Quotes by Michael Wolff - Page 2

President Donald J Trump and the U.S. media appear now to be split by deep doctrinal differences - of the constitutional crisis kind. But, virtually up until the split, Trump and the media were as one - a perfect symbiosis.
Michael Wolff /
Differences
Appear
Constitutional
Split
Virtually
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Rusbridger had risen at the Guardian through the years when it not only had the support and fail-safe mechanism of the Scott Trust, but guaranteed operating income from public-service advertising. Nobody had to sell anything.
Michael Wolff /
Advertising
Risen
Guaranteed
Scott
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One of the annoyances of working for The Guardian is that, obsessed as the organisation is with its digital and social media presence and its own sense of singular importance, editors would militantly try to edit your tweets.
Michael Wolff /
Guardian
Organisation
Social Media Your Media
Edit
Presence
Singular
Tweets
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Trump's election was dispiriting and confounding to most traditional political players - perhaps nobody more so than Murdoch. Still, Murdoch did what he has always done: made sure he had maximum influence with the new president.
Michael Wolff /
Election
Maximum
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With obvious irony, many of the left-leaning privacy advocates who might cheer Apple's stand against the government's intrusion into its system, are now, as transparency advocates, on the side of the leakers of the Panama Papers.
Michael Wolff /
Intrusion
Irony
Obvious
Panama
Privacy
Transparency
Advocate
Apple
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I have never heard the word brand used so often as I did around The Guardian. Brand was the magical word, particularly as it was uttered by Alan Rusbridger, that would transform the paper and the goal that everyone was working toward.
Michael Wolff /
Guardian
Alan
Magical
Transform
Uttered
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In America, the new post-postmodern politician is all about authenticity: the daffier you are, the 'realer' you must be. The more you have committed yourself to a ridiculous idea and fevered view, the more worthy you are of attention.
Michael Wolff /
Worthy
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Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W Bush (and, in their image, Tony Blair) bitterly annoyed their antagonists because they were - at least until the Iraq war caught up with Blair and Bush - Teflon. David Cameron is in this model.
Michael Wolff /
Annoyed
Blair
Cameron
Caught
Iraq War
Bill Clinton
David Cameron
George W
George W. Bush
Tony
Tony Blair
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One of the secrets of Fox News' outsized success - it's the most profitable news organisation in the U.S. and, quite likely, the world - is that it saw the country full of liberal occupiers and Fox News' viewers as the heroic resistance.
Michael Wolff /
Fox News
Heroic
News
Organisation
Profitable
Resistance
Viewers
Fox
Saw
Liberal
Likely
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Galling for left-wing activists and the mainstream media's bottom line - in its way as galling as Fox's daily agitprop - was the fact that liberal media did not have the talent or the savvy or the passion to match conservative media's success.
Michael Wolff /
Bottom Line
Left Wing
Mainstream
Savvy
Activists
Fox
Liberal
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For decades, Trump had no life independent from the media. He became a figure in the nation, and his a monitisable name - albeit quite a ludicrous one - because of his nonstop, relentless, shameless and often embarrassing courtship of the media.
Michael Wolff /
Courtship
Decades
Embarrassing
Relentless
Shameless
Albeit
Ludicrous
No Life
Nonstop
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At a particularly dicey moment in my own love life when I was interviewing Rupert Murdoch a number of years ago, I tried to get some advice from him about, well, about anything a man with three wives, the latest the age of his children, might offer.
Michael Wolff /
Love Life
Life Love Age
Interviewing
Latest
Rupert Murdoch
Wives
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One of the anomalies of digital journalism is a lack of clarity between high and low. That's the historic distinction in publishing, mass from class, the vulgar from the refined, tabloid from broadsheet, the penny press from papers costing a nickel.
Michael Wolff /
Clarity
Digital
Distinction
Historic
Journalism
Mass
Papers
Publishing
Refined
Vulgar
Costing
Lack
Low
Nickel
Penny
Press
Tabloid
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The most important virtue in politics was once thought to be likeability. But in Corbyn, dislikeable was king. Actually, dislikeability reached its apotheosis in Donald Trump, who exhibited sourness, truculence and negativity in every step and tweet.
