Monday, November 27, 2006

Caitlin Flanagan and the New Yorker



They are parting, after a heated and noisy love affair. The reasons are those nebulous ones having to do with journalistic ethics:

In this coming Monday's issue of the New York Observer, Michael Calderone reports that Flanagan is no longer on staff at the New Yorker; both she and the magazine say she's too busy writing her next book to write for the magazine regularly. The Observer's description of the split seems a little overly credulous -- Flanagan expressed extreme fealty to the magazine just last year, saying, "You'd never, never, never leave The New Yorker," but we can think of a few reasons why the New Yorker might want to leave Caitlin Flanagan. It's not just her philosophical inconsistency or the cheap shots she sometimes takes at working mothers. Calderone notes that Flanagan wrote a piece about Mary Poppins for the New Yorker last year, and a Poppins expert complained to the magazine that "Ms. Flanagan had drawn over-heavily on her work, without adequate credit." According to Calderone, Flanagan's byline hasn't appeared in the New Yorker since.

To the New Yorker editors who MUST be reading this blog, must: I am very ethical and I can learn to write more better, too.

If you have read my blog earlier you know that I'm not a fan of La Flanagan, but the reasons are more to do with those who hire her than with herself. She is a provocateur and most everybody in power thinks it's very funny that she disses the majority of women without any good evidence for doing that. It's a good game, hahaha.

And that is what provokes my divine anger: the utter contempt the editors and publishers and so on must feel towards women who have paid jobs for them to like the game so.

Oops. I just lost all chances of ever writing for the New Yorker.