The Journalism Stockholm Syndrome

Lately some liberal female opinion writers have been having a hissy fit, claiming the mainstream media doesn't employ enough liberal female opinion writers. Apparently this latest grumble started with ex-Clintonista Susan Estrich's specific lambasting of Michael Kinsley, op-ed editor of the Los Angeles Times. She's a lawyer so I don't know whether she's threatening legal action or not. Maybe she's just stamping her feet trying to feign testosterone. And I don't know if she's hot for Kinsley and this is just her feminine way of getting his attention, a political batting of the eyelashes so to speak. She'd probably deny it and call me a chauvinist for even suggesting that such an occurrence could ever take place between a male and female of the species.

My advice: If you want to write commentary, just do it. Sooner or later if you promote yourself a little bit and folk are interested in what you write, the word will get out and you'll have an audience. The lack of any opinion leads to unbalance.

And it's not like writing commentary is difficult, other than having to bear your soul and innermost feelings to complete strangers. The nice part about writing commentary is that if someone else says pretty much what you believe, you can quote them and then add the part they missed. Take, for instance, the insightful commentary of Catherine Seipp from National Review Online regarding the current kerfluffle:

I think what's really missing from the op-ed pages is not more women writers but more real diversity among those writers. I can't think of any major female columnist who brings the perspective of raising children without the safety net of a full-time staff job and/or a comfortably employed husband-- in other words, someone with firsthand knowledge of life beyond the small, privileged circles of the media elite. But then I suppose that's what I would say, since that describes me. Still, I don't think I'm the only one to notice that the problem with the mainstream media is less that it's liberal and more that it's just plain elite.

Seipp couldn't have hit the nail on the head more directly if she were a union carpenter.

"Hey, I've met you. You are not cool"

The members of the media get invited to all these social functions and they start thinking they are part of the crowd they're covering, like some kind of Stockholm Syndrome particular to journalists. They wear evening dresses and tuxedoes, pin-striped suits and wingtips to blend in and then start thinking they're part of the crowd they're covering when, in fact, all they are are our observers. Some of them even marry into the political royalty, like Andrea Mitchell, the ABC correspondent who married Alan Greenspan.

If they don't cover the event as well as the elites believe it should be covered, then the human resources people must get the word from on high to start hiring the children of the swells. Like designer and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt's son, Anderson Cooper, a graduate of Yale and the University of Hanoi who moved from ABC's overnight news program World News Now to a reality show called "The Mole" to his current gig on CNN with his own show.

I saw Journalism Stockholm Syndrome (JSS) occur in an old acquaintance who covered the police beat. Before he started at the newspaper, he was virulently anti-police. I saw him a year later and he was wearing a tie-tac in the shape of handcuffs and talking about "skells," cop slang for criminals. He'd learned the language, adopted the culture and went native. Neither the virulent anti-police person or the cop lover are good for the police beat if you want the truth and objectivity. In the old days, the editors used to move people around constantly to avoid this from happening.

But JSS is more common than that. Basically, it's a problem of money and respectability. I'm not saying it started with Hildy Johnson either. The reporters put on suits, get married, start earning a decent living, want their kids to end up in nice schools like every parent does. And they essentially become middle class, maybe even marry right through a newspaper connection and become part of the elite structure, a limbo section of the almost-haves who forgot long ago about the have-nots.

When you forget what it's like to have to scrape for a living, to have doors slammed in your face, to be ridiculed for who you are or what you believe, you become comfortable. And the journalist's job, according to H. L. Mencken, is to afflict the comfortable. So there's a conflict.

Enter the bloggers. Dissidence, like life, will always find a way.

[Update 4/3/2005: Susan Estrich should take a look at the opinion columns of the Orlando Sentinel's Kathleen Parker, including one of Parker's latest lambasting the mainstream media for showcasing and legitimizing weirdo-pundit-of-the-day, convicted pedophile Jake Goldenflame. But then again, liberal Estrich would probably discount such a sane, conservative female voice.]

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Deja Vu All Over Again: I couldn't stop thinking that I'd seen a situation similar to the media circus surrounding the Terri Schindler Schiavo case. I knew it was in a movie but I just couldn't remember the name of it. I have now, it's a 1951 film noir classic directed by Billy Wilder called "Ace in the Hole."

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See no Fox, Speak no Fox, Hear no Fox: An entrepreneur, apparently very willing and ready to accept liberal money, has developed a device to block Fox news on your cable. Aptly called the "Fox Blocker," the gizmo screws into the back of the tv and lets all cable stations through except Fox. No word on whether Jack Nicholson will help hawk the device.

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Porn spam Easter egg of the day:

Hoc tempore obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit
- In these days friends are won through flattery, the truth gives birth to hate.

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Today's date is March 29.
That was then. Thank you. Welcome home.

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The U.S. Army said it has awarded the Silver Star for bravery to Specialist Jeremy Church. He is the first Army Reservist to receive the award for gallantry in action in the Global War on Terrorism. The Army said then-Private First Class Church saved the lives of nine people including four civilians, his commanding officer and four other soldiers during action April 9, 2004 in Iraq. When a convoy he was riding in was attacked by insurgents, Church returned fire, helped guide the convoy to safety and then returned to protect the civilians and soldiers, the Army said. Two soldiers lost their lives in the attack by a force of 150 insurgents and a third soldier was captured and remains missing. The Silver Star is the Army's third highest award for valor.