"Brazil through the eyes of a reporter for the most influential newspaper in the world"
“One of the weirdest things about Brazilian journalism is the fact that it still lends credence to what U.S. newspapers, and especially the New York Times, have to say about this country.” –Kenneth Maxwell, in an op-ed in the Folha de S. Paulo
Além da cachaça no New York Times: Victor Hugo Soares of Terra Magazine follows New York Times correspondent Larry “Our Man in Copacaban” Rohter on his book tour for Deu no New York Times (”I read it in the New York Times,” roughly.)
“More than just cachaça in the Times,” is the headine — a reference to notorious story in which Rohter roht, “the President of Brazil’s drinking problem becomes an issue of national concern.”
On the absurdity of which, see also
In an interview about the book, Larry blames the headline writer for the supposed exaggeration as to “is a matter of national concern.” Which does not explain why he published this inane, hearsay-based story in the first place.
Although the article claims the book has made the local best seller lists (where selling 10,000 copies is enough to shoot you to No. 1, with a bullet), I have yet to see it listed in any of the Top 10 lists I have been scanning in search of an Xmas gift for the Mrs.
So take that claim with a grain of salt. (I stand corrected. I see it at No. 6 on the non-fiction list in Valor today.)
Soares googles up as the opinion editor at the A Tarde daily of Salvador, Bahia.
On Rohter’s tacky credentialing of himself as a big man at the world’s preeminent fishwrap — including the use of the Times logo (did he get the proper permissions to use it?) — see also
If the Times were as influential as all that, “well-respected businessman” (translation: “Hobbesian kleptocrat”) Pedro Carmona would be the dictator of Venezuela now.
Sintonizo a Metrópole-FM, Salvador, para ouvir o programa de entrevistas “Na Linha”. Maldigo o contratempo de ter chegado quase no final, pois este é um de meus favoritos do rádio, na Bahia: pela informalidade, conteúdo jornalístico diversificado e, principalmente, pela fauna humana e a prodigalidade de experiências, sentimentos e estilos que transitam livremente por lá. Nesse dia, o apresentador Mario Kertész conversava com o jornalista americano Larry Rohter, autor de “Deu no New York Times”, que já está na lista dos livros mais vendidos no País.
I tune in Metropole FM in Salvador to hear the interview show Na Linha. I curse my bad luck in having tuned in at the end, because this is one of my favorite radio shows in Bahia, for its informal tone, its diverse journalistic content, for the human fauna and the abundance of human experience, feelings and lifestyles to be found there. On that particular day, host Mario Kertész was conversing with U.S. journalist Larry Rohter, author of Deu no New York Times, already on the national bestseller lists.
Chego a tempo de ouvir o entrevistado dizer que não fez o livro com a intenção de dar versão pessoal sobre a ruidosa briga com o presidente Lula, em 2004.O objetivo, garante o ex-correpondente, é contar e pensar sobre os muitos brasis que conheceu desde 1972, quando desembarcou pela primeira vez no Rio de Janeiro e ficou deslumbrado. Na fase de correspondente, entre 1999 e 2007, reportagens sobre a Amazônia, o Nordeste, e a Bahia principalmente, ganham relevo especial. “Valem, por si, uma leitura”, recomenda o polêmico repórter de Chicago ao ouvinte que se dispuser a conferir.
I tune in in time to hear the interviewee say that he did not write the book for the purpose of giving his personal version of the noisy spat with President Lula in 2004.
The book’s marketing promises us exactly that: Rohter’s personal account of his noisy spat with the federal government in 2004, when it tried (somewhat undiplomatically, and cruelly and unusually, given that he has family in Brazil) to have the journalism visa of the Times’ Man in Copacaban cancelled.
His purpose, the former correspondent swears, was to describe and reflect upon the many Brazilians he has met since disembarking in Rio for the first time in 1972 and finding himself dazzled. As a correspondent, between 1999 and 2007, reporting on the Amazon, the Northeast in general and Bahia in particular, gained special emphasis. “For that reason alone, it’s worth reading,” said the controversial ex-reporter.
If you gave me a copy for free, I might spend ten minutes flipping through it.
O pedaço da entrevista que ouvi foi reduzido, mas suficiente para desestabilizar o pé atrás em relação a Rother, desde o “bafafá da cachaça” com o presidente. Sei que ele suscita avaliações extremas. De elogios rasgados nas páginas da mais importante revista semanal brasileira, até textos irados de articulistas que o desqualificam com acusações tão duras quanto improváveis, como a que inclui o profissional do jornal mais influente do mundo na relação de ex-agentes da CIA, “mandado em missão de espionagem à Amazônia”.
