Following up on an item from last weekend, the Washington Post, for reasons that defy comprehension, published a 1,700-word thought piece a week ago on women in America being dumb, shallow, and generally kind of pathetic. The author, Charlotte Allen, made her spectacularly dumb case, arguing that women are bad drivers, they have physically smaller brains, they’re awful at math, they have bad taste in entertainment, etc. Women, Allen concluded without a hint of irony, are “the stupid sex,” “embarrassing,” and “kind of dim.”
The problem, I argued, is not Allen. Her foolish attack on women is easy to dismiss as petty nonsense. Instead, the fault lies with Washington Post editors who thought Allen’s anti-feminist hit-job deserved to be published on the front page of the paper’s Outlook section.
A few days ago, the WaPo’s Outlook editor took a moment to respond to criticism, saying the piece was intended to be “tongue-in-cheek.” Today, Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell added some insightful thoughts on the subject, conceding that she was “offended” by Allen’s opinion piece, which she called “breathtaking” and “insulting.”
Of course, it’s important for provocative opinion to be in the paper, especially in Outlook, which is all commentary. And this should have nothing to do with politics. Allen is a conservative, and Outlook should pay attention to conservative opinion.
But my umpteen years of experience have taught me to be wary of using humor, satire or irony about gender, race or religion. Humor can easily go awry or be misunderstood; it deserves extra care in editing and labeling. The Allen piece was offensive because it was a broadside against all women, despite her weasel words here and there. And the piece had the fatal flaw of not being funny. At all.
Readers come to the newspaper looking for news, facts, analysis, opinion and a little fun. They do not come to The Post to be insulted, and the paper should not deliberately print anything offensive unless it is a matter of great news significance.
All true. But it leads back to the central question: how did Allen’s nonsense get published in the first place? Howell offers some insights on this as well.
[Allen] pitched the piece to Outlook assignment editor Zofia Smardz, who had worked with Allen before. Smardz thought the piece was “funny, clearly tongue-in-cheek and hyperbolic but with a serious point that provided food for thought at a time when the Clinton candidacy and some women’s reactions to the Obama candidacy have put the subject of women and women’s roles front and center. I thought her piece held up a mirror to some foibles so many women, including me, can recognize in themselves, even as we seek absolute equality and expect to be taken seriously.”
Smardz thought American women “have come far enough to be able to laugh at ourselves and not feel threatened by some satirical self-criticism and self-examination.” She “didn’t anticipate the fury of the Internet and the blogosphere, much of which seems to me to have either overlooked or missed the humor I saw.” Most women read it online. The version in the paper was edited extensively, but not all of the editing appeared in the version most people read online.
Six other women, five at The Post, read the piece; five thought it was fine and one didn’t, Smardz said. Outlook Editor John Pomfret, who has the last word, thought “it presented a different, albeit very non-PC take at a time when women and politics is a riveting topic in this country. I expected the piece to be controversial, but I did not expect the intensity of the reaction. It was a learning experience about the section, my job and our readership.” Deputy Editor Warren Bass argued against it. “I wrote a fairly blunt e-mail arguing that it wasn’t up to snuff and that the paper shouldn’t run a glib, essentialist screed that insulted an entire gender.”
This is all good to know, but in some ways, makes the incident all the more bizarre. All of these editors — including six women — read a shallow, cliched hit piece on all American women, and thought it belonged on the front page of the opinion section of one of the nation’s leading newspapers? I had assumed there had been some breakdown in the editing process, and somehow a clunker had sneaked through without scrutiny.
Apparently not. The editors actually thought this was thought-provoking. Attacking women for having small brains, deficient driving skills, poor taste, weak math skills, and underwhelming intellects represents “satirical self-criticism and self-examination”?
Seriously?
To be sure, it appears the Post probably realizes, a week too late, that this was an awful mistake, which insulted most of its readers — of both genders. One assumes the Outlook assignment editor, in retrospect, probably looks at Allen’s piece today with a more critical eye, and will be a little more cautious about giving the green light to similar hit pieces in the future. This has been, as Pomfret put it, a “learning experience.”
I should hope so.