It's very difficult to kickstart a career in freelance journalism. I've tried. You send out tons of clips, everything you've ever written that has been published anywhere that's worth a damn. Usually, publications large and small will simply ignore your work. Out of desperation, about a year ago, I actually wrote personal letters to editors at a variety of publications that had ignored submissions by me over the years.
Rather than asking for work, I simply asked what these editors would recommend to a person with some limited experience in journalism who wanted to start working freelance. Across the board, I was greeted with negativity, pessimism and, in a few cases, extreme condescention.
An editor from the perfectly-awful Los Angeles local City Beat told me that, in order to get work as a freelance writer, I would need to "intern" somewhere for a good while. To paraphrase, I should go slave away in some newsroom doing menial work for a year for free in the hopes that some kindly editor would throw me some piece-of-shit assignment for peanuts that I could then send around to be ignored by editors at publications large and small. Gee, thanks!
I suppose at least she was honest...Her entire job at a small local paper is about finding talented writers who will turn in interesting, important stories, so she automatically turns away any and all newcomers who aren't personally recommended to her in as mean-spirited and hostile a manner as possible. But she didn't string me along...There were no illusions that my inquiry would get me anywhere.
So, that's a long lead-in for a relatively simple question. Considering that it's so hard for writers of any stripe to make a name for themselves and get something published in a paper the size of the Los Angeles Times, then why are they running ignorant racist commentaries by idiots like The Doughy Pantload a.k.a. Jonah Goldberg.
First thing you should know about Jonah as relates to this conversation - he only has a job as a writer because of his mother, Lucianne Goldberg, who was a friend of Linda Tripp. Yes, that's right, he nepotistically exploited being the son of an associate to a loathed historical footnote to start his writing career. That's it...That's why any of us know the name "Jonah Goldberg." He's nothing.
Second thing you should know about him. He's unspeakably vile. Where to even begin with this guy...
Okay, here's a spot...Jonah's recent Townhall column about the immigration protests this week in Los Angeles. See if you can get your mind around this twisted bit of logic:
Many pro-immigration advocates say that Mexicans are no different than other immigrants, and that what critics of Mexican immigration - legal and illegal - say about Latinos is what they said about Germans, Poles, Italians, the Irish and the Jews in the past.
Obviously, there's some truth to this. Many of the complaints do sound similar. But that doesn't mean the arguments have the same weight. The arguments against interracial marriage sound very similar to the arguments against gay marriage, but that doesn't mean a black woman marrying a white man is the same thing as a man marrying another man.
Wow...
So, there's truth to the notion that hatred of Mexican immigrants works in a similar fashion to organized hatred of other ethnic immigrants in years past. But it should still be allowed because...the complains against Mexicans have more weight? What does that even mean? Could he be more vague?
Here's a good place to start. Why do contemporary complaints about Mexican immigrants neccessarily have more weight than complaints about the evil, exploitative Irish and Italian masses coming over in the early 20th century? Because those people were white and these people are brown? Because you said so?
Also, you've got to love the senselessness of the analogy that follows. Actually, Jonah, there are a lot of comparisons to be made between the interracial marriage debate and the gay marriage debate. In both cases, you have an old and intolerant generation that realizes their children are a lot more accepting of a practice that they find offensive. So they rush to outlaw it for all time in advance, to protect their treasured "values." First, it was whites and blacks living together. Now, it's two men co-habitating. But it's the same intolerant venemous horseshit. Why can't he see that?
Finally from this Townhall column, Jonah includes an actual "fact," one that I found kind of surprising:
Today, roughly a third of all undocumented immigrants in America are Mexican, and they make up a disproportionate share of low-wage immigrants.
He thinks this is a shocking revelation that will cause white Americans to wake up and begin opposing Mexican immigration. But actually...I think it might have the opposite effect. Mexicans only constitute one third of undocumented immigrants. So why are we going after them and not anyone else? What about those other 2/3? Could it be, again, because some of them might be white people?
(As an interesting little bit of trivia, his bio on Townhall.com refers to Goldberg as "the Gen X answer to P.J. O'Rourke." This is oddly appropriate, as both Goldberg and Rourke were the victims of Ben Domenech's plagiarism over the last few years. Why anyone would think to steal the poisoned, mindless rhetoric of this guy is beyond me, but there you go...)
I could write a Jonah Goldberg rant all day. Seriously. There's so much of his goofy writing online to pick on, whole blogs are taken up by the task. Anyone else recall his excuse for being a young man who firmly believes in the Iraq War and its crucial importance for America's future, yet refusing to enlist?
Well, okay, lets backtrack. First, Jonah wrote this:
"In the weeks prior to the war to liberate Afghanistan, a good friend of mine would ask me almost every day, "Why aren't we killing people yet?" And I never had a good answer for him. Because one of the most important and vital things the United States could do after 9/11 was to kill people."
Then, a lot of people on the Internet started saying..."Well, if you're so keen on killing, why not join up, dude? Or are you only in favor of sending poor people out to do your killing for you, while you sit around in your house eating Ring-Dings and looking at Internet pr0n?" To which Jonah replied:
For the record, I did in fact mean it. I wrote it here. As for why my sorry a** isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice.
Yeah, I mean, it's like...hello...Why do you think my mommy and her despicable, beastly friend go me this cool job writing bullshit on the Internet? So I could just cheer for war, safely, from my basement! A-duh!
Okay, so anyway, on to the LA Times, which added Jonah as a regular columnist back in December of 2005. Presumably, chasing the ridiculous notion of "balance," as if conservatives were going to suddenly stop saying mean things about the LA Times. It's idiotic. If the news constantly makes the president look bad, maybe he should change what he's doing instead of just whining like a petulant child about how reporters are unfriendly doodyheads.
