Celia Farber has scored another major knockout
Celia Farber has scored another major knockout
The trainers are applying smelling salts and ice packs and oxygen to her opponent; it’s a great night at Madison Square Substack
23 May 2023
Here it is. Read it. Read it in full. I’m not going to describe it. The headline gives you a sufficient clue.
“Former JP Morgan Exec Jes Staley, With Close Ties To Epstein, Was Central To The World Of AIDS Charities, Big Money And His Brother’s Fame As An ACT UP Pioneer; ‘All Roads Lead To Staley,’ JP Morgan Chase Attorney To Judge”
THAT
piece is what I mean when I talk about a WRITER who does journalism.
And there’s something else. In the wake of Celia’s revelatory 1998 Esquire interview with OJ Simpson, she could have gone on to live a different life.
A life that eventually would have landed her, say, at the top of the line at 60 Minutes, or the New York Times—along with visiting professorships at Harvard, Yale…
A life that people who never get within sniffing distance of fame can reject out of hand—but they never actually experience the temptation. They never see that big-time future spreading out in front of them. They never have the chance to step out into that future.
Celia had the chance.
She turned it down.
She had other fish to fry. In a kitchen where the heat was high.
She stayed in a world of investigative reporting that was destined to make her an enemy in the eyes of the establishment.
It’s easy to be that enemy when you were never inside the gates of the establishment. But she was. And then she exited.
That gets people riled up. That’s like a doctor turning on other doctors.
So there’s that history.
When Celia brings the hammer down in one of her major pieces, she’s IN the piece. Try it sometime. You’re in and you’re out at the same time.
She’s not inventing that paradox. It’s the way she experiences the reality of what she’s writing about.
In the process, she doesn’t short change the facts she’s uncovering. Try THAT.
How does she pull it off? I think the answer is clear. She’s a WRITER. Meaning she naturally experiences and creates and investigates and perceives simultaneously.
You can’t separate and pick apart the qualities of a writer.
She always wanted to be a writer. And that carries implications. She couldn’t shrink the dimensions of what she was covering to fit a formula. She couldn’t cut herself off from experiencing the truth, no matter where it led. She couldn’t settle on one acceptable style of writing.
I’ve read a few reporters’ attacks on her. They can’t hold a candle to her talent. They’re little mites trying and failing to bring her down. Especially the men-mites, who basically hate women.
A few of those mites appeared within her own camp, when she took on the AIDS scandal. They viciously blasted her reporting at every possible turn. They failed. They disappeared back into the fog. She endured.
She went back to work. She sees people suffering and dying needlessly at the hands of criminals and predators in HUMAN terms. She writes about this dying in a way that, for the reader, is VIVID.
And for most journalists, that is not permitted. That is not supposed to BE. I mean the journalists themselves don’t want to see that from one of their own.
Because I’m an old boxing fan from way back, I’m going to come in with that metaphor to describe what I think Celia’s doing at her Substack page. She probably doesn’t see it this way—so, just take it as a riff.
A lot of the time, she’s at her training camp in the mountains, in the Catskills. It’s a place boxers go. She’s doing roadwork every morning. She’s sparring in the ring. She’s lifting weights in the gym and breaking logs with an axe out on the field next to her cottage. She’s eating well, but not too well.
All these activities—they’re important to a fighter. They mean something. So she reports on them to her readers. Short pieces. She writes short pieces.
In reality, she’s gearing up. Getting ready. Putting her mind right. Sharpening her reflexes.
THEN…comes the big night.
She’s at the top of the card at Madison Square Garden.
She facing a major opponent. No more short pieces.
This one is for the championship.
And that’s when her talent shows up in full from every possible vector.
That’s when her readers get the piece I’ve linked to above.
That’s when her opponent folds under a withering attack. That’s when he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. That’s when he goes down.
When you review the tape in the aftermath of the knockout, you see a curious thing. She’s done enough to take him out. No question about that. But she hasn’t piled on cruelly. She’s shown you what she needed to do in the ring, in order to win decisively. She could have done a lot more. But some part of her has exercised prime-cut intelligence. She’s gauged the necessary and sufficient degree of damage to be inflicted. It’s right, it’s true, and it’s inescapable.
And that’s a bottom line, because all those men-mites who go after her and fail miserably? They can’t stand her INTELLIGENCE. She’s not supposed to have that. She supposed to—at best—be able to deliver her human reactions.
The mites are dizzy and flailing. Because she’s smarter than they are. Much smarter.
I laugh at that one. I’m sitting at ring side, I watch the fight, but I also watch the gaggle of reporters. Their faces are ashen.
They see her mind at work, in the action, and they’re going to their default position: hit a local watering hole and get drunk and try to forget the whole thing.
It’s moment of happiness. For me.
I like unusual events.
-- Jon Rappoport
Episode 45 of Rappoport Podcasts --- “How ‘THE VIRUS’ is used as a CIA-type cover story. The fake story conceals enormous crimes; people still don't get it; I break it down” --- is posted on my substack. It’s a blockbuster. To listen to this two-part podcast, click here and here. To learn more about This Episode of Rappoport Podcasts, click here.
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