Michael Wolff /
Every Step
Negativity
Virtue
Donald Trump
Reached
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Before even getting to David Cameron's father here's a starting-point question about the Panama Papers: how is the desire to break the anonymity of Panama banking secrecy different from the FBI's interest in breaking Apple's encryption of the iPhone?
Michael Wolff /
Anonymity
Banking
Cameron
Encryption
Fbi
Iphone
Panama
Secrecy
Apple
Breaking
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Unlike financial impropriety, which needs to be proven, a charge of sexual loutishness and aggressiveness in and of itself can finish you off. Does the man match the charge? To be the kind of man who would be accused of being so gross is guilt enough.
Michael Wolff /
Accused
Aggressiveness
Financial
Gross
Guilt
Proven
Charge
Unlike
Sexual
Match
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I am in the representational business, a portraitist. I have tried to walk an amused line amid hyperbole, documentary detail, cruel characterisation, occasional affection, some good punchlines and anthropological social insight. It's been a good living.
Michael Wolff /
Affection
Amused
Good Living
Hyperbole
Insight
Occasional
Cruel
Detail
Documentary
Representational
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The Apple imperative is to build a system that is 100 per cent resistant to any government warrant. The data on your iPhone, no matter how swarmy, corrupt, or dangerous you are, is supposedly safe. That's also the proposition of Panamanian banking laws.
Michael Wolff /
Banking
Iphone
Apple
Corrupt
Cent
Imperative
Proposition
Resistant
Supposedly
Warrant
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The emerging notion of the Eighties was that publicity was a currency. The old view was that if you had a currency - your talent or your product - publicity might draw attention to it. The new view was that publicity in itself, highlighting you, bestowed value.
Michael Wolff /
Currency
Emerging
Highlighting
Notion
Publicity
Bestowed
Eighties
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More than any other president, save perhaps John F Kennedy, whose father ran a film studio, and Ronald Reagan, a leading man and governor of California, Trump is on a buddy basis with media moguls, a speed dialer with the heads of studios and media conglomerates.
Michael Wolff /
Buddy
California
Ran
Speed
Trump
Basis
Governor
Heads
John
Leading
Leading Man
Perhaps
Studio
Save
Whose
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Corbyn and Trump don't seem to have anything in common except the assumption on the part of anyone subscribing at any level to the standard thinking that they could never achieve electoral success. They were supposed to doom, if not destroy, their party's future.
Michael Wolff /
Assumption
Doom
Destroy
Electoral
Standard
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Rusbridger's intelligence, personal sense of higher calling and almost other-worldly self-absorption have played no small part in the stories that have most defined the Guardian and that, under another sort of steward, might have had a much more sceptical reception.
Michael Wolff /
Calling
Defined
Guardian
Reception
Sceptical
Small Part
Steward
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Along with Trump, there are few people, on either the right or the left, who would defend the system. The system is, everyone believes, broken: it's an insider's game; it's totally fixed; it serves itself. Trump codified this into a simple and vivid idea: the swamp.
Michael Wolff /
Broken
Fixed
Simple
Trump
Vivid
Totally
Believes
Defend
Few People
Insider
Serve
Swamp
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As much as any other producer in the modern movie age, Harvey Weinstein has been a subject of media fascination. The grossness, the bullying, the unbridled exercising of personal power, the craven appetites, the awards and his good taste in films fed that fascination.
Michael Wolff /
Awards
Bullying
Fascination
Good Taste
Harvey
Good Age Power
Appetites
Power Good Age
Exercising
Fed
Producer
Unbridled
Weinstein
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Bieber is the first mega YouTube star, born inexplicably out of a novel and disruptive medium. It has, of course, always been so for pop culture: feverish bubbles, silly novelty acts and disconcerting new forces impose themselves on a reluctant and condescending media.
Michael Wolff /
Bubbles
Condescending
Disruptive
Mega
Novelty
Pop Culture
Reluctant
Silly
Youtube
Acts
Disconcerting
Impose
Medium
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As the entertainment industry became more corporate and MBA-driven, Harvey Weinstein remained an unreconstructed specimen of the worst and most compelling character traits of a truer Hollywood. Harvey, and in a sense only Harvey, continued to embody the Hollywood self.