Anyway, Jonah feels that the Congressional Black Caucus is getting uppity. And he can't have that.
The caucus lives in a fantasy in which it is the "conscience of the Congress." Immune to the sort of scrutiny that many other groups receive, it has benefited from the soft bigotry of low expectations for decades.
Again, it's so vague as to be meaningless. Is he actually quoting a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who said that he or she feels like "the conscience of the Congress." Or is it a term he's invented for the article? What does the group actually do to reflect the fact that they "live in a fantasy," which is kind of a serious charge. And most importantly, what other "groups" receive more intense scrutiny, and by whom? And who has "low expectations" of the Congressional Black Caucus. Democratic voters? Jonah Goldberg? I mean, seriously, what's he talking about?
Most African Americans favor school choice, but because the caucus is firmly ensconced in the
teacher-union racket, it bars the schoolhouse door to black kids who want a better education via vouchers.
So, I suppose Jonah's trying to make a point about how the members of the Congressional Black Congress don't vote in a way that African-Americans approve. But isn't the fact that they keep getting elected by their constituents in some small way a mark of approval? Maybe not for every position they take, but for their overall direction? In any case, I excerpted this quote because it's more vague, misleading pseudo-journalistic goo. I mean, "black kids who want a better education via vouchers" is such a melodramatic way of putting it, as if black kids are going up to Congressmen and asking, "Would you pwease give me a voucher so I can go to a good school," and the guy's going, "Get away from me, kid, I've got Teacher's Unions to protect!"
I've heard solid arguments for both sides of the voucher issue. (Personally, as the child of a public school teacher and someone who feels like educating the young is among the government's most basic and important functions, I'm pretty much against the idea of diverting funds from public schools to private companies). But Goldberg's not interested in really debating the issue...He wants to pervert it, to confuse people and make it seem like his side is the one favored by black children everywhere. It's not.
A majority of blacks oppose outright racial quotas, but don't tell that to the caucus.
Is this true? Do most black people think it's wrong for companies and universities to set minimum levels of minority hires or admissions? I'm not saying it couldn't be true, but I'd be surprised if it were. Why would a majority of blacks dislike proposals that would so clearly and directly benefit their community?
Why pick on the blacks in Congress? Because they represent black leadership in America, and it has been on their watch that black America has descended into such a mess.
And here's where the column shifts from poorly-thought-out piffle and into outright racism. Here is where Jonah starts to argue that blacks are themselves at fault for being poor and disenfranchised, as if all the black Democrats in Congress got together and agreed to keep their people impoverished and imprisoned, out of spite.
In a moving essay in the Washington Post, Joy Jones lamented how wedlock has become unfashionable in much of black America. A sixth-grader recently informed her that "marriage is for white people."
It takes a truly talented hack to come up with an entire social theory based on the observations of an unnamed sixth grader.
Sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University says blacks were more likely to be raised by both parents during slavery days than they are today.
Ah, yes, the good ol' days. When blacks raised their children, picked white people's crops and knew their place. Things were so much simpler then...
There's a lot of Marxist-infused nonsense about how economics are at the root of black America's problems. But this doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Of course poverty makes social pathologies worse, but it's the pathologies that cause poverty in the first place.
I'm pretty sure people had made a mental connection between poverty and crime even before Karl Marx, but no matter...Jonah here, quite remarkably, dismisses the vast vast vast majority of contemporary sociological thought with the wave of his hand. "It might seem obvious that the desperation caused by cyclical, endemic poverty drives an inordinate amount of people to crime, but...um...no. That doesn't hold up to, uh, scrutiny."
Also...if black people don't commit more crimes because so many of them are so poor, then why do they seem to be inordinately represented in crime rates? "Social pathology"? Doesn't that just mean "blacks are inherently more criminal"?
Racism alone cannot be blamed anymore for causing all black problems. By every measure, racism, particularly official racism, has declined even as these problems have worsened.
Oh, really? Gee, thanks for clearing that up. It seemed to me that a lot of people were still racist, and that the upper echelons of elite society are still largely off-limits to black Americans. But I guess I was wrong, because Lucianne's Boy said so! So, Jonah, please tell us...What is it, then? Why is The Black so much more criminal than The White?
Racism is surely still a problem, but it pales in comparison to family breakdown. Nothing more perpetuates the cycle of moral and financial poverty. If you are raised by two married parents today, black or white, it is unlikely that you will be poor, or poor for long.
Whaaaaaaaaaat? Where does he get this shit? As if having married parents has anything to do with living in poverty! It's ludicrous on its face.
Really, Jonah's made what could be a real observation, but he has come up with a completely backwards, tortured explanation. The observation: poverty seems statistically tied to single parenthood or broken families.
Is that accurate? Because it seems like rich people still get divorced and have messed up families all the time, and plenty of poor people remain married. In fact, every person I know who comes from what could be called a genuinely wealthy family likewise comes from a broken home. (Seriously, every single one.) So I kind of doubt even the validity of this information.
But even if true, wouldn't it seem more likely that cyclical poverty causes families to sever, as opposed to the other way around? Arguments about providing for the family and debt, the increase in alcoholism and drug abuse that comes with financial worries and poverty, living in dangerous or otherwise non-family-friendly inner-city neighborhoods...these things are what break up families.
But of course, a racist would see it from the opposite perspective. These crazy, out of control black men just can't settle down and look after their women, so everybody stays poor.
So, I repeat...Why is The Los Angeles Times running with this racist trash? I'm not saying they should have hired me, because I was never much of a journalist myself. But surely there's someone out there who's more qualified and less blatantly prejudiced against large segments of Americans. What's Ben Domenech doing these days? Haven't heard from him in a week or two...
