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Dean Poling

 

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Original Sin: Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson

 

Original Sin: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson

Jake Tapper has likely made a hunk of change, but he and co-author Alex Thompson can’t seem to catch a break from criticism with their latest book.

Commentators and social media posters have accused Tapper of selling out for a book deal, of not reporting the news on his weekday CNN show as he learns it, for going after a past president rather than looking into the issues with the current president, of betraying progressive views to carry water for a conservative narrative.

Depending on what social media you’re following, what shows you’re watching and what articles you’re reading, Tapper has been more controversial for writing “Original Sins: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, And His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” than what is chronicled in the book.

Arguably, most people – even his supporters – realized Joe Biden was incapable of running for re-election and having a second term after watching his disastrous performance in the debate with then-former President Donald Trump last June. Conservatives believed Biden was incapable of running the nation before he was elected in 2020.

In “Original Sin,” Tapper and Thompson report Biden’s abilities were diminished by the time he ran for president in 2020 compared to when he was vice president during Barack Obama’s two-term presidency; however, the authors claim Biden’s abilities were better in 2020 than what many conservatives claim.

“Original Sin” reports that Biden’s steep decline occurred in 2023 when White House handlers and family kept the president under tight wraps – keeping him away from unscripted meetings with people, secluding him from most White House staff, scheduling almost all of his events during a six-hour window of 10 a.m.-4 p.m., having a doctor who insisted there was no reason to give an 81-year-old president a cognitive test despite repeated gaps in his conversations and memory and the stiffening gait of his movements, etc.

As Biden moved away from his initial promise of a one-term presidency to seek re-election, some supporters believed a second term was not only a bad idea but impossible. But those observations were muted by the strong sense of denial coming from Biden, his family and the president’s closest advisors. Biden would run and could run again because he was the only person to beat Trump and the only one who could beat him again.

Until, after the debate, he obviously wouldn’t and couldn’t, and then it was too late.

With the publication of “Original Sin,” it’s easy to blame Tapper for the book’s message. Killing the messenger has long been a game played by leaders; in recent years, it has become a public sport for everyone.

As Tapper and Thompson note, they began research on the book after Trump won the 2024 election last November. That’s when Biden supporters, advisors and cabinet secretaries began speaking on the record, as mostly unnamed sources in this book, about the incapacitation of the 46th president.

If there’s blame about the timing of these revelations being released in a book, it rests on those sources more than the authors.

 

Twist: Colum McCann

Anthony Fennell, an alcoholic playwright and novelist, seeks a story to rejuvenate his stagnant creativity and career. He takes on a journalistic assignment to cover the boats and crews that repair the undersea cables carrying our digital lives through hairlike fiber-optics. 

The cloud does the cloud but most of the heavy lifting of our social media, banking transactions, voices and the rest of our life histories travel these cables criss-crossing the ocean floor. At least according to Colum McCann’s latest novel, “Twist.”

Aboard, Fennell is struck by the ship’s mission commander, John Conway, a man of mystery and something of a contradiction. Conway finds and repairs these damaged undersea cables, but he lives a life that seems oddly disconnected from the digital essence that binds and intersects all of our modern lives.

Or at least he does until the non-stop information of the digital world finds him, even miles away at sea.

From the first paragraph of page one, McCann hits readers with a torrent of words, of imagery, of thoughts, put together in single words, phrases, sentence fragments, complete sentences, an assault on the senses. These words strike like drops of rain in a sudden downpour, hitting with their own rhythm, leaving a reader to dash along, seeking a pattern, one found within a few pages, leaving a reader awash in the language of character and story.

McCann writes in a beautiful style. He can pull a reader down to the depths of the sea then buoy them aright into the sun. 

But he’s not for everyone. 

Several years ago, I was asked to lead a session of a book club whose members read the selected books prior to the meeting. “Let the Great World Spin,” perhaps McCann’s masterpiece, was the book I selected. The plot, the writing style, the themes, the artistry of words leaving hints to ideas … struck me as being so universal, so immediate, that I felt “Let the Great World Spin” would leave the book club in awe. Perhaps, it did for a few of the readers but most of the members expressed either confusion or apathy. One member who had spent years living in New York during the time period of “Let the Great World Spin” questioned the authenticity of McCann’s observations.

As for “Twist,” the only customer review listed on one digital book site is by an anonymous reader who gave the book one star accompanied by the review: “I don’t get it.”

For those who do get McCann, “Twist” is worthy accompaniment to his other novels “Apeirogon,” “TransAtlantic” and the National Book Award-winning “Let the Great World Spin.”

McCann follows the English-language tradition of setting a novel filled with large ideas on the waters – Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” – universal ideas set upon a timeless sea within the connected disconnect of our 21st century digital age.