Michael Wolff /
Compelling
Corporate
Entertainment Industry
Harvey
Traits
Embody
Remained
Specimen
Truer
Weinstein
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How advertising is handled has always been a key distinction between low and high order publishing. The higher you stood, the more separate you were from advertising, and, in the logic of snobbery, the greater a premium price the top brands would pay to be in your company.
Michael Wolff /
Advertising
Brands
Distinction
Greater
Higher
Logic
Premium
Publishing
Snobbery
Always Your More
Handled
Low
Price
Stood
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In the litany of issues that separate the two Americas - one more conservative and one more liberal, increasingly as opposed and intractable and opaque to each other as the Palestinians and Israelis - none is so fierce, precise, inviolable and confounding to the other side as guns.
Michael Wolff /
Opaque
Precise
Americas
Guns
Increasingly
Intractable
Israelis
Liberal
Palestinians
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Edward Snowden copied and leaked information from inside the world's most protected spy agency, and then fled to Russia, but yet, because a small part of the data he expropriated was provided to a news organisation, journalism conventions readily accord him lone whistleblower status.
Michael Wolff /
Accord
Agency
Conventions
Lone
Organisation
Protected
Russia
Snowden
Spy
Copied
Edward
Leaked
Provided
Readily
Small Part
Status
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If you are identified with certain opinions and an ability to express them, and if you can build yourself an audience, a partisan fan base - measured through social media - then you are an official opinionator, monetizable through books, television contracts and the speaking circuit.
Michael Wolff /
Contracts
Social Media
Base
Circuit
Express
Fan Base
Identified
Social Media Yourself Media
Measured
Official
Opinions
Partisan
Speaking
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What's wrong with politics in the celebrity billionaire analysis is politicians. Populism is not so much a cry for economic equality, or even a disdain for elites, but a mass revulsion against the inauthenticity of politicians. Celebrities are real celebrities, politicians are fake ones.
Michael Wolff /
Equality
Analysis
Billionaire
Cry
Disdain
Economic
Elites
Fake
Mass
Revulsion
Celebrities
Politicians
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Brexit and Trump are a generational revenge. This may partly be against millennial certainty and superiority, and, indeed, ageism; and it may be a natural part of population dynamics - not only are more people getting far older than ever before, but they are older for longer than they are young.
Michael Wolff /
Ageism
Certainty
Dynamics
Population
Revenge
Superiority
Brexit
Generational
Indeed
More People
Partly
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Donald Trump has been both a peculiar and characteristic American figure for more than three decades. Inheriting a small New York real-estate development company from his father, he parlayed it not so much into a big real-estate company, but himself into a fantasy of a big real-estate developer.
Michael Wolff /
Decades
Peculiar
Characteristic
Developer
Donald Trump
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If selling had been part of his job description, Rusbridger, who never met a pound he had to earn that didn't disgust him in some visceral way, would have been disqualified long ago. Indeed, his early enthusiasm for the Internet - and a continuing principle of faith for him - was that it was free.
Michael Wolff /
Description
Enthusiasm
Selling
Visceral
Disgust
Disqualified
Earn
Indeed
Job Description
Pound
Principle
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Politics, which really is about the art of expression, ought to be a logical profession for writers (it's very hard to explain to politics- and policy-addicted people that language is the basis of all ideas - if you can't say it, you can't think it), instead of a refuge for lawyers and apparatchiks.
Michael Wolff /
Logical
Profession
Refuge
Politics Art People
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Long-running scandal fuels targeted political media. It's the stuff of obsession, which is the basis of a passionate core audience. More obsession means more passion and a crazy, over-the-top audience. Equally, of course, this obsession leads to less soberness, moderation and disinterest in the media world.
Michael Wolff /
Obsession
Over The Top
Scandal
Equally
Fuels
Leads
Long-Running
Targeted
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Running for office, or suggesting you might, is no longer about being a politician but being an independent opinion or sensibility entrepreneur. You're looking for an audience to identify with you. Rather than trying to convince a majority of the electorate, you're looking to cull your particular following.
