Read Bob Herbert

"most of us are, indeed, hard-pressed to give a damn."

--T.A. Franks, "Why is Bob Herbert Boring?: The Perils of Punditry for the Powerless," Washington Monthly, October 2007

I had read T.A. Franks' column some time ago but was reminded of it this morning in one of Matthew Yglesias's posts. Franks writes about how right New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has been on many issues over the years--yet Herbert is not an influential columnist such as David Brooks or Maureen Dowd. I quit reading Maureen Dowd a while ago; her columns are smarmy, and her nasty descriptions of public people can go viral so quickly in mainstream media that her characterizations stick to those people like tar, absorbing all light and directing attention away from the real issues. I only occasionally read Brooks' column, but see him every Friday evening on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer voicing support of Republican ideas and actions in his soft and reasonable way (ideas which he is finding kind of difficult to defend these days; he has actually criticized recent Republican shenanigans). But I don't read Bob Herbert much, either, only when a blogger links to his column. Well, I'm going to make a real effort to read Bob's column and encourage others to do so, too. These days, with people screaming at town halls so that no civil discussion to take place, we need calm, reasonable voices that clearly identify the problems in this country and in the world and that encourage us to work to fix those problems.

Another reason I'm going to read Herbert's column is that his column of August 7th clearly articulates thoughts I have rolled over and over in my mind about George Sodini and his attack on those women in that aerobics class--but I hadn't gotten around to putting those thoughts into any coherent order. In "Women at Risk,", Herbert writes that

[w]e have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.

We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment.

The mainstream culture is filled with the most gruesome forms of misogyny, and pornography is now a multibillion-dollar industry — much of it controlled by mainstream U.S. corporations.

I, too, had been thinking of how so many of these public mass killings have been perpetuated by men who direct their disappointments in themselves and in their society toward women. As Herbert points out, if the victims of these men had been chosen because of their ethnicity, there would be a huge uproar; but because they are women, there is an immediate shocked response, and then a return to life as usual. No one seems to be trying to get to the root of misogyny in this country in order to weed it out of us. (Of course, there is disturbing evidence of racism and an unhinged attitude toward Barak Obama in Sodini's online journal, as well.)

Oh, and Herbert received 310 comments on that column, so someone is reading him.