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.
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.
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