<![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author - Gawker Comments]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author - Gawker Comments]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> Kind of easy to find out if someone is in prison, the Federal Bureau or Prisons keeps a website that has an "inmate locater" function. [www.bop.gov]
How hard is this? I found my brother in 15 seconds. He's a drug kingpin. No, actually he really is. Didn't grow up in the hood, and graduated from a reputable prep school. But I don't want to bore anyone with tedious true stories.

dressyslacks_cutetop

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Jezebabe: you are absolutely right. she does have some major issues. i worked with peggy about 10 years ago... at a bookstore... in sherman oaks. she is the type of person who can't stand it if you have a story to tell. she's got to top your story at whatever cost - and the cost typically, was the truth. obviously she's a compulsive liar.

someone told me that they went to visit her in oregon a few years back and that she had developed a "ghetto" accent. at the time i just figured she was trying to seem cool, but i guess she had a gameplan...

jneal818

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> I went fact checking since Sarah McGrath is at her obgyn appt.
She graduated Harvard Magna Cum Laude.
Her husband is a senior editor at Vintage books.
Her mother owns Wordmasters- who makes language arts programs for schools.
We know what her father does.
My source- the New York Times.
This is all true, unless no one fact checked the wedding announcement.

Oh, what tangled webs we weave, like corn rows in the hood.

[query.nytimes.com]







Un Chien Andalou

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @acridsheep:

oooh please tell more

do u want to write a memoir? i know some agents

if_i_only_had_a_heart

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @notsofresh:

dude -- public record like not just calling the prison, call the courthouse, look online, look back in old newspapers. public record is public; maybe not easy, but public. and that's the point. you keep looking until you find it.

if_i_only_had_a_heart

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @notsofresh:
Dude call the state's prisoner support. Check out the web site. You can confirm it. Seriously, it's not that hard. I've been doing it for 20 years. One of us doesn't know what he/she is doing and I've got bylines and paychecks to prove it ain't me.
House and Home, Details, Cosmo, I don't give a flying fuck where you work. If you can't handle checking facts about someone whose family is in prison, don't edit or fact check the story. Give it to someone who can (Gee, think a Columbia j-school grad could handle it? I did without a J school degree my first time out, way back in 19fucking 87) or have the editors kill the story.
You know, that old saying about if you can't take the heat (or turn off the stove...




lizzybennet

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Kakapo:

"Were I a book editor I wouldn't want to interrogate the author of a memoir, either, although I think I'd try to check out some basic facts. And my goodness, the budget was so low that the writer and editor never met in three years?"

Were you a book editor who had on your hands a white chick who persisted in speaking some white chick's freakish, imaginary version of black street dialect many years after she left South Central, wouldn't you try to do a little more than "check out some basic facts"?

Wouldn't you at least wonder WHY the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services allegedly placed a sexually abused little girl of white and Native American ancestry in an impoverished African-American home in South Central?????

BTW, JetBlue has been flying nonstop from Portland to JFK since late-spring 2005. Why, back then it was even possible to catch a $200 R/T fare.

Given the amount of $$$s Penguin apparently planned to make from this "memoir," there was clearly room for a modest travel budget for the author.

The only possible reason that McGrath and Seltzer NEVER met face-to-face is that neither really wanted to.

Better to let sleeping dawgs lie.

Hamud Ibn Hamud

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> why didn't peggy seltzer attempt to sell the book as fiction?

also why didn't Faye Bender and Sarah McGrath ask their black friends about foster care and drug dealing?

Then this embarrassment would have been avoided.

IamnotStarJones

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> I miss Laura Albert, who at least had style.

EnviousJuno

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> I read the Times piece and live in LA. I came away wondering what a Native American foster kid would be doing in an all African American household, when there's a huge urban Indian population here (my husband included). While there is a shortage of foster parents, I do know that childrens services tries to be culturally sensitive with placement of first nation kids. Also, for some reason the final mention of the pending cookbook also set me off. Needless to say, I wasn't surprised by the news of the hoax.

swampscott

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> You guys are too critical of the New York Times. It seems like a perfectly plausible story to me. Just like Steve Martin's character in "The Jerk" said:
"Huh? My story? Okay. It was never easy for me. I was born a poor black child. I remember the days, sittin' on the porch with my family, singin' and dancin' down in Mississippi. "
[www.imdb.com]

travelina

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Sigerson:
It's very funny.

"In an unforgettable narrative that weaves stunning, forthright narration together with the distinctive, rhythmic slang of the street, Margaret B. Jones brings us movingly into the world of her youth-a world of gangs and poverty, but also of hope and survival-to create a memoir like no other."

The last seven words are accurate.


The Cover Image:
Kindly, de-sexualized older black woman caring for a young white kid (read "Modern Mammy").

Now there's an image I don't see every day, except every time I walk up Broadway.

Seeräuber Jenny

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Ian Spiegelman: I had a friend who was interviewing for publishing jobs during her last year of college, and apparently an interviewer, at a major University Press no less, asked her why she wanted to work in publishing since it paid so little and the people who worked there were mostly being supported by the family's money. Apparently you weren't supposed to live on the small assistant salary. That was a thinly veiled way of saying "we don't want you here", and came after she was asked a bunch of plainly illegal questions probing her family background, national origin, and legal immigration status. She went to work as a paralegal instead and never tried to get into publishing again...

Jezebabe

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Sigerson: Except they never actually say, "Wow, we fucked up." Instead, it's all lame excuses about why they shouldn't have been expected to check her out.

3cardkitty

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> Gosh, this story is the biggest bunch of crock ever. Does anything about this girl scream authentic and legit? Did you guys hear her radio interview? She has an obviously made-up accent, and all the use of "homies" and whatever is so ridiculously put on. And I love how she kept insisting that people only know about South Central from movies like "Menace To Society" or whatever, when her whole characterization was completely made up out of thin air. I'm having a hard time believing that she ever did any "Gang Outreach" work like she says, I'm thinking she is a complete psychopath, a mentally unstable girl who believes her own story is true. She obviously has major issues...

Jezebabe

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> Let's hear it for the wonderful publishing practice of not accepting unagented submissions. That sure rules out all the lunatics, weirdos and liars.

famousauthor

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> [www.brothersisterhood.com]

Can't get enough of this website.

Sigerson

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> Oh, and the NY Times gets a little credit for running TWO articles in less than 24 hours on the debacle. Can't say that there's much of a cover-up, eh?

Sigerson

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> I agree that McGrath is a sucker and probably had some idea that all was not totally kosher, so she's a loser in my book. The House & Home folks are not really hard-core journalists so I'll give them a pass on fact-checking. MK is a slobbering, fawning mess with this sort of "prose" so it's maybe just a matter of taste. Whatevs. But McGrath's boss is offering up some really really lame excuses. I mean, really, how much does it cost to get Bo Dietl to make some calls? Damn!

Sigerson

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @lizzybennet: Actually this is for everybody who told me inmates' names are public record: Yeah, I know. I said that sometimes prison staff don't know (or care) and won't tell you, and calling again and again or working your way up the authority chain may not be the kind of thing the people on the House and Home desk think they should be doing. So there. Nyah.

notsofresh

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Seeräuber Jenny: It should raise flags when a girl with that face writes a book about dealing drugs for the Bloods or Crips. It doesn't make sense on it's (white-as-fuck) face. Whether a reporter or a reviewer, a journalist is supposed to have some freaking sense.

What freaking sense did this person's story make? If books and newspapers were not run for and by the rich (see the family connection behind the publishing of this book)a lie this sleazy might have been uncovered three years ago. Anyone with any experience with drug dealers and gangs could have sussed this phony out long ago.

But it was prepared by the daughter of a NY book review editor (rich guy) and sold to his daughter (rich girl) and vetted by the kind of people who can afford to work in publishing (rich people with trust funds). And then reviewed by a totally rich person who never worked an honest job in her life (Michiko Kakutani) but thinks she can understand how real humans live in America.

This was the phoniest crap that ever happened. But of course it was welcomed. So is MK and the rest of the New York Times.

