| I just don't get Susan Demas. What in the world is going through her head?
Susan is a highly credentialed journalist, with a large international audience, who is respected in her field. She's worked very hard for this. Why is she risking this credibility by taking childish pot shots at bloggers?
This time Susan goes after Julie Powers, for one of her coffee talk entries.
But bloggers like Julie Powers on MichiganLiberal.com are willing to swan dive into the cesspool and actually slander McCain's heroism.
"So John, how exactly does sitting on your ass in a POW camp for five years (and then returning only to cheat on your disabled wife and dump her for the Budweiser Barbie) exactly make you such a military expert?" asks Powers, who does PR for gay rights Equality Now group, which I doubt sanctions her inflammatory rhetoric.
OK, then, Jules. Let's throw your butt in the Hanoi Hilton, break your arms and subject you to psychological trauma even worse than reading your own posts and then we'll talk.
The problem with this pot-shot is three-fold: first, Susan misrepresents Julie's comments. The comment is lifted from the Michigan Liberal series, "Coffee Talk", which is a collection of links in an open thread each morning. The writers who publish Coffee Talk often summarize the point of each link. If you follow the link Julie provided, you can see that's what she was doing. Furthermore, Julie didn't comment on McCain's heroism, she commented on whether his experience as a POW made him a military expert.
more over the fold .. |
| Even if you disagree with my assessment of that, the second and more egregious offense in Susan's post is that she brought Julie's job into it. Julie's work is not relevant to Susan's point. If Julie was doing PR work for "Citizens against POWs", that might be relevant. The only reason to bring up Julie's employment was to make the comment sting.
Third, Susan slips into using language that is just indefensible -
OK, then, Jules. Let's throw your butt in the Hanoi Hilton, break your arms and subject you to psychological trauma even worse than reading your own posts and then we'll talk.
What a low character, horrible thing to say.
Let's set aside the fact that a political candidate who uses his military service as a political tool - as John McCain does - automatically opens up that service for scrutiny and criticism. Susan is painting a picture of violence and projecting it on to Julie because she doesn't like what Julie said. I'm disappointed that a journalist would do this. This is something you only see with the worst of the worst bloggers.
Journalists are supposed to meet a higher standard; they are supposed to set an example. Is this the kind of work that a Knight Foundation fellow is supposed to produce?
Why is Susan getting so personal with Michigan Liberal bloggers? Until today, I found it slightly amusing. I laughed out loud when she commented that anonymous bloggers on Michigan Liberal can post anything they want, with no fact-checking. (Story was here but it's gone now) Her comment wasn't funny, but Michigan Liberal's collective "harrumph!" resulted in 10,11,12,13 (I forget the number) front page diaries, all of them ignoring the simple fact that Susan was right. And I secretly cheered when she bitch-slapped PerfectStormer for his Russert "eulogy," even though the bitchslap itself was an assy comment on her part. PerfectStormer needed a good slap, and I really didn't care who gave it to him.
I've occasionally wondered if Michigan Liberal had an agreement with Susan ... you pick on me, I'll pick on you, and we'll call attention to each other. That's what journalists and bloggers need most - attention for their work. But today's article doesn't strike me as attention-getting tactics, or the harmless poking of a stick. It strikes me as an attempt to intimidate; to suppress future speech by associating speech with humiliation.
Perhaps that's not Susan's intent. Perhaps she just wants to inject some level of accountability into a medium that desperately needs it. Perhaps she just wants to improve what's coming out of the blogosphere. If that's Susan's intent, I hope she re-evaluates her methods. I hope she doesn't squander her professional credibility over the bloggers for whom she has so little regard. |
