Conclusions in Search of Evidence: Sex and the Modern Female Journalist
26th May 2025
My two daughters are named Kennedy and Reagan, and one of my sons is named Jefferson, so I’m not against the trend of presidential names, but probably you shouldn’t name your daughter “Carter.” That was my first thought when I encountered the name Carter Sherman, who writes for the U.S. edition of the Guardian. Knowing my readership, I’m sure the commenters will engage in a spree of ad hominem remarks about Miss Sherman’s appearance, but while y’all will be slagging her looks, my concern is about the nature of her work. Mark Judge has a very interesting article about Miss Sherman and her forthcoming book, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future.
There’s a certain hall-of-mirrors factor involved here: When Miss Sherman was an undergraduate at Northwestern University, she and her sorority sisters were interviewed by Peggy Orenstein of the New York Times, who was working on a book about young women’s sex lives. Orenstein, then in her 50s, was focused on the theme of “hookup culture,” and Miss Sherman says she and her Northwestern sorority sisters disappointed Orenstein’s expectations: “Frankly, we weren’t slutty enough.” So now Miss Sherman has written her own book, with its own preconceived conclusion, i.e., that “sexual conservatism” is the real danger to women, and I suppose her work is about as reliable as Orenstein’s, which is to say, not reliable at all.
The newspaper business was created by men for men: “Tell us the facts. Let us know what’s going on. Don’t take all day about it; we’re busy.” The Fox News trope says it all: “We report. You decide.” It’s all about the story. Watch the film His Girl Friday to see how that worked.
‘Journalism’, however, is a pseudo-profession that has been taken over by the female mindset: Start with a heart-warming (or tear-jerking) story that sets the emotional tone for the propaganda that follows. Every ‘journalism’ student ever says the same thing in response to the question, “Why are you in journalism school?”: “Because I want to make a difference!” It’s not about the story, it’s all about me. (And that’s why it takes forever to get to the point; we are all the stars of our own movies. The selfie is queen.) Watch the film Shattered Glass to see thie modus operandi in action – or review the history of Pulitzer Prizes awarded to (and then revoked from) ‘journalists’ who made it all up to win the prize.
For the record: Miss Sherman would have been good-looking enough for any practical purpose (i.e. finding a good husband) prior to the distortions induced by the Kardashian Age.