Washington Post reporter Caitlin Dewey on Monday secretly unleashed electronic stink bombs at folks who used the “wrong” pronoun for a certain Olympic gold medalist who now goes by the name Caitlyn Jenner.
There! I managed to identify Jenner without using a pronoun. I should unleash my own bot to coerce people into doing the same thing.
Oh, wait, no. I am a reporter not an activist.
It turns out that Dewey is a seasoned practitioner of activism disguised as journalism.
In an online video from 2012 https://vimeo.com/27016330 the WaPo scribe showed her flair for perverting journalism to agitate for “marginalized” groups. All the while primping for the camera and, true to Valley Girl form, inflecting statements as questions and interspersing her words with “like.”
Dewey tells how she learned to identify with Latinos after attending a soccer game with a recent Honduran immigrant she was profiling for news21.com. As one of the few whites attending and surrounded by gawking Latinos, she finally understood what minorities endure.
“So I was working on a story about a young woman named Jennifer who is 16 years old and an American citizen, although she grew up in Honduras and only moved to the US recently. And as part of the story I went with her to her friend’s soccer game. He plays as part of the Latino soccer league in Allentown [Pennsylvania].
“And as I was sitting on the sidelines with her I just sort of like looked around at the crowd and realized that I was like one of the only white people there in a very large crowd. And I felt a little self-conspicuous You know, I could see that some people were looking at me and I am sure they were probably wondering like, ‘What is this girl doing here?’
“And as I was thinking through some of those things I suddenly had the realization that that’s what Jennifer goes through in American culture every day. The anxiety about not being able to communicate with people or feeling conspicuous or feeling like people are looking at you because you are speaking Spanish and things like that.
“And of course those are issues I had been thinking about the entire time I was reporting the story. But to actually be in that position myself was a really powerful moment.“
Oh my God, Caitlin. It totally was.
“And it really helped me empathize not only with Jennifer but other people in her situation.”
Empathy is more suitable for a priest or activist than a reporter.
And mind-reading is not journalism. How does Dewey even know people were staring at her because she is white? Did she ask any of them after the game?
Maybe they were staring because she was dressed rather salaciously that day. There are oodles of possibilities to consider — for anybody who does not view the entire world through the prism of race.
In fact, the whole story fits too neatly with an ideological agenda. Were so many people really giving her the stink eye? Nobody was watching the game?
They just focused on the Gringo in their midst? That does not sound plausible.
Latin Americans tend to be fanatical soccer fans. Just ask relatives of the Peruvian player they killed after he scored a goal against his own team.
And who says Latinos all feel oppressed and uncomfortable around whites? The notion is counter-intuitive and rather condescending towards people she claims to understand.
If they feel so uncomfortable around whites why are they immigrating here?
Ironically, Dewey’s aha moment bespeaks the kind of racial anxiety otherwise verboten on the left. Whites who feel uncomfortable around minorities are invariably deemed prejudiced by liberals.
Barack Obama famously bitched out his own white grandmother for getting antsy around blacks.
Regardless, Dewey’s activism makes her fellow reporter Wesley Lowery seem objective by comparison.
Maybe she can develop a bot for every time Lowery skews his copy on behalf of race agitators.