[Shotimes] OT Jayson Blair

[Mike.Wojton@us.o-i.com]

I think I've seen this guy's name mentioned here before.


Jayson Boasts of Fooling Times

Discraced Times fabulist Jayson Blair has broken his silence this week
by giving an interview in which he brags about how he "fooled some of
the most brilliant people in journalism" and laughs about his
"favorite" act of fakery.

Blair makes his stunning remarks in an interview set to run today in
the New York Observer in which he tells about cracking up as he
remembered the falsehoods he inserted in a story about rescued POW Pvt.
Jessica Lynch.

"That's my favorite," he said, recalling how he painted a ridiculously
cliched description of her family's West Virginia home, saying it
overlooked "tobacco fields and cattle pastures." "The description was
so far off from the reality. And the way they described it in the Times
story - someone read a portion of it to me - I couldn't stop laughing."

Blair also bristled at the notion that affirmative action played any
role in helping him continue to work at the Times.

With apparent pride, he told the salmon-colored weekly's Sridhar Pappu
that he deserved all the credit for pulling his scam - and whined about
not being held in the same regard as other well-known journalistic
prevaricators.

"I don't understand why I am the bumbling affirmative-action hire when
Stephen Glass is this brilliant whiz kid, when, from my perspective -
and I know I shouldn't be saying this - I fooled some of the most
brilliant people in journalism," he said. "He's so brilliant and yet
somehow I'm an affirmative-action hire.

They're all so smart, but I was sitting right under their nose fooling
them ... If they're all so brilliant and I'm such an affirmative-action
hire, how come they didn't they catch me?"

The Observer also reports that Blair's agent is already shopping the
journalistic liar's story to Hollywood.

"I think we will be getting the proposal out in a week or 10 days, and
expect to make a deal within a week after that," said literary agent
David Vigliano.

Blair's rep also referred to a story by The New York Post's Keith J.
Kelly, speculating that the fallen fabricator's parable of perfidy could
get him a deal in the high six or seven figures.

Such a large sum for the tale doesn't "seem unreasonable to me,"
Vigliano said. "It's a huge, huge story." (PAGE SIX - NY Post)


Mike Wojton
Toledo, Ohio

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