Profiles in Class

Yesterday, Nate Silver had a rather nasty interview with conservative tool John Ziegler, which Andrew Sullivan commented on and reminded me that Ziegler had been profiled by David Foster Wallace a couple of years ago. The profile is a fascinating piece, delving into the attitudes and assumptions that drive right wing talk radio in, to my mind, a fair and even handed manner. Rereading it online (it’s also available in expanded form in Wallace’s Consider the Lobster), I suddenly wondered what Ziegler had thought of the piece – it wasn’t exactly a flattering portrait of the man. Well, ask and the internet shall provide.

The whole “editorial” is an exercise in extraordinary bad taste and ignorance, from Ziegler admitting that he didn’t know who Wallace was to talking about the children that Wallace didn’t have and finally beginning a sentence with the always problematic phrase, “I know that it is considered bad form, or worse, to speak ill of the newly dead, but …” It goes a long way towards proving that Wallace’s insightful, considered profile and Silver’s interview with Ziegler, in all it’s ignorant, profane glory, is far from an exception to this man’s personality: he’s an unadulterated asshole, through and through.

The only good that this did, as far as I know, is bringing me to finally read Rolling Stone’s masterful (I want to say “wonderful,” but it’s too achingly sad and human for such an adjective) profile of Wallace’s last days and his heretofore little known problems with depression. It was something I had kind of been avoiding, but I’m glad I read it. It’s a very well done profile of one great artist’s struggle with an illness that weighs on too many people.

Go read the Wallace profile of Ziegler from the Atlantic. Read Ziegler’s reaction to Wallace’s suicide. Read the Rolling Stone profile of Wallace. And then you let me know who you believe is telling the truth.