Mighty high cow pie Ezra stepped in, isn’t it? It pains me to see this fumble before the ball is even kicked off. The only possible defense is a combination of overwork and inexperience. In this case, though, that’s still an inadequate excuse, because even if Klein didn’t know about Brandon Ambrosino’s more incendiary work when he hired him, he still shouldn’t have hired him. Running buffoonish culture war nonsense is about as contrary to Klein’s brand as anything I can think of.
Just stupid.
If you want some ideological diversity, that’s reasonable. Just don’t hire charlatans who know nothing about the subjects that they’ll be writing about. The whole point of Vox is supposed to be to help people understand the news. A gay anti-gay bomb-thrower is never going to help get that mission accomplished.
Apparently he’s since read some of the offending pieces and he STILL doesn’t see the problem.
White privilege + beltway + early life success = Punditary Yglesiasing.
Yeah, Arana got a comment from EK. That’s grossly offensive. Who is the money behind EK, exactly? If people are going to bash GG because Pierre of Ebay fame is behind that venture, shouldn’t we know who is behind this one? Also, has EK hired anyone outside of his social circle? It sounds like EK was looking to start a more high-brow Buzzfeed. Not going so well so far.
The issue with Pierre is a few things:
Alexa Obrien has much, much more in her archive
Anyway, that by no means let’s Klein and his sugar daddies off the hook. That’s why the Pierre crap drives me up a wall: people treat most media orgs and their funders with extreme skepticism, yet Pierre and Glenn have a lot of the internet bringing down the hammer on the slightest criticisms.
re: # 1. Is that really right? I don’t mean Pierre’s involvement. I mean in other media org.’s. Take any Murdoch property for one. Or look how any TradMed outlet covers Israel/Palestine. There are biases all over the place. It’s best that those biases are out front.
I just came across this, which is right in Boo’s wheelhouse:
http://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/444259783198388224
on the Twitter machine. And yes, Olivia is the one Anthony Weiner’s press flack called misogynistic names last year.
And as CJ pointed out, didn’t even think about hiring minorities. Not that he specifically stated that he “didn’t think about it,” however, his answer said it all. There is no excuse for this bs.
Erik Wemple asked EK about this last week. Funny that Klein’s former employer called him on this. And his answer then was just as awful. Here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/03/05/journo-diversity-advocate-turns-attent
ion-to-ezra-klein-project/
is the BezosPost link.
Answer doesn’t seem that awful to, not considering what kind of person Klein is.
What kind of person he is, really? Do any of us really know? Has EK ever faced adversity until now? Sure doesn’t seem like it. And so he basically pulls a Sarah Palin when called on his bullcrap? Also, too, he must be paying pretty good if MY would leave Slate and Max Fisher would leave his comfy gig at BezosPost. So that’s not an excuse for his lack of hiring anyone non-white.
To me, Klein will always be the guy who in 2004 as we were reeling from the loss, had the instinct to blame his OWN demographic for not turning out to vote. He’s always craved approval from the pundit class and now that he’s got it he doesn’t need to listen to the rest of us.
When he got hired by what was then the WaPo, and maybe even before, I started calling him Young Broder. With good reason it turns out.
It pains me to see this fumble before the ball is even kicked off. The only possible defense is a combination of overwork and inexperience.
Overwork and inexperience to use Bing, much less Teh Google? How did he find this clown? And he hasn’t backed down here, or to TPM. All that goodwill he built up only to crap it away on this guy.
With any luck his little boiler shop will burn away, deprived of his editorial shield, in the scalding heat of reality.
He couldn’t find any minorities?
Really?
Really?
This isn’t Idaho.
This is the Washington, DC area.
There has been a Black professional class in Washington that pre-dates the Civil Rights Movement.
You can find a Black professional in ANYTHING within 90 miles of Washington.
If you don’t have any Black folks, you DON’T WANT ANY BLACK FOLKS.
And, I can’t wait for his wife to open up her muthafuckin’ mouth about this President and ‘ diversity’ in his Cabinet.
Hold up!
Ezra couldn’t find any Black people to hire…
But, he could find a 23 YEAR OLD to hire?
Seriously?
A 23 year old graduate of LIBERTY UNIVERSITY?
But couldn’t find anyone Black who was ‘qualified’?
G-T-F-O-H!
Why are people surprised? It’s not that long ago that Even The Liberal Ezra Klein was publicly fellating Paul Ryan. More recently still, not a day went by during the difficult Obamacare launch when he or his WaPo crew didn’t run a bullshit story grossly exaggerating the long-term consequences of the startup hiccups. I hope this greedy pig fails disastrously and his investors lose every penny.
I went to Netroots Nation in ’07 in Chicago. That was my one and only attendance at the event, which I generally enjoyed.
I sat next to Ezra and Matt Yglesias in the terminal at DCA waiting for the flight we were all on to Chicago. Two guys who were so enthralled with how smart they both were, it was pretty insufferable. Needless to say, I skipped any panels that they were both on.
Ezra’s is standing by this terrible hire.
https://www.facebook.com/ezraklein/posts/10152347488818410