Ian Spiegelman

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Seeräuber Jenny:
You don't interview the AUTHOR. You go AROUND the author and check teachers, school friends, neighbors, old boyfriends, associates. WHATEVER you can find. And you CAN find them. There's this thing called Google and ZabaSearch. They're REAL EASY to use.


lizzybennet

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @lizzybennet:
and yes I meant Angel, as in Angel of literature, Wallace God Stegner.


lizzybennet

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Ian Spiegelman:
I was oretty clear it was Carrie bradshaw, not Candace Buschell.
And I probably spelled that wrong but I never bought the crap. I have 102 per cent desire NOT to read "sex columnists. Unless it's Dan Savage.



lizzybennet

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @3cardkitty:
I got it over the internet. Prison support groups publish this information routinely.


lizzybennet

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> So the buck stops with the agent, huh? But it starts with the greed. Nobody lays out 100K unless they smell bestseller, paperback rights, movie deal. The editor never met the author? Did she think she was dealing with Salinger. This is the Pontius Pilate Book Club this lot is.

belltolls

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Ian Spiegelman:
It was carrie's "collection of essays" that got the rave review, because on S& The C, let's face it, carrie bradshaw was the shit. All the men wanted her. mr Big finally gave up everything for her (NOT true in REAL life). She never married the dancer (NOT TRUE in real life). And she's not pathetic, unsubstantial, materialistic, simplistic, and a "fun light" writer of cliche with a twist and in an expensive gift box.
Get your ass through Angel of Repose or Call it Sleep and then we'll talk.



lizzybennet

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Kakapo:

I do like Kakutani (I'm sure she has a very fine opinion of herself and couldn't care less what I think), but I think it's unfair to ask a reviewer to be a fact checker. A lot of people are acting as if there wasn't a whole chain of command that f---ked up absymally before the book got to her. Read after the fact, the review does display a bit of skepticism.

Were I a book editor I wouldn't want to interrogate the author of a memoir, either, although I think I'd try to check out some basic facts. And my goodness, the budget was so low that the writer and editor never met in three years?

Future memoirists:
Be ready to hand over your DNA (Thanks a bunch, Peggy.).

Seeräuber Jenny

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Seeräuber Jenny: She's been around forever. How about opening one's eyes to see how unlikely the story was?

But more to the point: If there is anything seemingly "ethnic" about you, even if it is absurd, MK will nod and praise and nod and praise. She's a cheerleader for an idea of a writer, and not even remotely a critic of existing writers. She's a stupid little preacher. Not a valid critic.

Ian Spiegelman

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Seeräuber Jenny:

Well... not be so damned gullible, for one thing.

I don't even hate Kakutani nearly as much as most people here; I'm actually flabbergasted that she was fooled by this shit and even thought it was well-written.

Kakapo

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Ryan:

Glad to see you're still carrying the fire in spite of the dayshifts rout.

The issue was never that that the book got undo coverage (surely it did, but that kind of nepotism is expected) The issue is that Penguin broke the story with Motoko Rich who occasionally shares a byline with Charles McGrath, and Motoko was uncritical of McGrath the younger. Shenanigans!.

KFedsbalzac

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Ian Spiegelman:

Why is this Michiko Kakutani's fault? That's the only part of this I don't get. I'm irritated by everyone else and see plenty of fault to go around:

Author
Liar, Poseur, Manipulator

Book Editor
Asleep at the switch (Let's be VERY kind.)
Enjoyed nepotistic connection

NYT Book Review Editor
Maybe a little too swept up by comfortable stereotypes about unruly black people
Responded to nepotistic connection
Assigned or suggested book (I assume)

Reviewer
Although possibly susceptible to nepotistic connection, read book and apparently liked it, with the assumption it was true. (The comment in the review about the memoir's "novelistic" aspects is screamingly funny now, as are all the articles the NYT ran before the fraud was exposed. The slideshow was priceless.)

But what was Kakutani supposed to do? Unloose the bloodhounds before opening the book? She's an effing reviewer/critic, not a P.I.



More important, shouldn't the Times's famous ethical rules have required an outside reviewer in a situation like this?

Seeräuber Jenny

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @lizzybennet: Do you mean she gave Carrie's book a good review in the show, or that she gave Candace's book a good review in real life?

