Witness the Washington Post’s announcement that they have hired Alexi McCammond to be an opinion editor. The Washington Post has been hemorrhaging credibility, integrity and subscribers for years, and one might think that it would be seeking some objective, serious, ethically competent old hands to right the metaphorical ship. One might, and one would be wrong. Heeeeeeere’s Alexi!
McCammond began her political reportage career covering Democrats for Axios. While following Biden’s presidential campaign, where she eventually began an intimate affair with Biden’s then campaign press secretary T.J. Ducklo. This is what is called in the days when journalists cared about things, a disqualifying conflict of interest but neither told their employers about their relationship until after the 2020 election. McCammond’s ability to be considered an objective commentator on the Biden campaign was, of course, corrupted, but never mind: Axios, hack outfit that it is, didn’t care, saying, “We stand behind her and her coverage”,” and because she was “a valued member of the Axios team.” Then, probably with the assistance of the White House, the love birds got their own feature in People magazine. Ducklo was quoted as saying, “We’re both really happy, and we wanted to do it the right way.” This the rough equivalent of Clarence Thomas saying the same thing about his relationship with billionaire Harlan Crow. There is no “right way” for a reporter to be in a romantic relationship with a key staffer of the politician she’s covering.
After Ducklo got himself fired for threatening a Politico reporter who dared to question the dodgy ethics of the McCammond-Ducklo alliance, Alexi quit too, becoming editor of that bastion of serious journalism, Teen Vogue (Current story: “Kylie Jenner’s Tight Corset & Spiky Bra Combo Is Her Best Look Yet”). McCammond got fired from that jobe when an old tweet surfaced saying she was “googling how to not wake up with swollen, asian eyes.” This political incorrectness endangered a huge ad buy from a “diversity”-obsessed company, so Alexis was out. Then she went back to Axios, where she became a “contributor” to MSNBC—you know, the leftist propaganda network that literally never saw a Republican or a conservative that it didn’t represent as rising from the bowels of hell. How in the world would anything about Alexi McCammond or her career in journalism suggests that she belongs as an opinion editor at the Washington Post? She has never been anything but a progressive Democratic flack; she violated basic ethics rules and never indicated that she regrets doing so. Periodically, reviewing a particularly unprofessional and biased opinion piece in the Times or Post, Ethics Alarms will ask, “Where were the editors? How could this happen?”
Hiring editors with the qualifications of McCammond is what happens. She is black. These days, in bastions of progressive madness like the Post, that’s often qualification enough: after all, a black petty hood died under the knee of a white Minnesota cop.
Writes the Federalist of this shameless display of media bias and complete abdication of professionalism,
The fact is that Americans don’t get accountability from politicians because journalists stopped demanding it of themselves. And in doing so, they have earned your hatred and no one’s respect. Ultimately, the most damning thing about Alexi McCammond’s continued professional success is that it’s unsurprising. Among the many, many tales of journalists behaving badly, her story barely even rates.
How can anyone argue with that?
Ethics Alarms 
I’m beginning to come around to a theory on The Post. I think the problem’s coming from the top. The very top. Jeff Bezos. The guy who’s spending all his time cavorting with his hot, new, or at least slightly used, Latina chick in all the places where the ultra-wealthy and/or wannabe perceived as ultra-wealthy are seen, or at least photographed. I think Bezos has a serious, stage four, delayed adolescence problem. I think running The Post is just part of being one of the cool kids at last. I’m sure he’ll run for homecoming king this fall.
“How in the world would anything about Alexi McCammond or her career in journalism suggests that she belongs as an opinion editor at the Washington Post? She has never been anything but a progressive Democratic flack.”
The question answers itself.
I am thoroughly disgusted with and depressed by the state of journalism today, and, my sense is that many in that field are arrogant and just don’t care. I have tried, without success to get some now and then to justify their bald, faulty assertions. Not even the courtesy of a reply.. What to do?
I’m sorry to hitchhike on your comment, HJ, but WP doesn’t let me write ny own right now.
The Banned One just sent an instantly spammed comment that is too rich to let lie in SPAM. She wrote, “Didn’t you JUST fucking argue yesterday that ad hominem attacks on a person’s character are unwarranted and instead, the content of what the person is saying is what really what matters?’
Thus proving that she didn’t understand any of the efforts to explain what’s wrong with ad hominem attacks used to discredit otherwise legitimate and valid statements, and she sees no distinction between attacking one’s character in lieu of an argument on the substance of a matter and concluding that one’s character and conduct disqualified an individual for positions of trust.
I’m feeling less guilty about my “idiot” outburst.
