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MESSAGE BOARD JOURNALISM.
Some of you who read Amy Chozick's article in the Wall Street Journal, musing whether Obama may be "too skinny" to be president, may have mistakenly thought you were reading The Onion. In her piece, Chozick quotes a "Clinton Supporter" on a message board who says, "I won't vote for any beanpole guy."
The good folks at Sadly, No! and Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog, however, point out that it was Chozick herself who started the message board. While the thread has since been deleted, this Google cache version is still up. Of the three independent responses, two were mocking Chozick for posing the question.
The anonymous posting on the message board is one of the only two people quoted in the article as actually criticizing Obama for being "too fit". Steve M. further points out that one sentence in the article -- "These days he stays away from junk food and instead snacks on MET-Rx chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and drinks Black Forest Berry Honest Tea, a healthy organic brew" -- is only slightly different from a description of Obama given by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis.
The results of a recent Washington Post poll show Obama besting McCain among low wage workers, including white workers, by ten points. So I guess you just gotta work with what you got, which apparently includes the storyline that Obama might not win the crucial "online anti-skinny bloc." I hear these lucky voters are the subject of Mark Penn's latest book.
--A. Serwer
COMMENTS (3)
Two things about that poll.
First, the data is presented really weirdly. They act as if the 47-37 is the finding of the poll, when actually it's just a crosstab. It'd be hard to ask for a better little synecdoche for the media's understanding of race - they present the exact numbers on whites in the lede, the exact numbers on blacks and hispanics deep in the body of the article, and never give us the exact numbers for, you know, all the Americans they polled. Obama is leading 58-28 among working class registered voters. That's just a humongous margin. Kerry won voters making under 30k by about a 60-40 margin.
It's actually a little too humongous, I think. If you look at the complete poll results, I'm a little worried that the poll started with 35 questions about the economy before heading into questions about presidential preference. This poll shows, in part, that banging on about the economy is a good way to win low-wage worker votes. I think it probably overstates, to a small degree, Obama's support among the working class.
Posted by: DivGuy | August 4, 2008 10:09 AM
Far be it from me to rise to the defence of Rupert Murdoch's WSJ, but I would point out that the piece in question was in their Weekend section. It was only as it was picked up and over elsewhere that it took on more weight than their reviews of bars and cocktails, movies and TV tips in that same section.
Posted by: Wendell | August 4, 2008 1:52 PM
Chozick represents the very bottom of the bottom feeders that "journalism" has become. This the writing of a hack. There is strong evidence that she fabricated the sources. Unethical at best at worst the slipshod reporting that has allowed our country to be taken over criminals and the corrupt. She should be fired.
Posted by: Bill Kibler | August 5, 2008 6:45 PM