On Friday the Wall Street Journal officially put on mask, fins and snorkel and lowered itself into the cesspool.
An in-depth, insightful bit of social inquiry by one Amy Chozick questions (remember, its only a question!) whether Barack Obama might not only be too skinny to be president, but may be effete, elite and disconnected from “hard working Americans”. The comparison to the pleasantly plump McCain is not favorable, especially since most of the quotes relating to him come from his press releases.
The rigorous method of research used was to post a question to a Yahoo! message board:
Is Obama too skinny to be president? 15-Jul-08 06:04 pm
Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his “no excess body fat”? Please let me know. Thanks!
amychozick
The thread has since been deleted. But Google retains a cached copy. 2 of the 3 responses just mock the inanity of the question, and even the one quoted in the article was probably sarcastic - in full: “Yes I think He is to skinny to be President.Hillary has a potbelly and chuckybutt I’d of Voted for Her.I won’t vote for any beanpole guy”
Too bad Clinton’s “chuckybutt” wasn’t mentioned in the article. It’s a bit shocking to see how shallow and insipid the basis for this article was, hopefully even News Corp. (an ironic name if ever there was one) will have Ms. Chozick out posting on Journalism Jobs Wanted message boards soon. But what is also funny/sad is the editors’ use of the Question Mark of Journalistic Integrity, whereby they turn a simple insinuation into free-spirited objective rational inquiry. Of course NYTimesCo is not above this either, but since I don’t subscribe to any of their papers for the same reason, I’ll have to cancel my WSJ subscription on principle.
The WSJ used to be 3 intelligent articles per day, a pleasure to read and always trustworthy, a champion of free enterprise and public service. The internet may have wounded the great American newspaper, but Murdoch murdered it.