Inside the 'mind' of a Washington Post Editor: Pomfret 'regrets' offending women

[BurtWorm]

This is from Laurie Rozen's War and Piece:

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/007109.html

An Explanation and Regrets for Offense

John Pomfret writes me:

... I ran Charlotte Allen's piece to provoke, but not to offend. I thought the parallel she drew between fainting Obama followers and Beatlemania was an interesting frame with which to analyze the Obama phenomenon. She went further, of course, to draw broader conclusions about the state of her gender highlighting women's interest in Gray's Anatomy and Eat, Pray, Love. But my reading of it was more a tongue-in-cheek screed borne from exasperation with her sisters than a mysoginist rant from a self-hating woman. Yes, she engaged in massive hyperbole but she did it to try to make a point. That said the piece obviously offended you and others and I regret that. But it was an opinion piece and that is what they sometimes do. ...

The expression of regret for offending readers is appreciated, although I still think the editorial judgment involved in running it at least in that form was seriously off, at so many levels. It's hard for me to see how any moderately sentient being would not have realized that running such a piece so prominently under a "women aren't very bright" headline would indeed do more than provoke, but offend. And as a colleague writes, "Where, exactly, was her analysis? And what was her analysis? 'She did it to make a point' but what exactly was the point? That women are stupid. That was the point." And it's one that I would think most people you or I would want to work with in the modern world would almost certainly recognize as deeply offensive, and not acceptable for a place like the Post to run.

He says the paper has asked for letters in response that will run in tomorrow's oped page and on Sunday.

Back to journalism.

[aquart]

1. It isn't like beatlemania?

[frazzled]

2. So, women are dumb whether they're for Obama or Clinton

teenage fans if they're for Obama, incompetent gender loyalists if they're for Clinton.

Gee, I guess the only smart thing we women could do is toughen up and vote for McCain.

I'd love to do a parody of this op-ed focusing on all the supposed gender-stereotypical traits of the sports-crazed, breast-ogling, violence consuming, testosterone-driven male psyche. But I won't: it's too obvious, and we women are far more nuanced and subtle.

[knitter4democracy]

3. There's a lot in there that's offensive.

No citations for any of her so-called stats, parts implying that women make up diseases and pretend to be sick (which, having lived that, is flat-out bad, no matter how funny she was trying to be), and the tongue-in-cheek part quickly got buried in the usual crap Ann Coulter and others like her pile onto women.

I hope they get good letters. A knitting board I'm on had a thread about this, and they had some awesome responses.