The Hag and the WaPoo
On the last thread, Mikeinportc alerted me to the fact that the Wapoo is eagerly looking for a Froomkin replacement, only cheaper, and flattered me by saying I ought to apply. Now that the WaPoo is so cheap and debased that it’s resorting to “American Idol”-like contests to fill its laughable mockery of an op/ed page, hell, maybe even hags like myself might be in the running. In my drunker moments, a road paved with cocktail weinies at the Graham’s “salon” beckoned. Well, to make a long story short, just for the hell of it, I went ahead and clicked Mike’s link. I think that was a mistake, career-wise. The application itself was so gob-smackingly insulting and dumb that, rather than trying ingratiate myself to these ninnies, I went ahead and wrote the 400-word essay they required, to kind of do the opposite, which turned out to be at least as much fun as you’d think. Think I’ll get the job?
Here it is:
Having been deeply influenced by the Watergate era, during which I was only old enough to draw from it that wiretapping was great fun, people named “Bebe Rebozo” couldn’t possibly be trusted, and President Nixon was, despite his declarations to the contrary, a crook, I have always had a soft spot for the Washington Post. Heck, accidental publisher Katharine Graham was willing to go to jail, risk a rather medieval sort of mammogram at the hands of former Attorney-General John Mitchell, and, probably most unimaginably today, place her company’s stock offering at risk to commit journalism. What wasn’t to love? Sadly, such infantile attachments were cruelly ripped away in the years that followed, as that fleetingly great newspaper devolved into a craven mouthpiece of the powerful, and its once diverse and interesting stable of pundits were replaced by a motley band of discredited pod people of the Military-Industrial Complex, as it was once called by the Post’s mercurial former publisher, Phil Graham’s, first political idol, Dwight Eisenhower. In the golden era that lasted from Graham’s alliance with Otis Chandler of the newly credible LA Times until the Post’s maniacal embrace of Reaganism made it an industry laughingstock, I turned to the Post and its wire service for its well-earned reputation of keeping the powerful in check, a habit I’ve since been forced to abandon. The neocon and corporatist tilt that coincided with the ascension of less journalistically inclined Graham heirs and the installation of such nincompoops as Fred Hiatt, culminating in the paper’s fanatical jihad against Clinton, its utterly unrequited love affair with Bush, and its credibility-shattering embrace of his policies, (which continues to this day) made me finally decide that if it was the Fourth Estate I was looking for, I ought to look elsewhere. Today, the once-vaunted Washington Post is a risible parody, and dark reminder, of what happens to establishment journalism as democracy slides inexorably into oligarchy, and worse. I now read it as subjects of the old Soviet Union read Pravda…. It’s nice, but not terribly enlightening, to know what the Establishment wants us to think today, and at least I now know what the opposite of the truth is. Although I might be interested in writing for the Post, if only to counter the many paid dupes that currently waste good trees with their nonsense, I would be a little embarrassed to do so.
With careful editing, I managed to hit the exact 400 hundred words they require, without a single factual error, grammatical flub, or blatant lie. I consider that a handicap, as they surely will as well. My only hope is that they read the entries at the WaPoo.
You nailed WaPoo. You’re hitting them on a bad day considering the pounding they got from Greenwald in the morning. Doubtful you will get the job unless McClatchy buys WaaaPoo which even if they had the money would be stupid. Once a brand is damaged it is extremely difficult to recover. Impossible when you have idiots in charge.
PS Thanks for the vocabulary lesson. I didn’t know risible. Being a theater major, I probably shouldn’t admit that.
That’s ok, rmp… do like I do, and have a couple of 50-year old dictionaries lying around. I find that helps. What do you think my chances are?
Slim to none, thank God. You’re far more valuable here, in charge of your own shop. I don’t know how much you afflict the comfortable, but I can testify from personal experience that you comfort the afflicted. Here’s to the Hag!
Aw, shucks, WT, you flatter me so. Still, the allure of afflicting the comfortable led me to at least give it a try, albeit a quixotic one. I plan to post, relentlessly, anything I hear about this contest from here on out. (Blog gold mine; woot!)
Thank the astute mikeinportc for giving the hag an idea that’s got legs….
This one was a two-fer. If anyone with any still-functioning brain cells at that paper (which I refuse to name) read your submission… they had to feel a sharp sting. Meanwhile, we, the afflicted, feel somewhat comforted by your recognition of what is so lacking at that same paper.