I only heard a small portion of the interview, but it was enough to shake the mistrust I have felt in relation to Rohter since the cachaça affair with the president. I know that he inspires extreme responses, ranging from high praise in the pages of Brazil’s leading newsweekly [Veja] to angry essays by writers who smear him with accusations as harsh as they are improbably, such as those that involve the reporter for the most influential newspaper in the world in relations with former CIA agents, “sent out on a spying mission to the Amazon.”
Rohter filed a piece a while back saying, in effect, that “those crazy Brazilians are mad paranoid about the Amazon.” The tone was more than slightly mocking.
On the other hand, a congressional probe of biopiracy here concluded there is good reason to be paranoid about outsiders coming in an trying to rip off Brazil’s biodiversity, which it views as its own public intellectual property.
De um lado, a louvação meio míope e politicamente imediatista. Do outro, as maledicências nascidas da miopia ideológica que cega e envenena avaliações sobre os fatos e as pessoas.
On one hand, you have this myopic praise drive by political expediencies of the moment. On the other, curses born of ideological myopia that blind and poison perceptions of persons and events. …
I personally just think that Rohter tends to be an execrable scribbler of gabbling nonsense, from a technical and ethical point of view.
He belongs to a school of foreign correspondence that tends to try to shape U.S. perceptions of foreign countries so that we will not laugh uncontrollably, for example, when Reagan calls the (nun-raping, drug-smuggling) Contras “the moral equivalent of the founding fathers.” He came down here to be a player, not an observer.
I keep getting interrupted in this translation.
Conjeturo, enquanto, na TV, o escritor João Ubaldo Ribeiro dá entrevista na Globo News, sobre o novo livro que o ex-editor da Tribuna da Bahia está lançando. Coincidentemente, ele ilustra tudo com uma história exemplar do encontro “com um desses amigos sacanas, que todo mundo tem”. Gente que dá estocada, mesmo quando parece querer agradar.
In the meantime, I am watching a TV interview with writer João Ubaldo Ribeiro on Globo News about a new book the former editor of the Tribuna da Bahia is launching. Coincidentally, he illustrates the whole episode with an exemplary story about “an encounter with one of those ill-intentioned friends, of the kind we all have at least one of.” People who are out to rib you, even if they try to make it look they are being nice.
“Você viu a esculhambada que o New York Times deu em você?”, pergunta o “amigo”, referindo-se a uma matéria sobre Ubaldo no jornal americano. O autor de Viva o povo brasileiro não se abala, nem perde o humor sempre afiado: “Vi, sim, e achei ótimo”, responde. “Agora me diga: quantas vezes o New York Times já falou sobre você”?, pergunta o baiano de Itaparica, enquanto se afasta sem nem conferir a cara de espanto do chato.
“Do you remember the trashing the New York Times gave you?” the “friend” asks, referring to an article about Ubaldo in the U.S. newspaper. “I saw that, and I thought it was great,” he responds. “Tell me: How many times has the NYT talked about you?” said the Bahian writer, moving off without bothering to note the shocked expression on the face of his annoying chum.
My favorite book of Ubaldo’s is Diário do Farol — a first-person narrative confession in the tradition of Per Lagerkvist’s The Dwarf.
Depois de ouvir Ubaldo parto para ler o livro de Rother. De saída, pulo o capítulo “Lula e eu”, a parte em que o autor fala do bafafá decorrente, segundo confessa, “da reportagem mais polêmica que eu escrevi em todos os meus anos como correspondente no Brasil”. Rother se refere, já se vê, à ardida matéria, publicada em março de 2004, com título opinativo e provocador: “Gosto do dirigente brasileiro pela bebida causa preocupação nacional”.
After hearing Ubaldo, I go off to read Rohter’s book. I immediately skip the entire chapter titled “Lula and me,” that part where the author talks about all the fuss about, as he says, “the most controversial story I ever wrote in all my years as a correspondent in Brazil.” Rohter is referring to that hot potato published in March 2004, with an opinionated and provocative headliine: “Brazilian leader’s taste for drinking is a cause for national concern.”
Sempre desconfiei que talvez esteja no título, mais que no texto da reportagem, a razão maior do ruído desencadeado na política e no jornalismo. Quase deságua em incidente internacional grave, diante da ameaça do governo de expulsar o correspondente do NYT (casado com uma brasileira). Tensão ampliada pelo espectro da censura de opinião que voltava a rondar preocupantemente sobre a imprensa brasileira, depois do regime militar.
