 6:37 am
Richard,
Full credit to you for being right and first on Sabrina and RS, and for following up in such a thoughtful, reasoned dispassionate way.
Even after you pointed the mainstream media straight at the 3 friends, they ignored it for a week, making their story about the failure to interview the accused. I don’t know where your blog got it’s name, but in this case the accuracy of that particular shot in the dark was uncanny.
But speaking as a fan, I don’t know why you have to be so hard on the NYT, when after all they put a link to this blog on their front page, the one that led me and countless others here. The aftermath story is suitable for the WaPo metro section (the one that broke Watergate as local news, after all), but I don’t fault the newspaper of record for not being as obsessed with this story. And your complaint about the lack of a shout-out in The New Yorker seems a little thin-skinned. (It was admittedly a list of her “friends,” and didn’t call you an idiot or anything.)
The important thing is that your unpaid (as you often remind us) blogging really has made a difference, and made your name one that some of us will recognize in the future. I’m even thinking that I must have been wrong to angrily discard that magazine you got Harvard to publish. I assumed that it was nothing more than a naked, cynical attempt to sell the class notes section and alumni mailing list to upscale advertisers. And the concept that the subset of celebrities with some connection to Harvard could be of interest to people with some connection with Harvard remains disturbing. Yet, I’m now thinking that there probably was something there worth reading, something that was just looking for an economically-sustainable channel to an audience.
It’s hard not to judge a magazine by its cover, and I assumed (undoubtedly incorrectly, now that I’ve seen its editor at work), that it was going to be nothing by fawning puff-pieces about people who at bottom were all just like Benjamin Edelman.
’76