Tony Hillerman\u2019s Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir is both sorely disappointing, for how badly and boringly it is written, and how much of a sell-out shill Hillerman, despite still calling himself a \u201cjournalist.\u201d
\nPlease, let us be clear: I do not just mean \u201cshill\u201d as a put down. I am being exact in language here. Hillerman is a shill and he should feel deeply ashamed and ethically compromised for it.
\nEven if Hillerman weren\u2019t a shill and a disgrace to the journalism profession, his memoir is still a terrible and boring read.<\/p>\n
\nFirst, let\u2019s deal with the reason Hillerman should be denounced by all journalists, for his duties as a shill.
\nHillerman got tired of being a reporter (he claims to be a journalist but it does not appear he was a journalist for particularly long and I write appear because he is so terrible with actually putting dates in his memoir, making it near impossible to know when anything is happening or create timelines) and moved to the position of flak at University of New Mexico or, as its current professors call it. University of Nothing Much.
\nWhile there, his boss tells him that a local sheriff, who runs a jail, needs 11 new mattresses after a prisoner insurrection, and he wants to keep it on the down low. Hillerman gets him the mattresses and he\u2019s off to the moral corruption Olympics and already ready to turn in his journalism credentials.
\nLet us be very clear: Hillerman participated in, facilitated and was part of a cover-up<\/b> and likely furthering the abuse of prisoners by an elected official<\/b>.
\nDon\u2019t take my word for it. Here\u2019s the Merriam-Webster definition: \u201ca usually concerted effort to keep an illegal or unethical act or situation from being made public.\u201d
\nHillerman writes the Sandoval County sheriff had some prisoners who were \u201cacting up.\u201d
\nI guess when all of your freedoms have been taken away from you, you\u2019re no longer entitled to civil rights. You\u2019re just dirty scum, Hillerman thinks.
\n\u201cHe had no budget to replace them and he didn\u2019t want to alert the press to this affair,\u201d Hillerman wrote.
\nToo bad Hillerman wasn\u2019t asked to break into a political rival\u2019s psychiatrist\u2019s office to steal documents. That kind of behavior is right up his alley.
\nThis isn\u2019t the only time Hillerman decides to take ethics, morality, and other people\u2019s lives into his own hands.
\nWhile working at the university, he hung up on bomb threats and reported them to no one. Because that\u2019s a totally safe thing to do. He also made sure he had \u201cdeniability\u201d because lying to the public is just the coolest thing ever.
\nBut wait! There\u2019s more! He also helped free a student suspected of killing another human being while in Ecuador so he and three other students could flee to the United States and avoid prosecution and keep it all out of the press.<\/i><\/p>\n
\n<\/i><\/i>He\u2019s good at cover-ups.
\nHe also looks down at genres that aren\u2019t mainline fiction or mystery, because, you know, mystery isn\u2019t a genre that\u2019s totally looked down on, or anything.
\nSpecifically, fantasy and romance? You might as well not be writing. Totally worthless.
\nThanks for your elitism, Hillerman! Really makes me want to read more of your elitist stuff.
\nHe later goes on to put down action thriller bestsellers. This man, he knows what is good and it\u2019s only the genres he likes.
\nMoving on, he is just a boring and terrible writer. Everything is told, and frankly, he\u2019s not that interesting. Maybe if you\u2019re a super fan you\u2019ll like his book. If not, don\u2019t give this elitist (who doesn\u2019t like elitists) any more money. He deserves not a cent, and in fact, deserves to be dressed down and never referred to as a journalist again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tony Hillerman\u2019s Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir is both sorely disappointing, for how badly and boringly it is written, and how much of a sell-out shill Hillerman, despite still calling himself a \u201cjournalist.\u201d Please, let us be clear: I do not just mean \u201cshill\u201d as a put down. I am being exact in language here. Hillerman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":273,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,16,6],"tags":[38,41],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-memoir","category-non-fiction-books","tag-memoir","tag-non-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}