Oh please, start one about me

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

Whoa! Somebody doesn't like the Globe and Mail's Margaret (Peggy) Wente. Whoever that somebody is started a Wente Watch blog, the kind of site which proves that, as a columnist, she must be doing a great job if she is provoking people enough to give up their free time to pick apart her scribblings.

Seems that the blogger was tipped over the edge by Wente's words on AIDS and Africa, specifically this sentence: "Changing the behaviour of African men is probably hopeless." Complains the Wente Watcher:

Margaret Wente has made many ugly remarks during her career as a columnist, but this is the one that finally angered me enough to start this blog.

If someone had said that of "white men", or even just "men", can anyone doubt that Wente herself would be the first one screaming about radical feminism? But change the skin color of the men, and misandrist remarks become fine with her. Her jeer has no basis in fact; Uganda's famous ABC campaign proved that the sexual behavior of Africans, both men and women, could and would change with a community-based program of education.

But to Margaret Wente, this doesn't matter. Facts contrary to her ideological worldview don't exist. She is a writer who sees the world through the prism of good guys and bad guys. The good guys are capitalists, the United States, and white people; the bad guys are activists, critics of the US, and people of color. With that blinker in mind, her columns often follow a predictable formula:

1) Find a social issue, preferably one dear to the heart of liberal-leaning activists;

2) Blame it on nonwhite people;

3) Claim that only through conservative solutions can the problem be solved.

You know, I am totally fine with these sorts of blogs. After all, somebody has to watch the watchers. But what I object to is the anonymous part. If you're going to bushwhack people, then come out from behind the bush. Columnists such as Wente attach their name and face to their opinions. Attack bloggers should as well.

Unless they work in the same office.

Ya think?

UPPITY DATE: The blogger has outed himself in the comments below. Here's what he says:

Dear Ms. Zerbisias:

My name is Tyrone Nicholas and I am the author of Wente Watch.

Thank you for mentioning my blog. I'll try to upload a photo to it as soon as I get the chance.

Comments

[sooey]

heheh - it's probably eddie greenspon. but i'm sick of the modifier "radical". it's just not radical enough anymore. how about Xtreme feminism. i wanna be an Xtreme feminist now.

[Big G]

AZ said:
she is provoking people enough to give up their free time to pick apart her scribblings.

I think StatsCan should use blogs as an indicator for unemployment...

[Justin...]

Love ya Antonia (and my thoughts go out to you on the tragic loss of your dog - seems you had it quite difficult lately) but I totally disagree with your objection to this person's anonymity. I don't see how their identity is relevant to the disagreement they have with the words of Windbag Wente.
What you refer to as 'bushwacking', I call reasonable criticism.
Some people can't afford to have a big Globe columnist as an enemy. I mean, just look at anyone who disagrees with the Canadian Rush Limbaugh, Warren Kinsella. They have their character attacked and/or he tries to dig up dirt on them in an effort to bully them into submission (disclosure: I was a big fan of his until I started reading his blog).

The only time the Wente Watcher's identity might become relevant is if they start making false accusations against Wente or attack her character. At this point all they seem to be saying is her arguments are weak.

Though instead of creating a blog I would suggest they just stop reading her - I know I have. Just look at any of her columns and basically it's a series of the same sentence printed over and over again: "this line is really going to get the letters coming in. This one too. Oh here's a good one. Tickle, tickle little liberal Globe readers. This one just drained all the inkwells in Richmond Hill...and on and on."

I refuse to believe she genuinely holds to many of the attitudes she claims to espouse to. No one is that dim - unless they're an American (oh wait).

I always mix-up Margaret "They Went-e that a 'way!) with Joann Webb, for whom I worked several wretched months while at Frank Stronach's creepy little ego project in the late '80s, Vista Magazine.

Or was it Wente I worked for? Who remembers? Who cares?

The two, Wente and Webb, always seemed like they were the same person. I mean, you never saw them photographed together, kinda like Clark Kent and Superman.

Ah, the has-beens of days passed! We hardly knew ye!

