'Hooray' For Workplace Violence!
The wonderful Gene Weingarten weighs in on the recent fisticuffs at the Washington Post style desk. (In case you hadn't heard, an editor and a reporter came to blows over a story.) He gives it a "hooray"—that people still care enough to brawl. He's right—just think about the end of Giant, when the dinosaur daddy of the family starts brawling with a racist on behalf of ill-treated Mexicans. Yes! "Newsrooms used to be places filled with interesting eccentrics driven by unreasonable passions—a situation thought of as 'creative tension' and often encouraged by management in eras when profits were high and arrogance was seen not as a flaw but a perquisite of being smart and right. Sadly, over the years newsrooms have come to resemble insurance offices peopled by the blanched and the pinched and the beetle-browed; lately, with layoffs thought to be on the horizon, everyone also behaves extra nicely to please the boss. In the face of potential ruin, journalists have been forced to reach accommodations with themselves: New strictures, new styles, new protocols, new limitations on what is possible are now meekly swallowed. In the frantic scramble for new 'revenue streams,' ethical boundaries are more likely to be pushed than is the proverbial envelope. Some of all this has leached out into the product. We all feel it. You do, too."
Hate to break it to you, but arrogance is still not seen as a flaw.
By you, maybe.
Well, what I say goes.
And he nominates a Worst Style Story ever! It's pretty bad!
It is TERRIBLE.
you're kidding, it's a hoot!
"According to the Farmers Almanac, on another such occasion, Dec. 21, 1866, 'the Lakota Sioux staged a devastating retaliatory ambush of soldiers in the Wyoming Territory,' a coincidence that to me echoes Marylin Arrigan's Indian vision.
"Another one: As I was interviewing Arrigan I was sitting at my husband's desk in his upstairs office, where I rarely go.
"As she was telling me about the Indian's command to 'leave a footprint,' I began toying with a pile of papers and suddenly saw something I had been looking for for almost two years–the program for Barry Goldwater's funeral, which I'd attended."
Though I admit I got Sally Quinn mixed up with Peggy Noonan until I got to the husband's desk part. Still, Grey Gardens!
YES.
Even though it's not even 10:00 yet, I'm going to break out the office bottle and brain myself with it.
I positively hated his Joshua-Bell-plays-Metro feature. (It was not a real story; he set it up – how is that Pulitzer-worthy?) But he's not wrong about this. I found two editing errors before the jump in the Post's A1 story today. If fisticuffs prevent this from happening then I am all for it!
Wait, he won a Pulitzer for that? As much as I respect/secretly lust after Joshua Bell, it wasn't that fucking groundbreaking that people don't appreciate good classical music.
In plain English: "Sensitivity training and PhDs have turned us all into a bunch of pussies. I long for the days when a fella could get drunk and just grope his way through the typing pool!"
Don't conflate sex and violence, please. Workplace sex is what's to blame for that Sally Quinn story.
When I first read about this story and found out the guy got punched for doing a "charticle," I was all, like, HELL YES.