If Ehrenreich were a better person by your standards, but a worse reporter, would we be richer or poorer in information and understanding? Orwell was a snitch, a liar in the same way that Ehrenrich was (Ehrenreich is not a snitch, but wasn't Gloria Steinhem? And now, it appears, Ryzcard Kapuzinski?), and a jerk in a way that she's not. Michael Moore, whom I used to work with/for in a minor way decades ago when he was just a n alternative newspaper publisher in Michigan, is an infamously difficult person and has come under partially well-deserved attack for ethical, er, deficiencies. In his case, some of them may weaken the value of his journalism. If they don't, why does it matter? Do you only want read things by good people? Who appointed you the ethical arbiter of journalism? (I'm not endorsing your low opinion of Ehrenreich as a person.)
And what, by the way, is this "personal gain" stuff? Apart from the fact that only a leftist of the sort that puts the left into disrepute expects people to work for free, and apart from the fact that her motivation, whatever it was, is irrelevant to the value of her work, where did you obtain this information about her reasons for acting in the way that she did? Did she say, "I only write left wing screeds for personal gain" in some writing of hers that I missed? Granted, that would be a pretty stupid way to make money, but maybe she's stupid as well as dishonest an inauthentic, although you wouldn't know about her stupidity from her writing. Be that as it may, you have no clue about her motives, which are entirely by the way in any event.
--- John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> bitch at pulpculture.org wrote:
> > At 01:49 PM 11/15/2007, Doug Henwood wrote:
> >
> >
> >> And I don't really get why Ehrenreich deserves
> this sort of contempt,
> >> but then I admire her as one of the best
> journalists in the USA. How
> >> is investigating the life of the working poor,
> fully aware that one
> >> is merely a tourist in their world, at all like
> being a tax evading
> >> egomaniac?
> >>
> >> Doug
> >>
> >
> > No shit. I have my disagreements with her attitude
> toward "young feminists"
> > but she's a national treasure and did an amazing
> piece of ethnography in
> > Nickel and Dimed. She spoke directly to the issue
> -- that there was no way
> > she could truly understand the experience of being
> poor, unskilled, etc.
> > And she handled with humor and honesty her own
> frustration when she about
> > wanted to strangle some of her co-workers for
> being scared tools on the job.
> >
> >
> > "You know how it is, come for the animal porn,
> > stay for the cultural analysis." -- Michael Berube
> >
> > Bitch | Lab
> > http://blog.pulpculture.org (NSFW)
>
> The problems I had with N&D were that she showed too
> much contempt for
> working poor people for failing to live up to an
> idealized fantasy about
> she had constructed.
> She glossed over the transportation issue but
> flippantly stating she
> needed a car because no one wants to read about her
> waiting for a bus,
> but that was dishonest. No one wants to read about
> her driving her car
> to work either. She didn't want to do without a car
> because it sucks
> waiting for buses and transferring from one to
> another starting at 5 AM
> to get to work at 6:30 AM. It sucks not being in
> control of that aspect
> of your life. If she doesn't want the inconvenience
> of using public
> transportation I don't judge her negatively for that
> but I disliked the
> dishonest reason given for doing so and I think she
> missed an
> opportunity to gain much more insight into another
> aspect of life on the
> edge of financial catastrophe.
> I also dislike deliberately deceiving people. She
> presented herself to
> her co-workers as something she was not and she did
> so for personal
> gain. That does not make one a national treasure.
> While it would have
> been a different book why not have working people
> put their own
> experiences into words themselves with her help
> instead of lying to them
> to gain their trust and then writing about the
> experience herself?
> She isn't poor so she can't truly understand being
> poor so there is not
> personal failing on that issue.
> The above is why I am ambivalent about her. She
> added to some peoples
> understanding of what it means to be working poor (a
> good thing) but she
> did so through being dishonest and in a rather
> self-aggrandizing manner.
> Did her way add some insight that is missing from
> the way someone like
> Studs Terkel adds to peoples understanding of the
> same issue? Does
> Ehrenreich think her personal story is somehow
> 'better' than the
> personal stories of real working poor people? If so,
> why and if not, why
> not tell their stories rather than fabricate a
> fiction so the story can
> be told from a false personal perspective?
> Since we all acknowledge, as does Ehrenreich, that
> there is no way she
> can truly understand the experience of being poor
> what exactly is gained
> by the subterfuge that cannot be gained through
> dispensing with the
> charade and letting working people tell their own
> story? Other than
> self-aggrandizing I mean.
> Maybe lying to large numbers of working people to
> gain their confidence
> so you can write a best-seller is really not such a
> bad thing and I
> should not hold such behaviours in the incredibly
> low regard that I do.
> I guess I should get with the times and stop holding
> to antiquated ideas
> concerning honesty. At least where national
> treasures are concerned anyway.
>
> John Thornton
>
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