Boys & Girls in The Bubble: White Shoe Media

The evil Atrios picks up on Ezra Klein's notice of the ethnographic chasm between reporters and their consuming public, AKA readers. A post reporter named Sebastian Mallaby simply showed his ass during a panel discussion, specifically, about what cancer patients do and don't need.

Pundit Life

I was thinking more about Sebastian Mallaby's mocking of requiring insurers to cover wigs. It is, as Ezra suggests, precisely the kind of thing that most people wouldn't think to add to an a la carte insurance policy, precisely because most of us aren't really equipped to sensibly make such decisions. More than that it highlights the pathological lack of empathy someone like Mallaby must have.

Here's a guy who undoubtedly has pretty damn good insurance through his employer. If an illness strikes and he's unable to continue the backbreaking work of typing a couple of columns per week about how other people have too much insurance at a very minimum I'm sure his employment contract contains a long term disability rider to ensure he'll keep his insurance and a hefty percentage of his salary. Since he's one of the gang of tenured pundits it's likely they'll just let him contribute when he can and keep paying him. Given his hairline it's true he might not bother with a wig, but even when he's able to work he'll be able to phone it in from home or the hospital. If he has a family there's probably a spouse who can pick up the slack in the childraising duties. If not, well, there's no problem there then.

Come to think of it, Washington Post readers are probably not representative of average Americans who mostly get their news in 2 minute broadcast chunks in between feeding their kids and rassling the utility bill. Unlike WaPo's Mallaby, the oppressed reporter-folk at the Dow's Wall Street Journal seem to be quite populist in how they think about things like healthcare and the wages to pay for it.

POYNTER, April 2004 (scroll down):

PRIZE-WINNING WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTERS TO SPEAK OUT AT WEDNESDAY'S ANNUAL MEETING -- AND TO STAGE PROTEST OUTSIDE

Inside the Dow Jones annual meeting on Wednesday, Pulitzer-Prize winning Wall Street Journal reporters will stand up and speak to directors and shareholders about the damaging effects that proposed healthcare cuts and pay limits will have on quality at the Journal. Dozens of other Journal and Dow Jones employees will attend the meeting to support those speeches. (The Journal is Dow Jones's flagship publication.)

Outside the annual meeting, Journal reporters and editors and other Dow Jones employees will be marching and picketing to call attention to this crisis at one of the nation's most respected news organizations.

This is an event of national significance. The Journal is one of the two highest-circulation newspapers in the country. Its quality and stature mean that it is often called the country's most trusted newspaper. It is not every day that reporters for such an august, conservative publication leave their desks and take to the streets -- and to the floor of the annual meeting -- to protest publicly and to warn shareholders and directors that the newspaper is on a dangerous path...

The Dow Jones Co's employees just don't get it, do they? "Damaging effects on quality"? "On a dangerous path..." Damn socialists. Class warfare, pure and simple.
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