Caveat lector

A HOWLER sequel: Son of Sammon

Synopsis: Should journalists try to tell the truth? Andrew Sullivan doesn’t seem all that certain.

Home Base
Andrew Sullivan, The New Republic, 7/2/01

I Won’t Let D.C. Lose Its Flavor
Natalie Hopkinson, The Washington Post, 6/17/01

Should journalists try to tell the truth? Andrew Sullivan doesn’t seem all that certain. In his current TNR TRB, he writes about Washington Post staffer Natalie Hopkinson. More specifically, he discusses Hopkinson’s June 17 article in the Post’s "Outlook" section, describing her recent purchase of a house in D.C. Here’s Sully, early on in his column:

But Sullivan seems to be embellishing. The Hopkinson Two did indeed buy a house. But here’s how the owner describes it:

How did "our first home, a Victorian rowhouse" turn into "an expensive Victorian house?" There is nothing whatever in Hopkinson’s article about how "expensive" her house is. In paragraph 3, she does refer to "[t]he house’s inflated price, the result of two rounds of bidding." But she also notes that it is located in an "inner city neighborhood" with "the occasional crackhead, prostitute and pack of idling men roaming our new block." Later on, she says that some of her new neighbors "have lived there since crack devastated our neighborhood." Is Hopkinson’s rowhouse really "expensive?" It’s not clear how Sullivan knows.

But then, Sullivan seems to embellish freely throughout this latest piece. And he seems to devote a good deal of effort to building up Hopkinson’s standing. "She’s an affluent member of the black middle class," he says, and he embroiders on that a bit later:

But is Hopkinson actually "wealthy?" As we learn in the Post, Hopkinson and her husband are "twenty-somethings" with a six-month-old baby, buying their "first home." (Sully forgets to mention their ages.) There is no indication—none at all; none—that either one of the tandem is "wealthy."

Alas, Sullivan doesn’t content himself with improving his subject’s portfolio. Exploring our most tragic topic—race—he’s prepared to embellish more widely. To Sullivan, Natalie Hopkinson is One Bad Blood. Just check out her views on non-blacks:

"Racial hostility" is in the eye of the embroiderer, of course. But did Hop and hubby loathe their young lives? That is another total invention. Here’s what she actually says:

There is nothing whatever in Hopkinson’s piece about "loathing" those middle-class suburbs. She does describe the problems that came with being the first blacks in town:

Hopkinson’s "loathing" is expressed in the image of a nine-year-old child, hoping that she won’t offend. Hopkinson writes, "[M]y husband was going through a similar experience in suburban New Orleans, where a favorite playground jeer from white kids was, ‘My grandfather used to own your grandfather!’" Meanwhile, back at TNR, Ol’ Massa has a dismissive way to describe these passages. Sullivan writes, "They were, she says, subjected to bigotry"—opening up the possibility that what "she writes" may not be so. (That is his total account of these passages.) Sullivan don’t apply this qualifier to anything else Hopkinson says—most of which, admittedly, he refashions himself, in the effort to tell a preferred story.

There’s a method to Sullivan’s embroidering. Ol’ Cap’n wants you to think of Hopkinson as wealthy, privileged, and hugely ungrateful. And he doesn’t want you to know her age, so you won’t give her the benefit of any doubts. And why does Sullivan go through this reinventing? So he can make you hate Hopkinson’s vile racial views, the views which he came here to slam. As we’ve seen, "[r]acial hostility to non-blacks pervades the entire piece," Sully says. Hopkinson wants "to return to a predominantly black city and keep it as segregated as she can." Indeed, "like many bourgeois blacks, [she] seems to view her success as reason to be more racially bitter, not less." Sullivan ends up suggesting that Hopkinson is a "bigot," a "separatist," and a "left-wing racist" with "an ugly aversion to living among people who are different." In his stirring closing sentence, Sullivan—the brilliant hero of the piece, as always—declares that it’s time "to take this evil on."

"Evil" is a rather harsh word. But when someone has spun you on everything else, do you trust him to characterize someone’s views about race? Is Hopkinson determined "to keep D.C. as segregated as she can," for example? After describing the commitment of her neighbors (one of whom is white) "to making sure our kids get the best education possible," Sister Huey P. Newton says this:

"Many whites want to help out, too?" Somehow we don’t think she’ll shoot Sully down if he takes a stroll through her new neighborhood.

This past Sunday, Post ombudsman Michael Getler said he didn’t think that Hopkinson’s piece was "racist," but he did offer this critique: "[H]er views were presented in inflammatory, in-your-face, racial rhetoric that alienated many readers rather than illuminating a complicated issue of history, place and emotion." We think that’s a bit of an overstatement, although there are surely constructions in Hopkinson’s piece that shed more heat than light. In fact, Hopkinson’s article is an almost hackneyed type of piece which has appeared routinely for the past thirty years, in which idealistic young people, black and white, declare their desire to live in, and improve, our troubled cities. Meanwhile, one other part of Getler’s comment deserves comment, his mention of the Post’s "alienated" readers. Here tis: some people today love nothing more than the chance to be "alienated" by "racial rhetoric," even that offered by young people whose wisdom may not yet be fully formed. Hopkinson, remember, is a young person. She is even younger than Sullivan, for example, and take a look at how hopelessly flawed his judgment always turns out to be.

But today’s HOWLER is not about Hopkinson, a young person with the idealism and, perhaps, the occasional indiscretion of youth. This column is about someone else—Andrew Sullivan—and his peculiar attraction to dissembling. To propel himself on his latest rant, Sullivan keeps you from knowing Hopkinson’s age; freely dissembles about her wealth; and invents a "loathing" of the suburbs and a "pervasive hostility." He even makes a "rowhouse" get bigger. Like Bill Sammon, Sullivan seems to have an instinctive aversion to stating the truth. So why does TNR keep the bloke in print? And what should we as free people do when our Washington press corps seems to be held by a culture of instinctive dissembling?

Kumbaya: As usual, the star of this show is Ol’ Cap’n, Andrew Sullivan. After inventing Hopkinson’s "ugly aversion to living among people who are different," he presents a stirring scene of life in the city, one in which our essayist stars: