And according to the New York Times, all the members of this curious tribe of bloggers-turned-professional have penises.

And near the end of the article, they made the point of how two of them are getting married (to women.)  While I’m happy they’ve managed to find someone with whom they want to spend their lives, is that really relevant?

Between this and the “11 year old responsible for her own gang rape” article, I pity any woman who works for the NYT.

Brat Pack Bloggers / Juice Box Mafia / Facebook Pundits (Subjects of this Article):
Brian Beutler
Dave Weigel
Ezra Klein
Matt Yglesias

Others Quoted:
Tammy Haddad
Andrew Sullivan
Betsy Rothstein
Douglas Brinkley
Annie Lowrey - fiancee of Ezra Klein

Referenced:
Eli Lake
Joe Liberman
Tucker Carlson

Mentioned in Passing:
George Plimpton
Walter Conkite
Kate Crawford - girlfriend of Matt Yglesias

Nope, no problem here.  Seems to be a perfectly balanced article.  15 people quoted, referenced, or mentioned in passing, 4 of them women, 2 of whom have direct personal relationships with the (all male) subject bloggers. 

Nothing to see, move along, listen to The Patriarchy, relax and let the anesthetic do its work…

I just can’t get beyond the fact that blogging is worthy of a news story in 2011.  The other concerns seem kind of quaint once that’s noted, but that doesn’t mean they’re invalid in any way.

But if you need to figure out how to get some respect, I’d recommend changing the name of this blog to Pandapundit.  Maybe you should spell it aMANda, too.

Totally in step with the NYT history: back in the early ‘70s when girls were storming the barricades of other media, the Times generally shunned women writers. (or people of color, it goes without saying.)

We had cooties or something. A friend got in through the back door by writing for the real estate section only because the great, white pale penis contingent considered the editorial in that section puffery.

They also fought against changing their policy of identifying the marriage status of all women written about: women were referred to as Miss or Mrs. in Times copy.

Apparently, that was important: no matter the story, everyone should know whether or not the bitch was up for grabs, owned by a husband or father, still.

If you go by the Times photo, they’re also writing about a “Brat Pack” with receding hairline. Oh those crazy, balding kids! (And with something that looks suspiciously like a purse on his desk.)

Frank Rich gone. Now Bob Herbert gone. Paul Krugman is now the Times’s sole generator of copy worth reading. (Most of their “reporting” ceased to be that in the Judith Miller days if not earlier, as this story exemplifies.)

Good riddance to a once-great paper. And heckuva job, Pinch.

judybrowni:  Apparently, that was important: no matter the story, everyone should know whether or not the bitch was up for grabs, owned by a husband or father, still.

Geraldine Ferraro, who just died this morning, was a particular victim of that; she was referred to throughout the ‘84 campaign as “Mrs. Ferraro” despite the fact that there was no Mr. Ferraro.  That embarrassed them, and yet they did not change that policy for several more years.

Frank Rich gone. Now Bob Herbert gone. Paul Krugman is now the Times’s sole generator of copy worth reading.

Nate Silver is interesting on his 538 blog, and I like Charlie Blow’s stats.  Joe Sharkey (business travel) does OK, but beyond that, yeah…

I’m not going to say too much, I’m working on my own piece on this.  But I disagree that this is not about Matt, Dave, or Ezra.  It’s partially about them.  That piece read very much like a PR rep-pushed piece.  Let’s say it wasn’t.  Let’s say the author, who used to work with Dave, pitched it to the three subjects.  (gee, didn’t that used to be called something?  oh yeah, the old boy’s club)

Two posed for pics, and at least one sat for an interview.  None of them thought to say, geez, this is so white and male? 

Herbert leaving the Times, and this is being presented as the new guard?

That’s scary.  not one of those guys is Herbert.  They can publish all the graphs they want to, but not one of them will ever write about CLASS, and race, the way Herbert did almost every time.  What loss.  And this is what we’ve gained.  Not good.