Speaking of "whatever happened to?" does anyone out there know what ever became of Brian Johnson? No, not the movie reviewer Johnston from Maclone's, and not the lead singer of AC/DC, but the former Globe and Mail writer who went to Manila and got a little, ahem, "close" with the locals?

AZ, could be interesting to track down some of these old jornos (eg. Jock Ferguson, David Hayes), and see what they're doing now.

[Elvid]

Whatever happened to young O''Malley who wrote the piece about Johnson? Seemed the highpoint of his career.
Wentewatch will probably have the same fate as similar "watch'' sites which I remember were set up for Leah McLaren, Rebecca Eckler and Wendy Mesley. Enthusiasm soon burns out..
Who I would really like to know about is the former Toronto Sun reporter from the 1970's who ended up doing serious jail time in the States for robbing banks? Forget his name but Toronto Sun ran a few stories about him about 15 years ago.

[CapitalCat]

I don't know where most of the Golden Oldies are, but Sean O'Malley is now a newswriter at CTV.

[Declan]

Well, for the record, I didn't start that blog. I imagine that if Wente ever runs into trouble, it will be over her apparent habit of taking chunks of other people's work and scattering it through her columns with little or no attribution.

Which is too bad, because in an ideal world, it should really be her endless stream of lazy, senseless, faux-contrarian, disingenuous columns that do her in.

As for the argument that provoking a reaction is the sign of a good pundit, I guess that makes Coulter a star in your books. In cases like these, what provokes is less what is said, and more the prominent forum given to the words. I know that if Wente was scribbling away in the Western Standard, I, for one, would be much less provoked.

[stephen.reeves]

Wente is one of those women who like Blatchford,or DiManno, think outside the excepted groupthink.You may disagree with her, but she makes some good points, which many others have made, and not just so called neo-cons . There are better ways to respond to her than the rantings of that blog.She must have hit a nerve with someone real hard. mabye it is Wente's American roots?.
By the way Eric Margolis said the same thing about African promiscuity and AIDS once on TV Ontario,and how the Muslim countries have a much lower incidence of the disease, ( I think the discussion was Muslim riots in Nigeria and he came to their defense by bringing up the AIDS thing).

[Louise Lauzon]

I've never read her columns, and have no interest in doing so. The one who started the blog should realize something. Her comment was not that far off the mark. There was a docu on CBC not long ago, where a black man in Africa (can't remember which country) said he would not wear a condom because he wanted to spread HIV. Until that mentality is changed, nothing else will change. And by the way, I am not racist or biased; but some of the attitudes men have towards women are quite strange to say the least.

[Antonia Z.]

Declan?

The rule about she-who-will-never-more-be-named-on-this-blog is that she cannot be named.
I am NOT a fan.

[Nate]

Wente's lack of likeability starts with the supercilious photo the Globe uses alongside her columns, and continues through to her contempt for rational, insightful, or critical thought.

All along that perilous journey, her lack of likeability makes frequent detours into "who cares what you think" attitudes, incendiary comments that seem to exist merely to provoke the ire of most sentient beings, and just plain loathsomeness.

It's sad really. She must have some incriminating photos in her possession or something. Why else...?

[tyronen]

Dear Ms. Zerbisias:

My name is Tyrone Nicholas and I am the author of Wente Watch.

Thank you for mentioning my blog. I'll try to upload a photo to it as soon as I get the chance.

[sooey]

heheh - it's probably eddie greenspon.

[Antonia Z.]

Oh come on Nate. "Supercilious" photo? No need to go the physical appearance route.

I have to say that, whilst taking column photo byline pictures, you have to strike the right look. If your material varies between the serious and silly, you can't be smiling like you're at a wedding nor looking as sobre as if you're a pallbearer. It's hard to find that middle ground.

That's why my own photo looks the way it does. It doesn't do me justice, I don't think. But it has that one raised eyebrow, don't give me that guff look which I hope suits my musings.

[sooey]

omigawd! omigawd! use eddie greenspon's photo, tyrone - that'd be hilarious!

[Dana]

Antonia, if as you say "you have to strike the right look" then you are saying you have some say in which photo is used.