I always suspected that maybe it was the headline, more than the content of the story, that caused all the fuss in political and journalistic circles. It almost resulted in a serious international incident, given the government’s threat to expel the correspondent, who is married to a Brazilian. Tension amplified by the specter of censorship that was starting to haunt the Brazilian press again, after the military regime.
They never repealed the 1967 Press Law, is part of the reason why. The courts recently found parts of the law unconstitutional.
Mas, superadas as suspeitas iniciais, não é difícil verificar: além do repisado episódio etílico, ao qual o livro não acrescenta praticamente nada de novo, sobra em “Deu no New York Time” bastante para ler e descobrir sobre os anos de Rother no País. Um destaque é o olhar especial do correpondente americano em relação a fatos e coisas do Nordeste em geral, e da Bahia em particular.
But once you get over your initial suspicions, it is not hard to perceive: Besides the ethanol-fueled episode, about which the book has practically nothing new to add, there is still plenty in the book about Rohter’s years in Brazil, especially his vision of the Northeast in general and Bahia in particular.
Uma visão romântica e complacente em alguns casos, mas atenta e atraente. Isto se vê nos relatos sobre o artista e ex-ministro da Cultura, Gilberto Gil; na avaliação da densidade musical e da transcendente importância intelectual de Caetano Veloso; na percepção da influência da literatura de Jorge Amado e da música de Dorival Caymmi sobre Salvador e sua gente.
It is a romanticized and complacent vision, in some cases, but attentive and attractive. This you see in the stories about Gilberto Gil; in his evaluation of the musical density and intellectual importance of Caetano Veloso; in his awareness of the literary influence of Jorge Amado and the importance of Dorival Caymmi to Salvador and its people.
All of which can readily be cribbed from Brazilian magazine.
Caetano Veloso is an astonishing poet and composer, but as an intellectual? Pompous, narcissistic and alost unreadable, that Tropical Nights of his. Jorge Amado is an extraordinarily overrated writer. I just finished reading his Os Subterrâneos da Liberdade — a sort of cliché-ridden Communist Gone With the Wind adapted as a Globo soap opera.
Surpreende a visão de Rohter quando identifica na Bahia a ofensiva dos credos evangélicos sobre os cultos afro-brasileiros, a ponto de ter registrado no NYT o momento em que os espaços das “baianas” do acarajé, ligadas tradicionalmente ao candomblé, começam a ser invadidos e ocupados. Gente sisuda, com a Bíblia na mão, vende comida de origem africana nas ruas de Salvador.
Rohter surprises when he writes about the offensive of evangelical Christianity against Afro-Brazilian religions …
Tem mais para ler com interesse em “Deu no New York Times”. Mas sobram motivos também para passar batido por páginas com registros de fatos e assuntos que, mesmo contextualizados pelo autor, envelheceram com a ação implacável do tempo, que, no jornalístico, é sempre mais curto. Viva e atual, como quando saíram no NYT, mantêm-se no livro as abordagens sobre a cultura popular nordestina, que pulsa em Olinda e Recife: na música, na arte, nas feira,no cordel e nos bonecos do carnaval de rua de Pernambuco. No correr das páginas, uma sensação: o ex-correspondente estrangeiro é bem melhor repórter que analista.
Yada yada yada. I can think of dozens of writers better informed and better qualified to write about Brazilian culture and society than Rohter. You would think they would dispatch a man to write about the serious stuff: politics, diplomacy, economics and leave the local color and exoticism to the freelancers who write the Sunday magazine. (In fact, Larry’s replacement, I think I read, is a business journalist. Good choice.)
Opinião a conferir, evidentemente.
You will form your own opinion by reading it, obviously.
My opinion of Larry Rohter is that he basically cribbed his coverage from the local press. My impression of his professional abilities will be scarred forever by his idiotic piece on “the teenaged hooker who blogged and became a national phenomenon.” See
- Hookers with Hearts of Gold: Bruninha Surfistinha on Larry Rohter on Bruninha Surfistinha
- Larry Rohter Leaves Brazil: “I Feel Like a Prostitute Lynched by Hypocrites”
Mindbendingly stupid on so many levels, that, and indicative of what I think is the essence of Larry Rohter’s tropical Weltaunschauung: Larry’s view of Brazil was always eerily similar to the vision you get watching Brazilian trash TV. Especially Globo. It has all the elements of the Globo-Veja aesthetic: sensationalist, puerile, sentimental, malicious, factually-challenged, and deeply reactionary.
Filed under: Brazil, Journalism, Media | Tagged: Foreign correspondence, New York Time, s Larry Rohter
