What Ever Happened to Jayson Blair?

As Matt Welch noted earlier this morning, former Reason staffer Michael C. Moynihan has caught now-former New Yorker staffer Jonah Lehrer fabricating quotes from Henry Timrod Bob Dylan. I don't have much to add to Matt's comments, other than my disappointment that Lehrer's inventions ended where they did: I'd be a happy Dylan fan if we could blame "Joey" on Lehrer too. But I was interested to see Salon's David Daley interview the disgraced New York Times fabulist Jayson Blair about the scandal, if only because of this tidbit in the introduction:

Blair is now a certified life coach

Let that sink in, then just try to go about your business for the rest of the day.

Comments

[Apatheist ?_??]

Wow my reasonable is already fixed. Now that is service.

[heller]

Mine is blocking random people's posts, like yours. Also when I click on this blogpost, I get a box with code covering the bottom quarter of my screen.

[robc]

Yep, I have turned off reasonable for the time being.

[heller]

I disabled it and updated my extensions. That got rid of most of the bugs, although if you put a youtube link under your name, it shows up on all your posts.

[heller]

Also, if you're reading this Amakaduri, could you get reasonable to switch the positions of the submit and preview buttons as they were before?

[EDG reppin' LBC]

I uninstalled/reinstalled Reasonable, and it looks like it running fine. Is there any way I can get a payment to Amakudari for his efforts? This extension really makes Reason a much better environment.

And a gratuitous youtube clip, just to check functionality.

[Amakudari]

I appreciate the offer, but I'm fine on the money front, and I'd rather do things for free and not feel obligated in any way. It's enough to know people like and use it.

I'll fix the YouTube thing, the now-ugly formatting, and maybe switch around the preview and submit buttons, but not for a few days.

Also, let me know if anything's not working, now that people should be on version 2.3.1. Version 2.3 had a bug that showed the "code" at the bottom of the screen because Reason switched around where the commenter's name, email, etc. appeared, so it was accidentally pulling in people's obfuscated email addresses in the "Recent Posts" section. That's fixed.

[Apatheist ?_??]

Yeah it's not completely fixed yet, I've gotten that code box a few times as well. As a quick fix though I'm pretty happy as it didn't work at all this morning.

[Brett L]

Certified Life Coach. What better career for a bullshit artist?

[Brutus]

Just imagine how fucked up your life must be to consider advice from Blair as an improvement.

[Brett L]

I assume if you're hiring a life coach, you've already proven your poor decision making skills. Hiring a life coach with a history of poor decisions is just a coda to the proof.

[Invisible Finger]

Isn't the POTUS basically a life coach?

[anon]

Not only considering advice, but paying for it.

Unfortunately, these same people don't also own guns that would make for a successful suicide attempt.

[Jerry on the road]

Not just any bullshit artist, but a certified one.

[Dr. Frankenstein]

Please the politically correct term is stand up philosopher.

[Dr. Frankenstein]

That said I suddenly have a desire to become a certified life coach. How hard can this be?

[Invisible Finger]

The hard part is finding paying customers.

[Pip]

"What better career for a bullshit artist?"

POTUS?

[Ice Nine]

OT ('cept on-topic all day):

All this glaring new white space on the page is giving me a headache.

Also, the transposition of the Reply box "Submit" and the "Preview" buttons from their positions in the de novo Comments box is going to make for some interesting and probably amusing mistakes.

[Lord Humungus]

me too... it's almost as if it was designed to limit my time here. What, now Reason is getting me to work more?

[Tman]

I keep waiting for the rest of the page to load, maybe some borders or some color but no.....just a glaring white screen..

I don't get it.

[Pip]

Why does Reason hate all things colored?

[DJF]

All Blair did was copy other peoples work and lie on his expense account. Something that was worth firing him for but there have been far worse liars at the NYT.

[BakedPenguin]

The hell you say.

[RedDragon6009]

Holy fuck. How much is that ass charging people for his coaching services? Are his sessions comprised of more than simply telling people to NOT emulate him? And what the hell are the certification standards for becoming a life coach anyway? Sure as hell couldn't include being a prior success in life.

[Hugh Akston]

That's the paradox of being a life coach though, isn't it? If you were already successful yourself, you would be too busy doing it yourself to teach other people.

Life coaching is just another way for the unscrupulous and unproductive to hoodwink suckers with poor decision making skills. IOW perfect for Jayson Blair.

[Sevo]

Hugh Akston| 7.31.12 @ 12:00PM |#
"That's the paradox of being a life coach though, isn't it? If you were already successful yourself, you would be too busy doing it yourself to teach other people."

Sorta like the guy who's written a book on how YOU CAN BECOME A MILLIONAIRE!

[Kaptious Kristen]

From Mostly Harmless, the 5th book in the Hitchiker's Trilogy (heavily edited because of Ye Olde Character Limite):

But the smell could just as easily have been coming from the old lady who was busy beating flies away from the pile of bodies...

"Er, I came to ask your advice," he called back, feeling a bit ridiculous.

She handed the copies to Arthur.

"This is, er, this your advice then, is it?" said Arthur, leafing through them uncertainly.

"No," said the old lady. "It's the story of my life. Now, as you look through this document you'll see that I've underlined all the major decisions I ever made to make them stand out. All I can suggest is that if you take decisions that are exactly opposite to the sort of decisions that I've taken, then maybe you won't finish up at the end of your life..." she paused, and filled her lungs for a good shout, "... in a smelly old cave like this!"

[Tim]

Jason gotta eat.

[SIV]

I liked Johnny Thunders' cover of Joey.

[NoVAHockey]

This actually makes some sense.

MISTAKES: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

http://www.despair.com/mis24x30prin.html

[John]

The editors who never checked on anything and let him get away with it so long are still employed as journalists.

[The Late P Brooks]

I actually like the uncluttered white page.

Hugely better than (for example) the juvenile frenzy which typifies your average Gawker Media site.

[The Late P Brooks]

And the pages actually seem to load pretty quickly; quicker than before.

However, my ISP can be somewhat erratic, so maybe they are just having a better-than-average day.

[Nephilium]

And the main Hit and Run page doesn't constantly try to to connect to the social media sites, so I can leave it open without watching it crash my browser.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Does he make you run laps?

[The Late P Brooks]

Yes. And if you confuse "their" with "they're" you have to do a hundred push-ups.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I see the new mandatory threading is broken already.

[Broseph of Invention]

One may think that having a life coach who's fallen from grace would be a great deal, since they've turned themselves around. But really, it's like hiring a golf coach who was caught tossing balls out of deep bunkers and "finding" balls in the rough. All his successes are suspicious.

Also, here are the results from a google search for "life coach profile". I would not trust these people with a protractor.

[Broseph of Invention]

I hope there isn't a federal law against feeding squirrels the ends of hyperlinks. But the orange adds color, even if it leads nowhere.

[Brett L]

Ralph Wiggum!

[Loki]

I liked it better when "life coaches" were simply called "con artists".

[R C Dean]

Re: the white space.

Too much on the borders. Serves no purpose, there. It's almost like its formatted to fit on an olde style CRT screen, and on a wider screen it just kludges in white space on the sides. Its not like the top and bottom sections with titles and links and stuff extend any content out that far, anyway.

I've griped at the designated email site for gripage.

[anon]

Its not like the top and bottom sections with titles

I initially read "titties." I'm now sad.

[Res Publica Americana]

Yeah. I'd like some color or lines separating the names and comments, and at the borders. And the homepage is too connected. too disorganized.

What's the email for bitching about the upgrade?

[Hyperion]

It would be a lot better if they just removed the banner column on the right from H and R. Once you scroll down past the banners, it looks like a LOT of white space because the banner column is still there. Of course, banners == revenue.

[GILMORE]

After years of helping people hate their own lives, I believe I qualify as a certfied Death Coach

Also, the new format sucks

[Hyperion]

The white space on both sides of the screen, I am assuming, is because the main Div around the page is set to a fixed width. I looked at the source and can't see it because it's in a CSS class in a .css file.

