Covering the Economy: The Washington Post vs. the Internet, Round XXXIV?

This story in last Saturday's *Post* is being played up as Round XXXIV of the Wahington Post vs. the Internet. I don't think that's what's going on.

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Amanda Marcotte reacts to this Washington Post story about Maryscott O'Connor by dismissing the Washington Post's David Finkel as a "passionless toady."

She writes:

And everyone else joins our other club, The Pissed Off Club at Pandagon: [N]ow I get to enjoy a bunch of bloggers that actually seem a little hurt that the WaPo did an article on the left blogosphere that featured Maryscott O’Connor and basically made the argument that being pissed off about evil things is somehow an argument for said evil things.... Like Shakes says:

[The Washington Post's] Finkel mistakes passion for poutiness, and that’s what made me squirm. There are a lot people who feel disenfranchised and disheartened right now, and that’s why they’re angry.... The GOP leadership has been a disaster, and most of us who respond with righteous anger aren’t throwing tantrums like two-year-olds denied what we want; we’re doing the hard work of responsible citizenry—-trying to hold to account a failed administration that’s bad for our country.

In other words, don’t let passionless toadies [like Finkel] tell you what to feel...

And Glenn Greenwald writes:

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Mistaking caricature and generalization for journalism: The article's principal tactic -- really, its sole tactic -- is to search through hundreds of comments on O'Connor's site and sites like Eschaton, pick out the most extreme ones, and then feature them as representative.... The words and attitudes of Maryscott O'Connor and the handful of comments which the reporter searched out and found aren't representative only of them. Rather, they demonstrate what "the left" in this country -- a term never defined but seemingly inclusive of all opponents of the Bush administration -- has become.

The tactics in the article are as intellectually lazy and empty as they are transparently deceitful and trite. There is no cheaper or emptier form of argumentation than to isolate a specific individual, describe her, and then, without any basis, ascribe those attributes generally to some larger group -- in this case, a much, much larger and more diverse group -- of which she is ostensibly a part....

[Maryscott] O'Connor has posted on her blog an account of the experience she had with Finkel, and it contains two revealing though unsurprising facts. First, before writing this article, Finkel "had never been to a blog before." Gee, what a surprise -- more journalists who have no idea what blogs are writing articles on the blogosphere like they are experts. Second, before writing the article, Finkel hilariously said that he "didn't have in mind any angle." But "[h]e did have a phrase weaving in and out of his mind: 'The Angry Left.'" To recap: Finkel had no angle in mind for the article beforehand - merely a phrase floating around.... How to respond to a proposition that negates itself? The scariest part: none of this is unusual. It is not an unrepresentative picture of how much of our "journalism" is produced...

I don't think Finkel was trying to make a political point here--I don't think he had a political hit piece in mind. Remember, this is not the only story he has written with the subtext of this-is-a-strong-willed-woman-with-issues-who-is-a-few-hoppers-short-of-a-full-carload. I remember an earlier story that equally grated on me--ah, here it is, from last January 31:

Utah Town Has Question About President: 'What's Not to Like?': Author: David Finkel Date: Jan 31, 2006 Start Page: A.01:To get to the place where they like George W. Bush more than any other place in America, you fly west for a long time from Washington, then you drive north for a long time from Salt Lake City, and then you pull into Gator's Drive Inn, where the customer at the front of the line is ordering a patty melt.

"Patty melts! No one makes patty melts anymore," she is saying to the counterman, Ryan Louderman, who knew she wasn't local as soon as he heard the sound of a car being locked. "Can I get it without onions?" she says. "And can I get mustard? On the side? Dijon mustard?"...

"No onions? With mustard?" says Orton, who voted for Bush in 2004 and 2000. "Oh, God, we get some weird ones" -- but she cooks it anyway, as requested, and passes the non-patty melt out to the woman, who takes a bite, declares it "fabulous" and wraps up the rest to go. She's on her way to a ski resort. She is going to be lifted by helicopter to the top of a mountain with untouched snow, and then she is going to ski down....