PS - Amanda you rocked the WAM conference!  I loved the whole panel you were on.  Excellent stuff.

Mrs. Geraldine Ferraro, riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

The Times in this sexist insistance on “Mrs.” weren’t even playing by the nomenclature rules that identified marital status: where a woman was Mrs. His First Name, Last Name if the husband was still alive, or in the marriage, and she became Mrs. Her First Name, His Last Name upon his death, or their divorce.

By keeping her “maiden” name professionally while married, apparently Ferraro so teeded off the Times that they screwed over Emily Post to get back at her.

I don’t know if it really reads like a PR piece to me, Daisy.  Part of me thinks it’s a subtle hit piece.  He probably spent hours talking to these guys, who are smart and often fun guys, and the quotes he pulled sound pretentious.  Plus, he recycles the ridiculous “bloggers are lazy” slur, functionally accusing these guys of not doing the old school work of journalists, even though he has Ezra saying that he pours over policy and breaks it down for his audience.  I *wish* traditional journalists worked as hard as Ezra or took the job of explaining shit to the public as seriously.  Same story with Dave, who really has put in the shoe leather of reporting on the right. 

But nooooooo….. If you read that piece, you’d think people who tweet a lot don’t really do anything else, basically. I’d say people who tweet a lot just are paying a lot of attention to what others are saying.  I think journalism could be helped by having people acknowledge each other’s work in this way.

Amanda, I’ll read it again and try to view it from that perspective.  I was so pissed the first time I read it.  I do have to go over it, point for point, when I am nice and calm.

I mean, I still am pissed like you.  Pieces like this reinforce the notion that all the plum jobs going to white men is the natural order of the universe, and I think many women and men and women of color would tolerate getting their noses tweaked like this in order to otherwise be members of the powerful elite.  I’m sure the writer believes he’s just describing the way things are, but he’s also reinscribing it, and making it seem like this is just the way things should be.

With Bob Herbert leaving, this story looks like a fluff piece intended to flatter a possible replacement.  I’m sure the timing is coincidental, but it’s not as if a big media creature is never looking to grab talent.  (Of course, they could choose from a wider field, but that’s a point that’s already being made here.)

God, let’s hope not.  I mean, I love all those guys and all, but the Times really should not give Herbert’s spot to a white guy.

Did you warn them?

http://xkcd.com/875/

judybrowni wrote:

And with something that looks suspiciously like a purse on his desk.

Ahhh, you missed it!  That photo wasn’t of someone’s desk, as in an office or at home, but of Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo at work in a bakery.  The <strike>purse</strike> European shoulder bag could belong to the customer at the next table. 

That’s the image that the Times wanted to convey: the blogger isn’t really a professional—though some do make money at it—but a guy who never quite got out of college.  Those professionals who did make it past the gatekeepers never really had any respect for those who took another path; the internet is really nothing more than the subsidy press, writ large.

Obviously, not all bloggers are male, and not all are young, and not all are white, but that doesn’t mean the stereotype doesn’t exist.  And much of that stereotype is due to another one: the Times article is referring to political bloggers, but not all blogs are about politics.  There are photography blogs and cooking blogs and travel blogs and car blogs, whatever the subject, there are blogs about it, but the Times reporter was never concerned about any of them; he might not have even guessed that they existed.  If the subject was cooking blogs or photography sites, he’d probably see more women, but he never bothered to look.

The report was from Washington, where he should have mentioned Oliver Willis.  But Mr Willis, though a fairly popular, black DC blogger, wasn’t considered because the writer was looking for professional bloggers, people making their living through blogging, and Mr Willis has to work elsewhere (Media Matters for America) to make ends meet.

One other thing that could have been noticed, but wasn’t: a lot of the referenced people (see Mr Ess) are Jewish.  Jews make up just a small percentage of the population nationwide, but are much more heavily concentrated in a few East Coast cities, which is, remarkably, exactly where the article was looking for them.  Blogging knows no geographical boundaries, but sometimes reporters’ prejudices do.

