Stonewalling the Steeply profile — the filibuster

timeline_event

texture · Nov YDAU

When: November YDAU (2009), the days around 11 Nov
What: When "Helen Steeply" of Moment comes to profile Orin (in fact a U.S.O.U.S. operative cultivating the family), Schtitt and Tavis handle her so that no student is exposed: Tavis "won't let [her] see Hal yet, even chaperoned," his reasons "too detailed for Helen Steeply to understand" (125), and deLint coaches that with Tavis "you have to back into a Yes-No corner where you can finally say I need a Yes or a No" — she was "in there for over two hours" and "really couldn't tell what he was telling me" (127; cf. 130). Hal's advance prophecy nails the method: Schtitt "let C.T. filibuster her till she throws herself out the window like that journalist from Condé Nast last fall" (n110). Pathological openness as an impenetrable defensive wall.