Why Do Women Act So Dumb?

Laura Rozen writes today about the Post sending out Charlotte Allen like a two headed dog in the Village freak show for an online chat, rather than addressing the appalling lack of journalistic ethics they showed in giving her column inches in the first place:

The Post's efforts to pretend this whole affair just "made readers angry" and would warrant a nice, cathartic chat are pathetic. Accountability? There was no editorial agency here? While Allen is responsible for what she wrote, the real issue is the Post taking responsibility for publishing it. Something they have so far refused to do, or even explain.

Megan Garber of the Columbia Journalism Review:

The Allen story seems to me a pretty clear case of page-view sellout; you don’t have to be Nick Denton to know that pissing people off is a surefire way to increase your eyeball count. And, judging by the hundreds of comments the piece has already received, it’s a winner, tally-wise, whatever else its (many) failings. Because of that, we’ll probably see more similarly ridiculous pieces in the Post’s pages and elswhere. I, for one, am already looking forward to the paper’s upcoming eyeball-grabbers, “Asians Can’t Drive,” “Jews Are Cheap,” and “Old People Smell.” They’ll all be tongue-in-cheek, of course.

Jay Rosen:

This was a deeply foolish act of publishing. The editor responsible, John Pomfret, told Laura Rozen that he “ran Charlotte Allen’s piece to provoke, but not to offend.” But if that were the case, he would not have chosen as provocateur a political opponent of the people who needed to be poked.

Allen from her chat today, after having said she wrote the piece for "fun":

West Lafayette, Ind.: Your idea of fun is to paint a (horribly inaccurate) picture of your sex as stupid?

Charlotte Allen: How about an accurate picture?

If the John Pomfret cover story is that it's "satire," nobody told Allen about it. She thinks she told some great truth.

Laura Rozen says the paper needs to address this at the highest levels, and she's right. Deborah Howell is better left to covering pie eating contests -- it's Len Downie who needs to explain what the Post's standards are for publicly attacking and degrading groups of people with crap like this.