<3 xkcd

One objection I have to both the original piece and this response to it though: the identities of the bloggers in question are being erased and replaced with ‘white’.

Ezra is Jewish (religiously agnostic).  Matt is of Cuban and Spanish heritage.  Other prominent lefty bloggers such a Markos and Josh Marshall are likewise non-white.

So yes, no women.  But to lump the 4 featured bloggers all into the category of ‘white’ is not justified.

Jon wrote:

But if you need to figure out how to get some respect, I’d recommend changing the name of this blog to Pandapundit.  Maybe you should spell it aMANda, too.

aMANdagon? 

Libdevil, are Jews non-white?  I suppose this would depend on your definition, I know Stormfront wouldn’t consider them white.  But I do, and my Jewish friends consider themselves white. How are you defining white?  That aside, let’s not pretend for one moment that Jews are in any way underrepresented in our media, please.  Let’s just drop that right here, right now.

As far as Yglesias goes, I believe his mother was white, but maybe not, I’m no expert on his family that’s for sure.  Regardless, you’ll note I specified class. Matt is an overprivileged Harvard boy. 

As a white woman, my first reaction to that despicable article was that the writer had erased women, and even conjured up a world (the past via Kipling) where we do not even exist.  After my white hot fury had, well, continued to be white hot, it hit me that Bob Herbert was leaving the Times, and on the same day, the Times ran this blowjob to white boys.  Now, maybe you can argue that Matt is not white, whatever.  I could care less.  Read Bob Herbert, then read him.  Then read Ezra, then read Dave.

We are at a time of historic inequality.  Not one of them will ever write as if they even care, or feel, or know, any of that suffering.  They are very smart, they make very pretty graphs, but they have no feel for suffering.  They certainly know nothing about the disenfrachised African American youth Herbert wrote so much about.  And they don’t know anything about me.

If Herbert is replaced by a white boy, or by Matt, whatever he is, or, and this is important, even by a black man, who is overfuckingprivileged, and not class-conscious, then we have moved, once again, to the right.

Those guys are all center, or center right, in my opinion, and I believe it can be proved that they are all significantly to the right of Bob Herbert, who never once took pen to paper without issuing a wake up call to the conscience of America.

So please, let’s not get caught up in ridiculous and meaningless, semantics.

Yes, idealy I would like to see a VERY leftist black woman replace Herbert, but a very leftist black man would be great too.  We cannot have a whiteout on the oped pages of the NY Times.  We cannot allow this glorification of three overprivileged, overeducated, Ivy boys, to be setting the so-called “liberal” narrative.

Cause they ain’t liberals.  Whatever they are, and I agree they are not righties, they ain’t liberals.  No one who sold Obama’s health care plan, can be anything, anything, other than a centrist. 

And fuck centrism.

Just to mention, I really know nothing about Brian Beutler.  I looked him up and he graduated UC Berkeley, physics and astrophysics.  So he is obviously very smart.  So are all of the others.  No argument.  I know nothing about Beutler’s politics, and he could very well be significantly to the left of Ezra and Matt.  (he’d have to be to the left of Dave since, let’s face it, that guy doesn’t even pretend to be liberal, he’s a Ron Paul voter).

But it wouldn’t matter.  Race and class really do matter.  They always have, they matter more now since we are in the new Gilded Age. 

There is some talk on Twitter of Digby replacing Herbert.  (well, more hopeful dreaming than anything I believe).  But she can’t.  She’s the kind who knows it too!  She said that Ta-Nehisi Coates should replace Herbert.  I love Digby and would faint from excitement if she ever replaced that idiot, Maureen Dowd.  But she can’t replace Bob Herbert.

Now I know no one has mentioned any of the subjects of that article replacing Herbert.  But it shows a very disturbing mindset.  And even within the liberal blogsphere, it would be a huge mistake to claim, or just accept, that Ezra and Matt set the liberal narrative.  They’re not liberals to a significant portion of the left.  They ain’t setting no narrative for me.