"Dijon mustard," Louderman says as the woman drives away. "I don't know what Dijon mustard is. Don't care to find out, either."...

In Randolph... where Bush received 95.6 percent... the mind-set is even more specific to a place that seems less a part of the modern United States than insulated from it. It isn't just mustard, but everything....

Terrorist threats? That's anywhere but here. Iraq? That's somewhere over there. Hurricane Katrina? That was somewhere down there. Illegal immigrants? Not here.... As for racial diversity, everyone says there are three African Americans in the county.... One main road that is 1.3 miles long.... One church.... One post office, with one full-time employee....

[Orton] turns off the "open" sign and starts adding up the day's receipts. It isn't much. She netted $10,000 last year, if that. She has no savings. She has no retirement plan. She works seven days a week, 12 hours a day. Her last vacation was a quick trip last Thanksgiving to see her in-laws.... Somewhere out there are the sounds of chattering terrorists, and shivering homeless people, and helicopters ferrying soldiers, and a president rehearsing a vitally important speech. Here in 71.5 percent Utah, though, and 95.6 percent Randolph, and 100 percent Gator's, the only sound is of a believer explaining why, come Tuesday night, she doubts she will bother to listen.

"I don't think there's anything he could say that would make me dislike him," she says.

Amanda Marcotte thinks that David Finkel is making the argument that "being pissed off about evil things is somehow an argument for said evil things." David Finkel, by contrast, thinks that he is making no argument at all: "You can't tell anything about what I think from the article. You can't tell anything about me other than that I am male and write for the Washington Post."

The most curious thing of all is that David Finkel really believes what he says he does.

Comments

[Charles]

I have been vigorously trying to ignore the WaPo for a long time.

But the revelation that Finkel had never had read a blog before but had already framed the notion that blogs were loud and angry pretty much describes the WaPo as having standards that wouldn't pass for high school journalism.

Maybe Finkel could discover my loud and angry exegesis of 1 Sam 23 in which the following vile passage can be found to be mocked:

"Engedi is situated eleven miles north of Masada and approximately thirty-five miles southeast of Jerusalem on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert, midway along the western shore of the Dead Sea. A severely-gorged mountain range six hundred feet above the Dead Sea acts as an aqueduct to bring an abundance of water to Engedi, producing the largest oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea.... The warm climate, diverse vegetation, predominantly of date palms, and the supply of water attract many animals including the ibex, hyrax, leopard, and a variety of bird species, including vultures, eagles, and falcons. See map and photo

Other names suggest the wild beauty of the region: Hareth ("thicket"), Jeshimon ("the waste"), Ziph (Ziyph; Strong's 2128), "liquefy", with a possible connection to Zepheth ("asphalt", Strong's 2203), and Maon ("habitation").

The one thing the region is not is at an adequate remove from Saul. "

D--n foul-mouthed leftwing blogs!

[jerry]

Where is that quote from Finkel from? I couldn't find it over at Pandagon, Glenn Greenwald, or Maryscott O'Connor's.

I will say that you need to be careful with Amanda Marcotte, I find she shares far more with the fascist right than the liberal left. She is a bully pushing her own form of politically correct feminism. I think it is a shame that liberals look to her to see how we should think about feminism.

[sm]

The corruption of the "elite" American press revealed again.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

I like Michael Berube's reaction to the Post article:

http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/the_left_online_and_outgrabe/

I'm getting tired of being angry at the Post.

[Zathras]

If the Post had had Finkel do a story on Brad DeLong's blog it would have gotten zinged for being elitist. If the story had been on Josh Marshall's blog the Post would have gotten accused of just buttering up a source.

So this O'Connor woman and some of her readers are upset that the Post's story, which quoted her liberally, made her look batty. Boo hoo. If bloggers want to be part of public life, they need to take care of their own public image, not expect a newspaper reporter to do it for them.

