Katha Pollitt Takes on the Washington Post
The Washington Post published a letter earlier this week written by Katha Pollitt in response to that Charlotte Allen piece. Ms. Pollitt was back today with a full column expressing what most of the rational world’s reaction was to the Allen piece. I particularly liked what she had to say about the culpability of The WaPo:
Here’s a thought. Maybe there’s another thing women can do besides fluff up their husbands’ pillows: Fill more important jobs at The Washington Post. We should be half the assigning editors, half the writers, and half the regular columnists too (current roster of op-ed columnists: 16 men, two women). We’ve got those superior verbal skills, remember? Drastically increasing the presence of women isn’t a foolproof recipe for gender fairness — Allen is far from alone in her dislike of her sex — but I have to believe a gender-balanced paper would reflect a broader view of women than The Post does at present.
A male editor with a lot of women colleagues on his level might think twice before proposing a sweeping denunciation, humorous or not, of “women.” Ideally he would have come to respect women as equals from working with them — but if he were just afraid of being seen as a total caveman, that would be okay too. And maybe this kind of editor would have flagged as tired cliches references to Oprah and Celine Dion; would have looked up the studies Allen claims prove women have the I.Q. of a bowl of cereal and found they don’t say anything like that; would have wondered if more women bake doggy treats than subscribe to Scientific American or run marathons, and how does the treat-baker come to stand for all women?
And then, after all this, and seeing that Allen’s piece still didn’t ring even vaguely-kinda-sorta true, our imaginary editor would have asked a question. “You know what I think of this article?” a good editor would have said. “I think it’s really stupid.”
I believe that the Post is going to post (bit redundant there) more letters on their website and in their print edition on Sunday. I wouldn’t be surprised to read some familiar (blogger) names in there.