Joe Nocera is going to the op-ed page of the NY Times—I don’t know if he’s replacing Rich or Herbert, or if they’re carving out another column for him.

http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffbercovici/2011/03/01/frank-rich-leaves-ny-times-as-joe-nocera-joins-op-ed-page/

A twice weekly column isn’t replacing Rich.

My first thought at mentioning Coates was that he can’t go be a useless Times columnist, he runs a great and unique blog for The Atlantic. Yeah, he’d be great at it, but it’s just not as valuable, was my first thought. But, presumably, he’d just start running the same blog at the Times site, the way Silver does.

The article sucks because it’s shallow foolishness and the term “Juicebox Mafia” is shorn of its actual content by the gutless Times.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Juicebox Mafia

Young liberal bloggers who are insufficiently deferential to Israel’s Likud party or its agents within the United States. Generally recognized members include Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, and Spencer Ackerman.
The Juicebox Mafia thinks that Israel’s operations in Gaza were a failure. They’re self-hating juice!

That’s the context of the name and the Times doesn’t provide it. Especially if Daisy and Judy are correct above, they wouldn’t want to, with acceptable opinion on Israel being to the right of Joe Lieberman.

I’m also trying to imagine the person who reads that article and becomes more informed.

A.M..
W-Aay off topic…
BUT; Well done you - on feature/front page piece Salon today.
Usual great insight… your (her) unmistakable voice.
Still love it.

cheers y’all

Daisy @24, Jews used to be non-white.  Perhaps Hispanics are now becoming white, as Jews, Czechs and eventually even the Irish did.

Amanda @14, what sort of solvent does Ezra “pour” on policy to break it down? :{ )

judybrowni @13, I remember giggling over the discomfort of conservatives, knowing they were making themselves look like idiots if they called the VP nominee “Mrs. Ferraro”, but that they’d look even stupider if they called her “Mrs. Zaccaro” (plus, nobody would know who they were talking about).

I think Hispanics are still non white. See all the OMG, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE SPEAKING SPANISH AND RUINING OUR COUNTRY freak outs. Basically, you’re white in America if your presence doesn’t cause massive freakouts, veiled insults in the letters and op ed in the newspapers, or laws trying to attack supposed attributes of your ethnic group(such as English Only, OMG, NO SHARIA EVER laws, or anti saggy pants laws.)

Yes, white teens wear saggy pants, but the laws aren’t aimed to criminalize them. (oddly enough, deficet hawks never think of the costs of making so many things illegal.

They could at least have mentioned the great Melissamanda McMarcotte Anti-Anti-Catholic Jihad associated with the Edwards campaign.

Congrats on the Salon article.

Matt is of Cuban and Spanish heritage.

He is also a Jew. His mother is jewish. 

Josh Marshall are likewise non-white.

I am not aware of any other ethnicities Josh Marshall may possess, but one of them is Jewishness.

Definitely a list light on WASPs….Not to say that is a bad thing

Dr Psycho wrote:

judybrowni @13, I remember giggling over the discomfort of conservatives, knowing they were making themselves look like idiots if they called the VP nominee “Mrs. Ferraro”, but that they’d look even stupider if they called her “Mrs. Zaccaro” (plus, nobody would know who they were talking about).

Maybe my memory is faulty in this, but did’t the Mondale/Ferraro campaign itself refer to her as Mrs Ferraro? 

1984, trying to win votes, starting out way behind; I can’t see Ms as being a net vote winner back then.

I’d like to see Jesse, Pam and Auguste help relieve some of the load for you.  Though rumor has it not all of them have penii or are of pale skin tone…

Hmmm… that probably doesn’t read right.
Stupid posting before coffee.

yes it’s a shame, the new york post wants to take us all to the stone age, the most important success we had with the internet, was the real freedom for, and of information, this is a bullet that will impact the shooter himself

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