Telling the Truth

Daniel Drezner on what would happen if those author blurbs that come at the end of articles were forced to be honest:

* Suzie Wong has never been to the country about which she is writing. What’s in this op-ed is culled from a quick perusal of the Economist and a few phone calls.

* Cass Bunstein is a law professor. He dashed off this essay in his head while commuting to work this morning, wrote it in under thirty minutes, and it’s still smarter than anything, my dear reader, that will ever pop into your brain.

* Augusta Cornington has been teaching at an obscure state school for two decades, lying in the tall grass, waiting for her arch-nemesis to make a mistake in print. This book review is her chance to completely eviscerate him.

I once received a manuscript from a reviewer who seemed to take this principle to heart: “The writer of this review,” he wrote for his author tag, “is an associate professor at a midwestern liberal arts school, and isn’t it an outrage that someone who writes this well still hasn’t been promoted to full professor?”