Michael Wolff /
Convince
Electorate
Entrepreneur
Politician
Sensibility
Suggesting
Identify
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I can hardly tell you how boring it is to interview almost every politician among the multitudes I have ever interviewed (journalists can't say this, because if people knew how boring politicians were they wouldn't read what we write), how dead the conversation feels, how bald, flat, uninteresting the message is.
Michael Wolff /
Conversation
Feels
Multitudes
Among
Bald
Dead
Politicians
Hardly
Interview
Journalists
Uninteresting
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Donald Trump doesn't necessarily stay mad for very long. He's a transactional guy. If you can offer him something, he will take it. Or from a salesman's point of view, if he's not making the sale, you're of no use to him. But if you suddenly come back into the showroom and are willing to buy, he's willing to sell.
Michael Wolff /
Point Of View
Salesman
Donald Trump
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I am old enough to think the word 'journalist' is not all that noble a designation. Journalist - that record keeper, quote taker and processor of press releases - was, in the world of letters I grew up in, a lower-down job. To be a writer - once the ambition of every journalist - was to be the greater truth teller.
Michael Wolff /
Designation
Journalist
Letters
Noble
Release
Old Enough
Quote
Teller
Copy Quote
Every journalism bromide - speaking truth to power, comforting the afflicted, afflicting the powerful - that otherwise would be hopelessly sappy to a journalist of any experience, has become a Twitter grail. The true business of journalism has become obscured because there is really no longer a journalism business.
Michael Wolff /
Comforting
Afflicted
Grail
Hopelessly
Obscured
Sappy
Copy Quote
Possibly the defining development of postmodern politics - naturally, an American one - is the separation of personality from ideology. If you are likeable, or at least not disagreeable, if you can strike a personal bond with the electorate, if you reassure rather than disrupt, it doesn't really matter what you stand for.
Michael Wolff /
Defining
Disagreeable
Electorate
Ideology
Likeable
Postmodern
Separation
Bond
Disrupt
Reassure
Strike
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Here's a certainty: When you play out your personal dramas, hurt and self-interest in the media, it's a confection. You say what you have to say in the way you have to say it to give it media currency - and that's always far from the truth. Often, in fact, someone else says it for you. It's all planned. It's all rehearsed.
Michael Wolff /
Certainty
Currency
Self Interest
Truth Always Your
Dramas
Planned
Rehearsed
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Curiously, many Democrats have acceded to Clintonism not because of their cold practicality and political professionalism, but because the Clintons are the sworn enemy of the right. The Clintons, in other words, while hardly being left, have been defined as the opposite of being right - the enemy of my enemy being my friend.
Michael Wolff /
Cold
Defined
Enemy
Left
Practicality
Professionalism
Words
Opposite
Friend
Curiously
Democrats
Hardly
In Other Words
My Friend
Sworn
While
Copy Quote
There was, when I came to New York in the 1970s, no more profound or moving experience than MoMA, an almost perfect piece of 20th Century modernist expression, existing in an extraordinary balance - modestly, functionally, elegantly - with the extraordinary art it held. This place changed my life. I was transformed by every visit.
Michael Wolff /
Profound
Transformed
Life Art Experience
Existing
Life Experience Art
Modernist
Visit
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Reality television is to television what marble and gold are to real estate. The point is to dispense with the idea of taste. It's all id. The more unrestrained the better. We all know that 'reality' in reality television is not real. That anybody who would participate in reality television is a fake. But pretending otherwise makes them real.
Michael Wolff /
Fake
Gold
Marble
Reality Television
Taste
Dispense
Estate
Id
Otherwise
Participate
Real Estate
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Bill de Blasio, for his part, became the mayor of New York, surely the most powerful local political position in the nation, and arguably - after Giuliani and Bloomberg - one with a national base, one with, practically speaking, no job at all. He went from marginal political flotsam and jetsam to extraordinary centrality within a few months time.
Michael Wolff /
Most Powerful
Arguably
Practically
Marginal
Mayor
Surely
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Michael Wolff Quotes - Page 2

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