Unsurprisingly, I haven’t heard a thing. I guess I won’t be hired, which is only disappointing because I had an outfit all picked out to wear to Katharine’s “salon.”
Biting the hand you want to feed you in advance of employment (or freelance assignment) is probably not the way to go. But then, I surmise you’re only joking.
You don’t really want to give up the balcony-view of Portland, do you?
Of course I’m joking. I’m giving the WaPoo the same treatment I would the next Clients From Hell.
But I thought it would be fun to toss something in; people at the Oregonian often told me that although I seldom got published, everyone read and laughed at all my letters. Pissin’ up a rope’s not bad on a slow news day.
Y’know, similar same thing happened for me. Writing hundreds — hundreds! of letters to The Oh, Editor and more, and nary a ripple of echo indicating reception, nevermind recognition. One day in some conversation some one of ‘them’ said, disarmingly unguarded to me, that in-house was a built profile of me from all my writing, passed around, discussed, and debated somewhat uncertainly because I didn’t fit any mold any of ‘them’ had ever seen. He went on to call me the most unusual and thoroughly informed, and informative, long-playing writer supplying ‘them.’ So I stopped after that.
As compared to here at Hag’s blog, where I (for ‘Imagining’) can hear the gazing group question “who is this character?” But even if I actually heard it I shouldn’t think I’d arrest myself. Here I write with the grain, inspired in accordance and flow; to The O, I cut against the grain or across it. quelle fatigue.
… ‘s funny, where I’ve been blacklisted and banned is at the piteously petty peck-sniffy blogs, and it has been a sort of convenient self-cull of the crapola.
You look marvelous, CH.
No wonder that paper is so crappy; all they do all day is pass around letters they’ll never print, while the ones they do print are from the same dozen Lars listeners.
You would be a wonderful thorn in their side, burr under their saddle, and goat head (puncture vine) in their shoe. Chances are they are smart enough to ascertain that from your submission. In my fantasy world WaPo gets get a bushel basket full of submissions that read similarly to yours.
I have no doubt they will, and their subsequent recycling surge will make the WaPoo look like PETA. What’s more interesting though, is who they will finally hire. Do Ross Douthat or Jonah Goldberg have little brothers? Maybe Bill Kristol has a nephew…. We’ll soon find out.
I don’t expect a curlered visage to be gracing the WaPoo op/ed page anytime soon.
Well…they could always hire away la Dowd, like they did young Billy.
My apologies to the Great Dyspeptic for the lèse majesté. It may not be as bad as Microsoft’s offense against the Stones, but I do regret the necessity nevertheless. (Especially since, unlike the Stones, the estate of Mr. Eliot is not being compensated.)
As long as Dowd has a column, the entire art form is irredeemably debased. One more reason, as though one were needed, for the less than eager tone of my “application.” I can’t wait to see what the canned responses are… I’ll post hem, of course.
Methinks that CJR will “find” you again. If it wasn’t so accurate, with your gimlet eye, CTH, it would be terribly, terribly funny.
But I suppose that laughing while crying is the norm at the WP. And as for your job prospects there, stranger things have happened.
Interestingly, I’ve yet to hear back….. I’m sure they’ve been flooded with applications, though, one or two of which might even be serious.
Awesome column!
Should be a winner. (But it won’t:() Hope Sourkrauthammer sees it.
Just in case there weren’t enough hag legs to go ’round ,& so it might go millipedal, I mentioned it at BlueGirl( in a formerly red state)’s place. Thought Brando http://cjsd.blogspot.com/2006/04/bush-reveals-plan-to-curb-illegal.html & other DFH ilk might want a go at it .
Thanks… And you gave me a blog idea at the right moment; always appreciated. I still haven’t heard back. Imagine that.
I’m giving it a whirl, too.
My entry is 400 words on the truth about the health care debate from the trenches, and it will be as quickly dismissed as Hag’s amusing and sardonic ripost.
Mine doesn’t include the splendid word “risible” but I do have a couple of doozies.
Did you post it on your blog? I want to see what the competition is like…. If we end up the two finalists, get ready for some drink-throwing and hair-pulling, Sister. (Hee hee…)
Hey, why not. I don’t expect to win and I think if anyone over at the WaPo googles me, I’d surely be disqualified for my left-leaning (nay, totally hard-a-lee) political proclivities.
I look forward to reading it; 400 words is a bit short for me, so I’d be interested to see how you handled it. (Does this mean that lefties get 400 words, so the righties can have 750?)
I posted it on my blob. Yours is MUCH better.