The Juicebox Mafia Is Loose

Not sure what's more disturbing in this NY Times article on the new "young pundits" in DC: that the Times' Sridhar Pappu considers Dave Weigel, Ezra Klein, and Brian Beutler as wet-behind-the-ears kids (they're younger than I am by a good 6 years or so) defined primarily by their youth, that they are grudgingly recognized and then summarily dismissed as college kids from the Facebook generation, or that none of these hot young guns are women and that Pappu doesn't seem to think there are any under 30 who might be worth listening to in the DC area.

There is precedent for such packs of smart, self-important young men in other capital cities. More than 50 years ago, Gay Talese wrote of “the witty, irreverent sons of a conquering nation,” led by George Plimpton, who once tromped through Paris.

Of course, Washington is not and never will be Paris. In a city where Ms. Haddad’s brunch is known simply as “Tammy’s” and where young Congressional staffers and reporters still cling to the bars on Capitol Hill, the scene these young men inhabit is as foreign as Mars. On Friday evenings it’s not uncommon to spot them at rock places like Black Cat or the 9:30 Club, or (juice boxes forsooth) drinking overpriced beer from cans — or even Mason jars — in grungy enclaves like the American Ice Company. But they’ve also rerouted the aspirations of young journalists here, for whom a job in print media was once the holy grail.

“This is the age of the individual voice, liberated by the new media,” the former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan — whose reinvention as a prodigious, immensely well-read blogger has inspired many to take to their laptops — said in an e-mail. “Anyone in the younger generation who yearns for a column on the Washington Post op-ed page is seeking oblivion.”

That hasn’t stopped traditional outlets from reaching out to them — with mixed results. In the years surrounding the 2008 presidential election, The Washington Post employed Mr. Weigel; and The American Prospect and then The Post made his peer Ezra Klein into a multiplatform superman of blogging-twittering-column writing. The Atlantic and then Think Progress — the online arm of the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund— transformed Matt Yglesias from a formerly bored Harvard kid who hated reporting into an Internet star.

They are cognizant of their evolution. 

Yeah, note how it's The Wise Media Mavens of Washington who picked these guys up by their bootstraps and thrust them into the spotlight.  They couldn't possibly have gotten there on talent or hard work, like these guys won the lottery or something and are really just a bunch of frat dudebros with netbooks, as a wistful Sully looks on.

Of course the fact that Pappu can't find a single woman to challenge this all-male boys club meme only makes it all the worse.  Ugh.