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SATIRE OF WHAT?
To follow up on Addie's post about the world-historically stupid Charlotte Allen piece that John Pomfret inexplicably (or, perhaps, all-too-explicably) decided to print on Sunday, Pomfret is now claiming that the piece was "tongue in cheek." Laura Rozen is right that this is an insult to the reader's intelligence. I would think this would be obvious, but satire can't involve a column expressing the same views that the writer earnestly expresses on a regular basis. If someone who wasn't a professional misogynist submitted a dismal combination of crude anachronistic stereotypes, long-discredited junk science, selective comparisons, and non-sequiturs as a satire of IWF hackwork, then maybe you'd have something. Allen's piece, alas, was merely self-parody, something that the Outlook section of the Post has descended to all-to-often in recent years.
--Scott Lemieux
COMMENTS (2)
It's bitchy. I wouldn't call it misogynist.
But, I already know you need to get out more.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 3, 2008 5:17 PM
not only is pomfret insulting the reader's intelligence, but he is also reinforcing one of the strangest, oddest fixations in contemporary journalism with his use of the term "opinion journalism:" that somehow, if you say this is someone's opinion, that relieves you, editorially, of any responsibility for the content.
as lord keynes noted, people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. why is that so hard to understand?
Posted by: howard | March 3, 2008 5:26 PM