While the p.r. juggernaut behind the deceptions and distortions of Ted Olson, David Boies, Jo Becker and Chad Griffin grinds relentlessly forward to mainstream applause, there’s been an extraordinarily gratifying pushback from countless people who actually know something about the subject. We had Mark Joseph Stern weighing in at Slate. Alyssa Rosenberg filets the Becker and Olson books in the Washington Post here. Jamie Kirchick takes a good whack in the Wall Street Journal here. Hank Stuever got the true measure of the documentary here.
Alyssa’s review is particularly strong and I recommend it if you haven’t read enough about this controversy. She rightly sees this egregious p.r. campaign as turning the actual story of this remarkable civil rights struggle into something “less true and less interesting.” And she has a good eye for the motives of Boies and Olson:
Much is made of the fact that Olson and Boies opposed each other in Bush v. Gore, but little of the alternative legacy each man might want to build for himself, Boies as a winner rather than a loser, Olson as a man above politics rather than a partisan operative.
It goes to show that there is, in the end, a riposte to public relations. It’s called journalism. And the rumors of its death – at the hands of Jo Becker – are mercifully exaggerated.
The Dish 