I almost never write letters to editors, let alone individual journalists, yet given what is rapidly becoming a pattern, of journalists peddling all manner of narratives to try and sway this election this year, I've really felt that we should begin to push back not only as a movement, but as individuals. Which is why after reading Bob Sackamento's rec'd diary, "Why Can't Obama Close the Deal on Fat Americans?" and the article that inspired it, I decided to write to the author of the article at the Wall Street Journal. Letter over the fold.
Re: "Too Fit to Be President?"
Dear Ms. Chozick,
I read your article, "Too Fit to Be President?", in the Wall Street Journal today, and thought I should join other Americans in communicating to you how dispiriting it is to find the level of journalism that your article represents on the pages of such an esteemed publication. One may find such article on the cover of a tabloid on one's way out the grocery store and ignore it, but to find it in the Wall Street Journal is a complete disgrace.
This ludicrous narrative that journalists like yourself are peddling, that the individual that we expect to lead the free world should be a mirror image of the worse aspects of ourselves and our culture is particularly sad because in a more civilized era, a leader was expected to be a role model, someone to look up to. Obviously, people like you have a different understanding of what a leader should be.
There is, of course, a great deal of disingenuity in this narrative that you and others like you are peddling, in that it is politically motivated. It is carefully calculated to alienate as many Americans as possible, and eventually make it difficult if not impossible to elect the first African American with a good chance to get to the White House.
Yet, putting the duties of professionalism aside, is it really patriotic to place the real interests of the people of this country beneath your collective desire to manipulate and engineer the outcome of this year's presidential elections?
Is it, in all honesty, patriotic to place the interests of struggling, hard working Americans beneath your selfish desires to make yourselves believe that you matter, and that as journalists you have the power to force a political outcome? Is it so important to you to feel important, that the inevitable consequencies of failure to bring change to the White House with the next administration become less important.
Because that is what all this is about. Abraham Lincoln was not the size of the average American of his time. Einsenhower did not graduate at the bottom of his class at Westpoint. George Washington did not drink. Yet you and the likes of you make believe, in spite of your awareness of the very phoniness of your narrative, that the leader of the free world should be a Regular Joe.
The ploy is pathetic and disgraceful, it is not funny, and it does nothing for the reputation of your profession.
Sincerely
[Signed]
Amy Chozick can be reached at amy.chozick@wsj.com