[c gilbert]

And Dean Baker today points out another Wash. Post faux pas. This one economic. Perfect for Mr. DeLong to take on, I would think.

http://beatthepress.blogspot.com/2006/04/surprising-news-on-mexico-at.html#links

[Ginger Yellow]

Zathras, maybe in a 2000 word article on "The Left, Online and Outraged" the Post could have looked at more than one blog, rather than one blog and a handful of one line comments from two other blogs. It would be like doing a major article on right wing blogging and only focusing on Free Republic and the commenters at LGF.

[Kate G]

Jerry,
Please, show me some evidence that "liberals" look to amanda at pandagon to find out what feminists think. Also, please try and remember that "feminists" aren't a single entity that "thinks" and that "feminists" and "liberals" aren't actually a distinct, non overlapping set of categories. For example, I'm both a feminist and a liberal and, oddly, no single site tells me how to think about either of those aspects of my political persona.

Also:
1) there were feminists before there was pandagon
2) feminists and non feminists may read pandagon to find out what amanda thinks
3) they may read pandagon and *disagree* with amanda because they don't think she represents their brand of feminism or liberalism.
4) they may read pandagon and disagree with amanda because they think she is *not feminist or liberal enough (!)
5) they may read pandagon and agree with amanda on a given point but not on a different point.

Amanda isn't feminism, she represents herself. People who are *already* both liberals and feminists may read Amanda and they don't need to be lectured to by you on what they should read.

On the larger issue of Finkel's writing I was disgusted that he had never read a blog and seemed proud of that fact. There is so much and such great writing out there--I'm thinking of Velveteen Rabbi, Chez Miscarriage (now discontinued) and hundreds of others that are both political and non political. If you don't have a recognition of, and love of, the variety of the medium you should never have been commissioned to write the piece in the first place. But I also want to say I agree with Brad's catch--Finkel thinks he has a telling eye for the vignette that tells the reader what to think--but he also prides himself on being, somehow, the objective mirror that reports what is really there without manipulating the reader. He reminds me of--was it steno sue schmidt?--making fun of Kerry for ordering green tea--a widely available and well known cancer fighting tea--while pretending that she was just setting the scene for the reader.

The whole piece on Maryscott O'connor was a hatchet job on her and readers and I don't have any hesistation in saying that its true objective was to make what the Post thinks of as its "real" readers shy away from reading blogs at all. BUt as Maryscott posted later--people have, instead, found their way to her blog from the post story and have become readers so its a strategy that may well backfire. Every knock's a boost.

Kate G.

[anne]

Nicely done :) though I think we are really in it for the shoes.

[anne]

Remembering :)

http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/reviews/990509.09shulevt.html

May 9, 1999

Outside Agitator
By JUDITH SHULEVITZ

But what was and remains refreshing about the author of ''The Feminine Mystique'' is that she doesn't blame others for women's plight. It is surprising to reread the book and realize that she almost never addresses the question of sexism. [Betty] Friedan wants women to lead the lives they're capable of. She thinks they're entitled to jobs that fulfill them and marriages and families that give them love. She suspects that eliminating the sources of female frustration would make everyone's life more pleasant. Granted, she is talking about middle-class life, where pleasantness is a leading desideratum and women can get jobs worth leaving home for, not working-class life, where eliminating brutality may be the goal and women may have only the choice between holding a terrible job and raising children on a husband's meager wages. Friedan also decidedly underestimates the ferocity of the forces that would emerge to push women back into the home -- religious fundamentalism, in particular. But her faith that the will to better one's life can surmount many obstacles is not, I think, misplaced. For all her personal failings, Friedan's life and accomplishments are a testament to that optimism, a hopefulness that swept through society like a giant wind, rearranging as it went....

[anne]

Still, the shoes must be part of it :) otherwise we are lost.