[I’m getting tired of losing respectable commenters’ points when I have to spam poor Kate’s nonsense, so today I’ll leave the shell up while deleting the gibberish.]
Jack
Even if Hannibal Lector helped you solve a crime, you do not put him in charge of the cafeteria.
HOWEVER, the crime is no less solved for Hannibal Lector having been the one who solved it.
These are two separate thoughts, which I think many get conflated, which is why ad hominem is such a misunderstood and overused tactic/rebuttal.
I have written so much about that particular issue that my brain hurts. It shouldn’t be hard. Saying that statement Y that advocate X asserts is necessarily flawed be cause X is an idiot is a non-sequitur, and either a cheat, because it doesn’t address the issue at all, or evidence that the one using that fallacy has the brains of a tadpole. That’s an ad hominem attack, attacking the messenger rather than the message.
Concluding that the messenger is an idiot because his or her message is objectively idiotic is NOT ad hominem, nor is it unreasonable or illogical. Insults are not ad hominem attacks. They are insults, and often insults are necessary and illuminating.
Why is this hard?
I did not mean that you were using ad hominem, Jack. Just the opposite, in fact. I was referring to the difference in this post to the one about the failures in Maui. I was trying to give an answer to the question “ Didn’t you JUST fucking argue yesterday that ad hominem attacks on a person’s character are unwarranted and instead, the content of what the person is saying is what really what matters?“
I apologize that this was unclear. I thought I had quoted that correctly and then the quote did not appear. I am apparently incapable of using the script that others use to show quotation and need to rely on long hand or copy paste. I will try to avoid that mistake in the future.
Nononono! I didn’t misunderstand you at all—I just wanted to elaborate on your completely accurate point.
I don’t think that just because someone says something idiotic then it means he or she is an idiot. Everyone, and I really do mean everyone, says something idiotic occasionally. It doesn’t make that person an idiot. A idiot is someone who says something idiotic REGULARLY such as those on the far left.
But signature significance applies.
Yes, but most idiotic statements don’t reach that level significance.
Well, it’s a fascinating topic. Human intelligence is wildly complex. I don’t see how a non-idiot, for example, can advocate open borders, unrestricted adult-child sex, or tell me, as I have related, that dinosaur fossils were placed on Earth by God to test the faithful, as a US Chamber of Commerce executive once told me. I have trouble believing that a truly idiotic statement can be made by a plausible non-idiot: I sure don’t want to bet my life on it. The problem is knowing when people really intend the idiotic things they do, and really mean—or really think through—the idiotic things they say.
I saw a friend who was wearing a ‘Flat Earth’ t-shirt and another friend says that he really believes the Earth is flat, i.e. he was not wearing it as a joke. But he seems so intelligent. Intelligent enough to make a lot of money, and is a good athletics coach. So I will keep him as a friend but if he ever wants to seek any elected position then I will not vote for him as I don’t know what else he may believe.
I got the impression that Kate was calling out what she saw as hypocrisy in the argument that Ian Miles Cheong’s statements were valid – despite his obvious conservative bent – while McCammond was labelled as unethical because she was liberal. And frankly, even if I’m wrong and Kate wasn’t calling our host a hypocrite for the two posts, I’m still going to make my point.
As far as I know, Ian Miles Cheong is not a journalist for a newspaper. He’s an internet personality. On the flip side, Alexi McCammond is a journalist…well, is supposed to be one. Journalists are…well, at one time were…held to very different standards that people who simply compose tweets or other self-created content on the internet. Journalists are supposed to be impartial – in a similar vein to judges, including our friend Justice Thomas – and not engage in activities that would potentially cloud their neutrality. They are supposed to investigate both sides of issues with equal ferocity and rigor. They are to present their findings with equal honesty and integrity. They are not to cloud their work with biased supposition, innuendo, tainted data, or heresay that supports or in any way gives the appearance of siding with one side or the other.
Cheong is under no such restriction. In my opinion, he’s no different than Bill Maher. He can say what he wants, even if he’s a jerk. But we can weigh whatever Cheong says without the journalistic standards to which McCammond is held.
Alexi McCammond is free to have a political bent, but it should – as far as is possible with her – stay out of her reporting, her investigations, and her activities. She did not do that. And I think that’s the difference between the two.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
No need to apologize. Didn’t know that person was banned. But, I was trying to reply (I enjoy pointing out idiocy when it’s not my own) so, here’s my reply anyway:
Yep, some ad hominem there (can we use that western civ Latin masculine term?), but the important stuff — that’s the signature significance stuff noted, were the ethics fails. Or, are those okay so long as she (or, is it they) says the right words?
