Saturday, November 10, 2012

A Most Intimate Biography

Took things a little too far did biographer Paula Broadwell.

Knowing the subject of whom you write is critical to an in-depth analysis, missus, but did you really have to know all about your subject's sexual proclivities?

It makes the title All In a bit of a double entendre, does it not?

Things are devolving quickly in Washington, D.C., where the news of General David Patraeus' resignation hit like a bunker buster bomb.

He'd had an affair, cheated on his wife, and he couldn't be the head spook at the CIA when he himself was holding a big secret that could be used to blackmail him. In the interest of national security, the storied general quit his post.

Before the day was over, the details trickled out. The FBI, it seems, was investigating Ms. Broadwell because she was dipping into the general's e-mail without proper authorization. Once that first domino fell, it was only a matter of time until the whole row tumbled and there at the end was an embarrassed man.

A skilled biographer demands access to the subject, but did that access really need to include the bedroom?

Unpublished authors need to know these things. If there's something they're not doing that is preventing them from landing a publishing contract, don't you think they would like to correct such an omission?

More books may be coming at us. Consider how the conspiracy theorists are lining up, to describe a plot to rid the Obama administration of an unwanted bureaucrat.

It's the sort of thing that's right up David Axelrod's alley, after all. It would make for a gripping read, to have the political junkie probing another man's sexual escapades.

Over the course of the next weeks, the full story will be pieced together and someone else can then write another biography, about hubris perhaps or ego.

Or the lengths one author would go to uncover all there is to know about the subject of the biography.

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