Friday, January 09, 2009

Michelle Malkin Takes Issue With Oxymoron's Smug Dismissal of Joe the Plumber's Journalistic Credibility

Recently, Oxymoron caused quite a blogospheric firestorm with his giggly post about Joe the Plumber's new role as a reporter from the Gaza War front.


Oxymoron's post was the last straw for Michelle Malkin, who as Situationers have long known, is one of our most important public intellectuals. Today she releases a column, the title of which, Who's Afraid of Joe the Journalist, is clearly a taunt and a dare shot across Oxymoron's bow.

Among her many brilliant observations in this piece:

Joe Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. Joe the Plumber, is headed to Israel to interview ordinary citizens about life in the crosshairs of jihad. He'll be filing dispatches for conservative Internet video broadcasting site PJTV.com (to which I also contribute). Predictably, the very idea of a non-credentialed public figure attempting to "do journalism" has catty elite journalists hacking up hairballs.



But Joe the Plumber, Malkin points out, is representative of the remedy which our American journalistic discourse so desperately needs:

Groupthink, credential fetishism and the Sorbonne mentality have turned national newsrooms into stale echo chambers. For all its self-aggrandizing paeans to "diversity," mainstream American journalism remains one of the most intellectually and ideologically monochrome sectors of the public square.


Michelle Malkin. Opponent of Groupthink. Champion of Journalistic integrity. Woman for our Times.

4 comments:

Oxymoron said...

Touché, Ms. Malkin.

Although in my defense, it was not I but Harrogate, in all his elitist glory, who imposed giggliness upon my original post.

I was clearly neutral in my report of JTP's new gig, neither mocking nor celebrating his new employer's decision. To be sure, the venue in which I posted the news--this award-winning but left-leaning blog--might lead readers to assume that my purpose was jeering, but those assumptions are wrong.

I wish JTC the best of luck in his new role. (That's "Joe the Correspondent," not "Joe the Christ.")

solon said...

But I trashed Joe and the conservative media in the comment section....

Why is no one upset with me?

harrogate said...

Solon,

The elitist, anti-Freirean Harrogate just got off the phone with Malkin, and she assures him that you are every bit as representative of the problems with our American media, as anyone.

Oxy: Malkin notes that the sheer brevity of your post, given the broader Rhetorical Situation of your political arc, implied a giggliness, indeed a fauz-intellectual smugness, of which she is sure you were aware at the moment of the post's creation.

Before hanging up on Harrogate, Malkin added that what makes her saddest is that any of the three of us found women willing to marry us.

solon said...

Well, Malkin may be correct, for the first time in her life, on the last point before she hung up on you....but that is besides the point.