California Conservative

I’ve seen some monuments to literary stupidity in my life but this Washington Post article rates as the Taj Mahal of idiotic journalism. Here’s a taste of what passes for journalism these days:

In the swampy soup of hopefuls for the 2008 presidential election, there is a man with a funny name. (No, not that one.)
We’re thinking of the one named Fred (Thompson).
Say it out loud. Do it. Fred. Fred. In the South, Fray-ud.
Fur-red-duh.
It has the tonal quality of something being dropped on the floor, something heavy and damp-ish.
Waterlogged paper towel.
Fred.
The phonetics of the name seem integral to its image problem: On Urbandictionary.com, a “Fred” is defined as “a person who does stupid, annoying, or idiotic things” (Fred Flintstone, Fred Mertz). The best-case descriptors a Fred can hope for are terms like well-intentioned, predictable, benign (Fred Rogers).

If you think that’s bad writing, and you should, it gets worse:

Recent media accounts of the guy (who has not yet officially announced his candidacy) would have us believe that being a Fred means Law & Orderly sex-in-a-suit, a name exuding such flypaper pheromones that people find themselves helplessly drawn in. Chris Matthews dedicated three minutes of a recent “Hardball” to exploring Thompson’s sex appeal. London’s Sunday Times last month interviewed a bevy of his ex-girlfriends, all of whom have drunk the Fred-Aid: “He’s majestic,” said country singer/Fredophile Lorrie Morgan. “Women love a soft place to lay and a strong pair of hands to hold us.”

Fred?

Why? Is there something about the craggy actor we’re not getting? Maybe he’s ugly-sexy, like Mick Jagger?

Or maybe the name Fred is etymologically close to obviously sexy names like Dirk, Clint, James?

Granted that this isn’t on the newspaper’s front page but this is utter drivel. For the record, it’s on page D1. Still, this isn’t the sort of thing that an editor should let into a newspaper. If this meets the Washington Post’s journalistic standards, then they need to return to the drawing board and come up with a better plan because this type of journalism won’t sell.

At a time when their paper isn’t doing well, the editors must exercise tighter control over what their columnists write. Letting this stuff into a newspaper diminishes people’s opinions of that newspaper. That was possibly acceptable at some time but they don’t have a big margin for error anymore.

If they want to be taken seriously, they need to eliminate this type of column. Until editors tighten up the requirements and standards, newspapers won’t be taken seriously.

I’d describe this as tabloid journalism written by egotists and idiots. It doesn’t get much worse than that.

Technorati Tags: Tabloid Journalism, Washington Post, Columnists, Editorial Control

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 12:16 pm and is filed under 1st Amendment, Author: Gary Gross, Liberals, Media, Washington, DC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.