So anyway, the higher your resolution, the more white space you will get. I have 1600 x 1200, so I see lots of white space. This is pretty common and doesn't bother me at all.

Life coach, lol. A life coach is someone who has figured out that they can make an easy living off people who don't have a clue how to organize their existence and need someone else to tell them what to do all of the time. Sort of like a majority of voters these days. Good career course for someone considering being a psychiatrist but no desire to spend lots of time in school getting a PhD. There is probably a 3 hour course you can take online and print out your life coach certificate.

I should switch careers and become a life coach. It would be great fun BSing confused liberals out of all their money, or their parents money more likely.

[Brett L]

My life coaching plan:

Pay your fucking bills
Quit listening to your bitchy friends about unhappy you/they are
Get a job or volunteer if you don't need to work
If you wish to deviate from this plan, call me and I'll tell you you're a dumbass.

I think I'll start a blog for it today.

[Hyperion]

Don't forget the first step:

Get the f out of your parents house, you're 42 now!

[Amakudari]

This is what Chrome's Inspect Element is for.

The web page is exactly 960 px wide and the comment section is exactly 630 px wide. This is perfect if you haven't purchased a new monitor in 15 years.

[Loki]

Blair is now a certified life coach

He was probably Lehrer's life coach. Where do you think he learned it from?

The real question is: WTF does it mean to be a "certified" life coach? Is that a real thing, or was Jesse Walker just trying to turn a phrase? The fact that these questions are even asked tells you a lot about the state of occupational licensing.

[Invisible Finger]

"Certified" implies private-organization certifying.

But it means we are just one step away from LICENSED Life Coach.

[GILMORE]

Loki|7.31.12 @ 12:21PM|#

WTF does it mean to be a "certified" life coach?

It means you've spent some time involuntarily committed in a mental institution, if i recall.

[Ted S.]

Where do you think he learned it from?

I learned it by watching you!

[GILMORE]

Re: life coaches... I know this guy

http://www.elephantjournal.com.....er-dunlop/

He's actually a good dude, although calling oneself a 'life priest' is maybe much

[Brett L]

WTF. Dude. Numerology with playing cards?

[GILMORE]

Look, all I can assume is that there are some really fucked up people out there for whom this kind of gibberish is soothing and helpful. I mean for fuck's sake the guy makes a career out of this gunk. It makes me wonder why I work for a living sometimes. He could probably help me.

he went to harvard, if i recall. Neither here nor there.

[GILMORE]

In some kind of mystical convergence of events, I received another email from him today...

Dear friends,

I'm very excited to share that last week Forbes Online Magazine published an article about the work I do coaching entrepreneurs. The article talks about how ancient wisdom from the Deck of Playing Cards helps you make better business decisions.

Here's a quote from the article:

"Alexander has a business because his model works. He's developed a coaching method that teaches new ways of being introspective, helping people pull their best out from within and harvest it into success."

You can read the full Forbes Article here!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma.....-the-deck/

Life Coaching abounds, apparently

[Mike M.]

Speaking of scumbags in the media who fabricate things, Brian Ross still hasn't been fired for falsely accusing the wrong man of being the Aurora mass murderer. And I'm pretty sure that he isn't going to be either.

[Christina]

I know someone who was referred to Jayson Blair for life coaching services. He said Jayson was nice, just not worth $100/hour.

[GILMORE]

Should have requested the happy ending.

Anyone who actively seeks out "life coaches" and then complains that the people professing to be such are not 'good enough'...?

I think they need a kick in the head. The $100 could be a tip maybe if the kick is effective.

[Espantapajaros]

"Blair is now a certified life coach"

Meh. That seems a bit like "ordained minister in the church of light", or something to put on your resume other than "desperately seeking employment".

[galiana]

You know, this makes total sense to me given the other "life coaches" I've met. If you want money to tell someone how to be successful, then you're probably not out there being successful yourself and -- you know -- making money in some legitimate way.