A classic story of He Said, She Said, with a twist. A Slashdot user, Guy Montag, was recently featured in an article about the dating site ConservativeMatch.com in The New Republic. Apparently, the young Eve Fairbanks was assigned to go on dates with men she met via ConservativeMatch and then told to write stories about them. His experiences on the date and responses to the article can be read here. The article he is responding to is reproduced in its entirety here. (Strange coincidences: The blog where the article is reproduced is made by the same designer as the one I’m using — No wonder it seemed kind of familiar.)
To be fair, I didn’t have a heck of a lot of problems with Fairbanks’ article: It seems like she did a bit of exaggeration in the name of either writing a more interesting article or appealing to political stereotypes, but on the whole she seems pleasantly surprised by her experiences. Guy seems to take issue with a lot of minor things, but at the same time I can’t really blame him — If it were my character being misrepresented by some deceitful journalist I’m sure I’d take them to task on every piddling little error as well.
The main issue is simply this:
A subversive note or two of liberalism is a feature of many profiles on ConservativeMatch–and of everyone I went on dates with. Shooter told me he drives a hybrid car. One poster does yoga..The edge of guilty-pleasure liberalism in people’s profiles creates an interesting tension on ConservativeMatch… Some of these betrayals are not so benign.
The tone she creates here, intentionally or unintentionally, is one in which her political adversaries are presented, as Guy himself insinuates in later commentary, as “Gorillas in the Mist.” Guilty-pleasure liberalism? Betrayals? This really tells us more about Eve’s own internal caricatures and cliquish perception of politics than it does anything else. Personally, I’d worry if I knew anyone who took having different political ideas as being a betrayal.
another interviewee saying Eve Fairbanks made stuff up about him:
http://brothercyst.blogspot.com/2006/04/nostalgia.html
(via Realclearpolitics blog)