Issue #25/50, October 22 - November 5, 1998  

By Kevin McElwee

Have you found yourself laboring under the misconception that there's a bright side to the Russian financial crisis? If so, there's no cause for alarm; you haven't lost your grip on reality. It's just that you represent a completely different variety of human being-the foreign correspondent. And not only are you not suffering from harmful delusions, you're absolutely right: there is a bright side to the crisis-for you, anyway.

What is the bright side, then? It's not just all the lucrative freelance work you're getting while your friends in the high-flying financial world are enjoying indefinite unpaid vacations, although that certainly does have its benefits. No, the true bright side is of far more consequence. Are you ready? Here goes: Being a foreign correspondent means never having to say you're sorry.

It may not sound like much at first, but take a moment to consider the ramifications of this real-life Get out of Jail Free card. It means you can do whatever you please, and write whatever pops into your head without ever worrying about the consequences of your actions. In fact, in certain situations when your own ineptitude, negligence, or just plain laziness has been responsible in part for some negative turn of events, you could even end up making out on the deal. Not too shabby, eh?

For instance, you could decide-just on a whim or something-to spend three years or so rewriting the same story five days a week about how, despite the inevitable setbacks, Russia is clearly on the path to democracy and reforms are finally taking root, and so on. It's all horsepuckey of course, but whadda you care? And when it turns out you were kind of wrong about, say, the entire situation, you can instantly go from starchy optimist to brooding pessimist, pretending you knew exactly what was going on all along. You can even get really whacky about it and go on the attack, accusing (again, this is just a random example and all) the Russian government of undertaking the same empty program of vague reforms that, until yesterday, you yourself rooted for. And again, the bottom line is that no one will call you on any of it. You're like an all-powerful tyrant, an omipotent god, answerable to no one but the CV (conventional wisdom).

Anyone gaining entry into the club automatically attains these low-level deity powers. And I'm here to tell you that one such messianic being lives and works here among us. That being is none other than Moscow Times interim editor Geoff Winestock.

In Winestock we have a journalist of such mysterious powers and force of will that he was able to err in his divinations more often and by a greater margin than just about anyone else in the business. He made Jimmy The Greek look like Nostradamus. It's not that he was out of touch with "ordinary" reality; he just had absolutely no use for it. Peppering his now legendary editorials with every form of deception from the slightly misleading to the mid-level fabrication all the way up to the boldfaced lie, Winestock unleashed his false prophesies with such fierce, unwavering conviction that the mere mention of his name strikes fear in the hearts of polygraph operators everywhere. "Russia must do this," "The IMF should do that," "Fyodorov is an uncompromising free-market reformer"... Did he really believe all that nonsense, or was he just taking delight in his privilege of living in what Austin Powers would describe as a "consequence-free environment"...

Winestock put in his best performance this past August. As most other hacks were rushing to cover their tracks just before Kiriyenko finally pulled the rug out, Winestock remained calm, his unshakable confidence in his inalienable right to be publicly wrong telling him that nothing he did mattered anyway. So, in his August 14 editorial, Winestock brazenly pronounced the notion of debt default "premature." His rationale? That every last problem plaguing Russia might magically work itself out at the last minute, thus obviating the need for carefully considered human intervention. Although Geoff did not then attempt to argue in favor of the existence of Santa Claus, he almost certainly could have gotten away with it.

Next, in his August 18 editorial (the day after the joint default-devaluation), Winestock mockingly implored Russia to "stay the course," continue with "reforms," and go on expecting regular handouts from Western aid organizations. The barely hidden joke was, of course, that not only had Russia reached the breaking point at which such action swere no longer even a remote possibility; it was precisely these tactics that had brought the country to this precarious state. The threatened outcome should Russia not follow these recommendations? A virtual replay of the total collapse that occurred last year in Indonesia-another knee-slappin' Winestockian quip. As Geoff was certainly aware, Russia was already well on its way to just such a worst-possible outcome.

Nor was that the concluding cadence of this cleverly orchestrated prank. Winestock then patiently awaited the arrival in Moscow of Bill Clinton-a full two weeks-in order to spring his final trap.

His oracle of September 21, "Corruption Flourishes as U.S. Fiddles," was a masterpiece of the Glass House editorial genre in which Winestock accused the unsuspecting U.S. President of committing practically every crime he himself had ever been personally responsible for on the MT's op-ed page. Yeltsin must continue with "vague 'reform'"? Check. Russia must stay the course? Check. Remained silent in the face of massive state corruption on a level never seen previously? Check. Never a peep about the obviously rigged privatizations of enormous state-owned monopolies? Check. Sat idly by collecting its own hefty paycheck as millions of underpaid laborers went without salaries for months and years at a time? Check. And so on down the list.

All of which leads irrevocably to the audacious final sentence in which Winestock invites Clinton to "shoulder some of the blame" if he is "now uncomfortable visiting such an obvious foreign policy failure as Russia." Thus, Winestock ducks the censure he himself would have earned were it not for his journalistic immunity and needlessly directs it at some other individual simply because he can.

And not just anyone, mind you, but the world's most powerful cigar aficionado.

Perhaps this was going too far even for the likes of Winestock. Would Clinton take the unprovoked attack lying down or would he perhaps instruct a pair of top-secret agents from some little-known U.S. government organization to pay Geoff a late-night visit and force him to put on a pair of kneepads...

Nothing of the sort. This bold display of unbridled hubris earned Winestock the one laurel that had always eluded him: the respect of his fellow journalists. And big-time respect, too. The word came down from the very top of the liberal-establishment journalism mount: a Winestock editorial received a favorable mention in a "Postcard from Moscow" by Joe Klein in The New Yorker. It's hard to imagine a greater honor for a careerist hack like Geoff.

And what exactly does the esteemed Mr. Klein have to say? Aside from demonstrating that he is as unfamiliar with what's going on in Russia as he was unable to plausibly depict a black character in his anonymous smaller than-life portrayal of Clinton's 1992 primary campaign, Joe draws the unsuspecting East-Coast wannabe lit-snob's attention to the above discussed Clinton editorial, informing our poor junior snob that The Moscow Times is an influential English-language daily. One out of two ain't bad.

The truly rewarding part comes when Klein expresses his enthusiastic approval for Winestock's savage mockery of Clinton's alleged hypocrisy by quoting a long passage from the editorial. Later, Klein even makes the ludicrous suggestion that a Clinton statement ("If the reform process can be completed then I, for one, would be strongly supportive of greater assistance to Russia from the United States...") invites still more derision from the Times. It's hard to imagine anything of which the MT is less capable than derision, yet Winestock still manages to have the last word. What is Clinton's remark, after all, but a barely edited excerpt from one of Winestock's mid-August rants.

By now we have so many levels of insincerity swirling in such a frenzy that it becomes impossible to judge where Winestock ends and Clinton begins and vice versa. But the important thing is that the Blunder from Down Under's (as we like to call him around the eXile newsroom) tireless efforts in the singular field of blissfully oblivious hypocrisy have finally earned him the elusive acclaim which is his due.

Congratulations, Geoff!