Kate, please try plain English instead of gibberish. Then we’ll know what you’re trying to say.
Just, for example, re-write this into ordinary language: “Exactly my point about your social media influence your used a source…but nevermind.”
This episode makes me wonder if I’m using too lenient a standard for admitting a new commenter into the forum. What keeps happening is that I get an acceptably clear comment that may be someone parroting partisan talking points, but in the interest of diversity of opinion, let them out of moderation despite having a sinking feeling that I’ll regret it. And almost without exception of late, I do. Searching for passionate, informed, open-minded, fair and articulate commenters from the Left like tgt, Ampersand, jan chapman, Charles Green, Still Spartan, Curmie and some others, I’m ending up with trolls, sealions, and hollow-eyed dolts.
I’m wondering about whether I need a volunteer vetting committee to give me input before I pass some of these people through. Because when I make a mistake, they waste a lot of time and pollute the discussions.
Waste a lot of time and pollute the discussion.
Amen. They achieve their objective. EA commenters get sucked into trying to reason with vicious partisan operatives. As I recently observed, when the number of comments head north of fifty, there’s a malign force at work. You could engage with Charles or Sparty. They’d make their point and promptly enough leave it at that. These paid operatives are here to simply disrupt things. And boy, do they ever.
Curmie is pretty good, like it or not, we conservatives don’t know it all and can’t claim there aren’t some holes in our arguments. Tgt was smart, even if he was kind of a pain (atheists vs. theists is very hard to keep civil). Charles at least tried to be evidence based and intelligent, but he lost me with saying Jack drank the Kool-aid. Still Spartan is missed, she was pretty much the only liberal here who related to others as people – maybe her being a parent of two daughters who had their highs and lows had something to do with that. I ALMOST met her once, and in retrospect, it would have been an honor. Valky has at least as many insightful posts as angry ones (I know, I know, physician, heal thyself). This last crop, though, starting with “a lib” and “Katie,” around the time Jack raised the question of an echo chamber, forget it. A lib was especially bad, he acted like an arrested 14yo.
Ugh. Forgot about “A Lib.”
I didn’t. What a dickhead.
I would think that those who are reasonable and those who are unreasonable basically defines who is a liberal and who is a progressive.
Did Still Spartan actually leave this arena?!? I knew I hadn’t seen her for a while. What a shame.
I kinda miss that Alizia Tyler…was that her name? I spent a lot of time trying to decipher her offerings, usually word spaghetti with a side of chopped word salad.
“I kinda miss that Alizia Tyler…was that her name?”
It was; for some abstruse reason, I do as well.
“I spent a lot of time trying to decipher her offerings, usually word spaghetti with a side of chopped word salad.”
Walls of text, beau coup esoterica replete with…um…careening mental pathways were always a challenge through which to slog, am I right?
You are NOT wrong.
No, SS still drops in occasionally: she never self-banned, and I certainly never banned her. (She’s a friend, but then so is (was) “A Friend”)
Just checked: SS last commented in April, civilly and interestingly as usual.
That’s great to know. Thanks!
Too weird man. WAPO has achieved woke stardom with this hire. Perfect curricula vitae – Teen Vogue editor in chief. Which in April 2021 WAPO’s Sarah Ellison wrote a derogatory piece on.
Last I saw of Teen Vogue was a piece on teen DIY anal sex. I wasn’t convinced WAPO’s slide into fatuousness was inexorable but now I am.
And how about the other new hire?
“He has been a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, research professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Seminary and a contributing writer for The Atlantic.”
Why do media outlets hire so many foreigners who’ve left their usually shithole countries and come to the United States for a better life and, astoundingly, get paid to tell us how terrible we all are? Why do we have foreigners advising us on U.S. foreign policy? Or even domestic policy?
Because we are the goddamn United States of America and we are different from every other country in the history of human civilization because we were founded on the wholehearted embrace of freedom and democracy. Anyone, no matter their background, gets to have their say and we all benefit from this because not one of us is the smartest who ever lived and has nothing to learn from other people, including foreigners. And in that same vein, we are all free to listen and evaluate and accept or reject what they say according to our own knowledge, experience, and sensibilities.
It’s one of the reasons I really enjoy reading the comments of some of our non-American posters here like Humble Talent, Zoe Brain, and Extradimensional Cephalopod (who, apparently, isn’t even human nor from Planet Earth) . . . those are just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are more.
–Dwayne
P.S. OB, please don’t take this as a snarky or argumentative response, it’s not intended that way. Think of it more as my putting on the Glory Glory Hallelujah record in the background and making an Otter-style speech at Dean Wormer’s expulsion hearing.