Still, I could understand giving Candace's book a good review. It was light fun and Candace was one of the first successful sex writers in the 90s. Michiko's real crimes occeurred later.

Ian Spiegelman

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @felion: shocking that they bought it, really. punk'd has more convincing pull-the-wool-over-their-eyes strategies than this chick.

saltwatertaffy

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> The truth is insulting and divisive, according to Nan Talese as quoted. Her name is on book spines, if books can still be thought to have them. "I don't think there is any way you can fact-check every single book. It would be very insulting and divisive in the author-editor relationship."

friendofyours

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @notsofresh: I have to enter this late: It actually is just a matter of picking up the phone to get prison inmate status confirmed. You might have to pick up the phone several times and call many people, but, I've done it at least two dozens times and it's not rocket science.

3cardkitty

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @slakboy:
It all makes me VOMIT. Nepotism everywhere. The son of Mr. Television Chuck Sherman head of MTV, his daughter a hack "financial editor" and money mag columnist who plegarizes every publication she can get her manicured hands and botoxed eyes on--she's down to MSN money. How do you think these people get these jobs? and why do you think they fuck up so monumentally? you think some no-nothing reporter who toiled away at The St Louis Dispatch who finally got a shot working for the NY Times would screw up like this?
I doubt it.



lizzybennet

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Ian Spiegelman:
Oh come on! She gave Carrie Bradshaw's book a great review in Sex and the City!!!!! And I'm sure it was a Great Book.


lizzybennet

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @friend_of_a_friend:
She'll sick her Brentwood residing slander-lawyer uncle on your ass is more like it.


lizzybennet

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> So what did the editor have: A pale white girl claiming to be Half-Native American,to have grown up with a black foster mother in South Central, and to be an "inactive member" of the Bloods. Yup, no reason to doubt this girl, ever. Everyone directly involved with the publication of this book should be fired and their positions elminated.

felion

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @notsofresh:
oh and that's an excuse? Fuck. Hey NY TIMES House and Home! Hire me. I will fact check the shit out of your prima donna ass connected writers. They'll get nothing by me. And you don't have to pay me no 75 grand a year to do it. I'll do it for half that.
Course, I'll last about three months. That'
s how long it tooks the morons at RS to get rid of me after I brought up problems I had with the Stephen Glass college admissions story.
I was "difficult to work with" I was told. That's what the writers said.
I'll bet I was difficult.
Hard to tell lies and fabricate shit when someone actually takes the term "fact checking" seriously.







lizzybennet

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @notsofresh:
just finished a story on three in prison. so not true. all public record. sorry.


lizzybennet

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> The pathetic excuses in that story are more galling than the fact that she faked it. My favorite: That skepticism would harm the author-editor relationship. Not as much harm as finding out your author is a big liar.

3cardkitty

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @notsofresh: Trust me. *Every* single reporter under the Times umbrella throws their weight around as if they were. The fact that this was the easiest story to debunk, and that they could not debunk it, will not lessen the hubris there.

And let me add one more thing: Michiko Kakutani is a horrible, horrible force against decent writing, that cheerleader of utter fucking crap.

Ian Spiegelman

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> I found the part about her getting a tattoo when "Nevada set an execution date for a close friend" a bit suspicious because I know from living in Nevada that they don't execute people like Texas does. Sure enough, .10 seconds on google and I find out they've only executed 6 people in 10 years. If I weren't so lazy I would confirm that Nevada doesn't give people execution dates until all appeals are exhausted and it's sure to happen. But I wouldn't want to challenge Peggy's story. She'll sic Fat Momma on my ass fo' sure.

friend_of_a_friend

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> You know, when I read the House & Home piece, my inner b-s detector went *wild.* White foster child in the hood? I don't think so. I just didn't buy it. Maybe if the crack investigative team at the NYT had called, oh, anyone who lives in LA, they might have caught it as well.

thenorthwing

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> And I'm sure that the fact that Penguin Group editor Sarah McGrath's father is Charles McGrath (former editor of the NYT Book Review) is just a coincidence and had nothing to do with why the Times ran the profile in the first place.

slakboy

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @notsofresh: The hubris of the New York Times encompasses every single writer and editor under its stinking umbrella. Do you think that irrelevant zombie slob Michiko Kakutani even wondered for a second if this bullshit story was the real thing?

