It’s on!
Wesley Lowery, a black Washington Post reporter, got arrested this week in Ferguson, Mo. and suddenly he’s drunk on power. Some 80K new Twitter followers later, WaPo‘s superstar is invincible. He’s blasting MSNBC’s “Morning Joe’s” Joe Scarborough and other pundits he thinks are stupid. Pretty much all of them.
Today he’s calling out Politico for not being a place where black people work. (Except you can’t forget Juana Summers, now at NPR, and Joe Williams, now at Blue Nation Review. Well, Williams, was asked to leave after he blew a gasket on Twitter about his own pub, but he’s African American. Update: According to Politico‘s masthead, the number of black people working at Politico today is five with other minorities represented as well.)
Lowery lashed out at Scarborough on CNN’s New Day Thursday morning. “Well, I would invite Joe Scarborough to come down to Ferguson and get out of 30 Rock where he’s sitting sipping his Starbucks smugly,” Lowery snapped. “I invite him to come down here and talk to residents of Ferguson where I have been Monday afternoon having tear gas shot at me, rubber bullets shot at me, having mothers, daughter, a 19-year-old boy, crying, running to pull his 21-year-old sister out from a cloud of tear gas thinking she would die.”
Will WaPo put a lid on Wesley?
Politico reporters (two white guys) Dylan Byers and Ken Vogel immediately took offense to Wesley’s remark and began systematically attacking him for the claim and his journalism abilities.
BYERS: “Hey @WesleyLowery this is offensive and factually inaccurate.”
LOWERY: “@DylanByers please release diversity statistics. Can send to wesley.lowery@washpost.com.”
VOGEL: “1.) Make public allegation. 2.) Demand contrary evidence. Formula for sound journalism? cc: @WesleyLowery”
Sadly, Lowery then opted to suck up to Politico by complimenting Politico reporter Byron Tau, who is Asian. “FWIW: @ByronTau is here on ground in #Ferguson and doing good work.” If this keeps up, we may have to diffuse racial tensions in northern Virginia.
Correction: Amazingly, I spelled Lowery’s name three different ways in this story. 1. Lowery 2. Lowrey and 3. Lowry. Thankfully the first reference was right, but those second two were wrong. And boy did Lowree (just joking with you Lowreeh) let me know it.