I have been somewhat — OK, OK, maybe more than “somewhat” — disparaging of the #woke,[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading so a gleam appears in my beady brown eyes when I hear of yet another of the left getting destroyed by their own. We have previously noted the ‘turmoil’ at The New York Times, and that editorial page editor James Bennet was fired resigned, and deputy editorial page editor James Dao was demoted reassigned to the newsroom. We noted Bari Weiss Twitter thread that “The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same.” A few days later, Miss Weiss was gone, too.
Then, a couple of months ago, The Washington Post reported that Times “star reporter”, who had joined the NYT in 1976 as a copy boy, used the infamous “n” word, not in a statement he made but in quoting something from someone else, was history. The Post said that Mr McNeil “wasn’t fired, according to people with knowledge of the decision, but was essentially compelled to resign.”
And this morning, we have this gem, also from the Post:
Inside the Teen Vogue mess — which is really a Condé Nast mess
By Sarah Ellison | April 4, 2021 | 6:00 AM EDT
From the start, Alexi McCammond seemed an unlikely candidate to become a top boss within the storied Vogue empire — at least on paper.
Only 27, she had little editing experience and had never managed a staff before she was tapped as editor in chief for Teen Vogue early last month. A stranger to the world of glossy New York magazines, she had spent the past four years as a junior reporter at a news start-up in Washington, scrapping for incremental scoops and gritty campaign-bus assignments alongside scores of other young D.C. journalism strivers.
Yet in her short career, McCammond had acquired the rare sort of Washington currency that translates to Manhattan’s power centers: buzz.
It was a wave of buzz — her youthful reporting successes amplified by a high-profile celebrity dust-up and vivid and appealing national TV appearances — that helped put her on the radar of Anna Wintour, the legendary longtime editor of Vogue and top Condé Nast executive, who hired McCammond.
Shades of Ali Watkins, the New York Times reporter who kept her job even after it was revealed she had been sleeping with one of her sources, though the Times at least tried the fig-leaf cover of reassigning her to a different beat. Miss Watkins had buzz, don’t you know!
Alexi McCammond was hired as editor in chief of Teen Vogue after four years of covering politics in Washington. (Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images)
“Alexi has the powerful curiosity and confidence that embodies the best of our next generation of leaders,” Wintour announced March 5.When it all fell apart within days — after a staff uproar over anti-Asian tweets that McCammond posted as a college freshman — some critics saw a parable about an unforgiving “cancel culture” in elite media. Others clucked over the irony of Condé Nast both hiring and firing a young Black woman in its flailing attempts to align with a renewed push for diversity.
Now, I have to admit it: when I looked at Miss McCammond’s photo in the Post, “young black woman” is not really what I see.[2]As noted in our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not go along with the politically correct foolishness of the Associated Press Stylebook in capitalizing ‘black’ when referring to … Continue reading
So at the start of the year, when New York Magazine poached Teen Vogue’s top editor — Lindsay Peoples Wagner, a 30-year-old who is one of the few Black women ever to helm a Condé Nast title — Wintour and Condé CEO Roger Lynch may have wanted to send a reassuring signal in picking a replacement. In McCammond, they found not only a journalist gaining notice for her work, but also a young Black woman with the stylish good looks of many Condé editors.
T J Ducklo and Alexi McCammond. Phots from Twitter and Instagram.
Guffaws! Condé Nast found a woman with enough ‘black’ in her to qualify as black — perhaps they were using the old “one drop rule“? — but those “stylish good looks of many Condé editors” certainly seem to come from some obviously Caucasian ancestors. Looking at Miss McCammond’s photo, I see a woman no darker a complexion than I have on a summer’s day. She very famously dated T J Ducklo, briefly a Biden Administration deputy press secretary, who got himself fired resigned after threatening a Politico reporter who was going to reveal that relationship.
Mr Ducklo sure looks white to me! A white boyfriend, a light complexion, mostly Caucasian-ancestry features, but Miss McCammond was hired at least in part because she was black? Shades of Rachel Dolezal!
I might have skipped the Post article entirely had I not previously noted Lauren Duca, previously a columnist and editor at Teen Vogue, who was used as a supposedly informed commentator by CNN. The very left wing Miss Duca has had her own problems with wokeness:
In May 2018, it was announced that Duca would be a visiting scholar at New York University’s journalism department.[32][33] In the summer of 2019, Duca taught a six-week course there entitled “The Feminist Journalist.” The class was taught under the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and focused on intersections of feminist ideology and the practice of journalism, and was made up of high-school and college students.[34] Four weeks after the course, students sent a collective formal complaint to school’s journalism department regarding Duca’s conduct during the class, writing, “We are disappointed at the department and NYU for hiring a professor with more interest in promoting her book than teaching a group of students eager to learn.”[35] Students allege that Duca targeted an exchange student, writing that she “consistently targeted this student on the basis of a communication difficulty the student cannot change.[35][36]
The left have created a situation in which the 27-year-old Miss McCammond lost her new job because of a couple stupid tweets she made when she was a college freshman. Given that the left tried to torpedo the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh over wholly unproven and unprovable accusations from the 1980s, when he was a minor, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that their own wokeness is coming back to bite them in the ass. Schadenfreude!
References
| ↑1 | From Wikipedia:
I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid. |
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| ↑2 | As noted in our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not go along with the politically correct foolishness of the Associated Press Stylebook in capitalizing ‘black’ when referring to race. However, in reading the Post, it seems that the newspaper also capitalizes ‘white’ when referring to race, something specifically not done according to the AP Stylebook. |