She just read it, saw "woman" and "black" and "native" and whinnied her way through a gushing review. Because she is an idiot. And that is what fuels the New York Times.

Ian Spiegelman

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Hamud: "I'm livin' in shame, Mama I miss you / I know you're not to blame, Mama I miss you."

trojanhorse

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @if_i_only_had_a_heart: I was raised by them chutzpah. True story.

acridsheep

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Ian Spiegelman: Yeah, I agree. But I doubt that the NYT House and Home section is a hotbed of hardass, don't-take-no-for-an-answer newshoundery.

notsofresh

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> "The one thing we wish," Riverhead Books publisher Geoffrey Kloske told the Times, "is that the author had told us the truth."

Wow, Kloske. To paraphrase Juno, "Wish BIG!"

My wish is that the sun goes down tonight and comes up in the morning and I will still have a job.

MissCast

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @acridsheep:

jewish wolves?

if_i_only_had_a_heart

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> I didn't know they had wolves in L.A. Nazis and Jews, sure, but wolves?

Egats!

acridsheep

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @notsofresh: All prisons and jails in the US are required to confirm if a certain person is being held there. Many try not to, yes, but their lame strategies are among the first things a cub reporter learns how to circumvent. And, last I heard, the NYT was the most powerful newspaper in the country. They shouldn't be employing reporters who can't get that kind of totally basic info. But the reporters at the Times are just as lazy and lame as the reporters they look down upon. And this is just another example of their lazy lameness.

Ian Spiegelman

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> I guess everyone fucking decided that credibility is overrated, and all these publishing-types circling the wagons in the comments around here are just self-proclaimed hacks. If you want a clue as to why people stopped reading newspapers and books, take a look in the mirror, hacks.

vulturesquadron

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> they thought she said she was "well, off-white." damned punctuation! the only thing worse is.... capitalization.

metalkate

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> people people -- if someone is in prison, they committed a crime. if they committed a crime, it's, uh, how can i spell this out so ny times editors and publishing house fact checkers can understand it ****A PUBLIC RECORD****

obvs they haven't ever used any

if_i_only_had_a_heart

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> Not to be a wet blanket or anything, but in defense of the Times, actually getting any kind of contact, let alone a fact-checking interview, with someone in prison is not just a matter of picking up a phone. Some prisons won't even confirm that a particular person is incarcerated there (even if they are supposed to), which may be what Ms. Seltzer was counting on.

notsofresh

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @Furious George: Seriously. She looks like the crying Santorum kid, all growed up.

valet_of_the_dolls

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> @nicepony

When the NYT paid her a call, Seltzer was in her kitchen...making black-eyed peas and cornbread.

If that isn't proof-positive that a white person has spent time among black folk, well, you're a cold hard-to-please cynical bastard!

Hamud Ibn Hamud

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> I love "Nothing in her home or conversation or happenstance led me to believe otherwise."

Was it decorated in Mid-Century gang banger?.....Was there dog-fighting in the foyer?

nicepony

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> Oprah is going to give her the Nan Talese treatment.

uncle_wiggly

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> What's with the disappearing comments?

Ian Spiegelman

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> It should be a giveaway anytime a white person says "I'm part Native American". Which part? The bloated drunk kind?

Cheap Shot

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> Seltzer's agent Faye Bender, who McGrath said she totally trusted, said "there was no reason to doubt [Seltzer,] ever."

It's that "ever" that really sells it for me.

But, seriously? Can you fucking weak-ass publishers stop buying memoirs from anyone under sixty who isn't famous, a war hero, or a proven convict? And that goes for thinly-veiled roman-a-clefs as well. Except for mine.

Ian Spiegelman

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> I'm beginning to suspect this Seltzer woman has not been entirely upfront about this memoir of hers.

Malarcus

]]> <![CDATA[Editors' Pathetic Attempts To Fact Check Lying Author]]> The worst punishment this chick has to endure is having had that very unflattering headshot appear 20 times on Gawker in the past 48 hours.

Furious George

]]>