Wente supposedly does too.

The photo of her that is used assuredly strikes me as well as "Having or showing arrogant superiority to and disdain of those one views as unworthy".

Snide is another word I'd employ.

She might have used another one, one showing her smiling disarmingly at her reader for example. One scowling in disapproval for another.

But she didn't. She went with the haughty one.

In keeping with her style.

You should do a whole entry on columnist byline pics. That'd be funny.

[Sean O'Malley]

Nothing against the writers at CTV, but I'm not a writer here. I run the national assignment desk.

[Nate]

Hi AZ: I stand by "supercilious". I mean, just look at her. http://images.theglobeandmail.com/RTGAM_Archive/images/20060823/wlivewente0824/margaretwente58x784.jpg
She demonstrates, in that photo, the supremely patient air of a mother waiting for her young daughter to throw up after eating the play-doh so she can say "I told you so...". Tolerant of her readers' silly notions, confident that her own are just so much more correct, and unquestioning of her own superiority (both moral and intellectual). I'm not reading this into that photo, it's all there. If it was an animated GIF, she'd be gently shaking her head.

The eyebrows say it all. And after the first few columns of hers that I ever read, it was clear that the photo was bang-on, and told me everything I needed to know about La Wente. When I foolishly fall into the trap of reading another column, I feel like I've been walked on. Suckered again. "Ok, never again," I say. Until the next time.

Your photo, on the other hand, is smart, playful, and more than a bit irreverent. And after reading anything of yours, I find your photo has also revealed the character that comes across in your writing. The only real difference is that I like you.

It was not meant to be an attack on Wente's personal appearance, it's just that if she had chosen a photo of her sticking her tongue out at the camera, it would have been just as revelatory about her attitudes as this photo is.

AZ,

Speaking of bad head shots, I remember emailing my co-workers a Spy Magazine-esque "Separated at Birth" of now-former Maclean's editor Tony Two-Names next to Sam the American Eagle from The Muppets. I don't think the moribund dump laugh as much before, or since.

Darn, wish I could find that one!

Sorry folks, but Canada -- especially the CBC -- is home to some really unattractive journalists. The U.S. has 10 times our population, and Gene Shalit. But they also have all those babes at CNN and Court TV. We have Rex Murphy, so there!

Argh!

Nate, curse you! I made the mistake of checking out that headshot you mentioned before breakfast. You made me spit-up my Starbuck's latte!

It is the expression of a privileged dowager inadvertently running into a beggar-child on the street, and letting out a chortle when being asked for money. It reeks of, "Poor child. Of course I have it all, but I won't give you any."

I'm not criticizing he Wente-ness'personal appearance here, just her expression. And it is sooooooo smug!

[Idealistic Pragmatist]

I'm with Declan in being a little surprised that you think people being angry at a columnist means they're doing a particularly good job. Isn't it possible to be angry at a journalist because they write poorly-researched drivel and are given a national forum with which to disseminate it to the public?

[vinb]

I read Ms Wente's photo as saying amused-by-it-all. A little aloof, yes, but aloofness can be a perspective from which to survey the broader picture. The tilt of the head says, "Here's an idea with a different slant from what you may be used to. I think it's interesting, how about you? Try it out, if you are so inclined." It could also say, "I'm slightly off-kiltre. You don't have to take me as seriously as you would a man with his head on straight." Or it may say, "The world is all askew. Maybe if I look at it slantwise, I can make sense of it." Now that I look again, it also quite frankly says, "Kiss me."

[Antonia Z.]

I agree with VinB about the photo. Like I said, it's hard to strike the right pose.

Also, I never said columnists who anger people are good. I said: " ... if she is provoking people enough to give up their free time to pick apart her scribblings." What's the point of having opinionators if their opinions don't spark debate?

This is NOT an endorsement of whack jobs or bad research.

One last thought: I wonder if a man's photo byline would have inspired a similar discussion.

I doubt it.

[Antonia Z.]

One more last thing:

I would also say that this town's best columnists are all women ... Di Manno, Blatchford, Wente. Why? Because, unlike the men, they let it all hang out.