Times Bomb [Jayson Blair's inside story, from Newsweek]

Newsweek ^ | May 18, 2003 | Seth Minookin and others

[summer]

Times Bomb

Newsweek

.... As the Times meeting was unfolding, Jayson Blair was holed up in an apartment in Manhattan, talking with his lawyer and his literary agent. The week before, friends say, Blair had checked himself out of Silver Hill, a tony inpatient hospital in New Canaan, Conn., where he had been receiving treatment for a history of alcoholism, cocaine abuse and manic depression, NEWSWEEK has learned. ....

...In a conversation with NEWSWEEK, Blair spoke of his feelings since his career went up in flames: "I can't say anything other than the fact that I feel a range of emotions including guilt, shame, sadness, betrayal, freedom and appreciation for those who have stood by me, been tough on me, and have taken the time to understand that there is a deeper story and not to believe everything they read in the newspapers."...

...But Blair's performance, already spotty, seemed to be getting worse. His personal life also seemed to be spinning out of control. His apartment in Brooklyn was littered with broken furniture and rotting food, his landlord said; there was fungus, and mold. When he moved out in the fall of 2002, the place was in such sordid condition his landlord considered taking him to small-claims court to recoup damages. "It was real filth," the landlord told NEWSWEEK. "Imagine using a bathroom for two-and-a-half years and never cleaning it."

....Within months, Blair was circulating drafts of a book proposal on the sniper story in which he discussed his own anger and frustration as an African-American. "[A friend] encouraged me to look for answers about the history of violence in my own family and that of Lee Malvo [the other sniper suspect], suggesting the search would not be in vain, if it at least ended my restless angst," Blair wrote. Later, he told friends that he identified with Malvo....

[Aquinasfan]

"Imagine using a bathroom for two-and-a-half years and never cleaning it."

Sounds like my college apartment. 8-P

[aristeides]

In a few years the demonization of smoking will be so complete that a movie set in WW2 will feature a chain-smoking Hitler and an abstemious Churchill, just to telegraph to the audience who’s naughty and who’s nice."

My recollection is that the movie Pearl Harbor already had a nonsmoking FDR.