Seemingly pounding on one another: one by dissing, the other by bypassing… thus go the NYT and Assange.
Remember Alfred E Neuman and Mad magazine’s Spy vs Spy, where the white robed spy and the black robed spy were always trying to outdo each other …and would wind up blowing themselves up instead of each other… most every time? No one ever quite won for long.
That.
The NYT apparently has to aggregate their profile of Assange in a new article, as he appears to not want to talk to the NYT. Rather to Al-J instead.
Assange says his legal bills are piling up.
Breaking news: The newly announced $1.1 million autobiographical book deal from Sonny Mehta of Knopf for Assange, should help alot. (Knopf is a melange in itself: Mehta is an east Indian raised in UK who still wears the silver kara. He’s the elder publisher of Knopf under Random House/ Bertalsmann… which is wholly owned by the Mohn family in Germany… speaking of the new globo-mono-conomy)
Here’s a good synopsis from Business Insider: The Wire, by Glynnis MacNicol
The NYT has been reduced to essentially aggregating other people’s reports on Julian Assange in today’s story by John F. Burns. The following caveat appears half way through a piece detailing Assange’s “high-tech” house arrest.
Attempts by The New York Times to interview Mr. Assange in recent days were unsuccessful. For months, he has regularly changed cellphones, and had members of his close-knit entourage answer them for him….Telephones there go unanswered, and the hall’s Web site for weddings and shooting parties, during which the public is charged $40 to shoot a pheasant, has been taken off-line.
This appears to be the latest snub from Assange against the NYT. The paper was forced to get the most recent round of cables from the Guardian after Assange refused to send it to them; in October Assange took great issue with a profile the Times ran on him co-authored by Burns.
You can read the actual here and watch a clip of Assange and David Frost as well: