Rare News Desk
Yesterday, Rare ran a profile of Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, press critic and senior editor for The Federalist. As with most longer stories, much material was left on the cutting room floor. It didn’t seem environmentally friendly to let that go to waste, so we present here some of the choice excerpts of the interview which took place last Tuesday.
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Why the mainstream media does such a bad job covering religious issues:
Rare: You had mentioned in a few columns that there is a definite media bias against religion, and at GetReligion it would have been your prime focus. Could you briefly describe why that exists today.
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway: Part of it is what we know about people in media not being terribly religious. There are polls that show reporters are much less likely to be churchgoers than the average population. I don’t know why that is, but I know that it is. And I think that affects peoples’ ability to write about religion. It affects their ability to write about religion in any charitable way. If you don’t know people who go to church because you don’t go to church, you can view people who do go to church as foreign and it can affect your writing about them.
And of course reporters are overwhelmingly liberal, and so there is no sense in pursuing that. So, there are political views they hold with religious fervour. And they view the traditional religious view as being hostile to the doctrines that they hold. And they are doctrinal. Reporters don’t think they go to church, but they kind of have a religious hold on their social views. I remember when [former New York Times editor] Jill Abramson was hired as editor she said, “The New York Times was my family’s religion.” And it was in the first story about her hiring before they realized that didn’t sound so great and so cut it out.
You know that line, “everyone’s dogmatic but only some people realize they are”? If you talk to reporters about their views on, say, same sex marriage, they have a sort of rigorous doctrinal system in play. They just don’t realize that is so. They don’t realize they have very strong ideas about what is sin and what isn’t sin because they don’t quite use that language. But they hold them with at least as much fervour as your average Methodist.
Advice for young journalists:
Rare: Imagine you are a teacher and you have before you a class of eager young writers. What advice would you give to these people now, at this time in this day and age? Other than find another line of work that pays…
MZH: Run for your lives! [laughs] Yeah, I’ve thought about that a little bit, too. I think that it requires humility. Your job is to share information. You get to be someone who gets to interview people or go to events other people don’t get to go to, and you shouldn’t have too high a view of what you are doing. You are just sharing information that will serve other people.
And I think that you should have a clear understanding that your job as a journalist is frequently, particularly for straight news writing, your job is not to change peoples’ minds or weigh in on one side of the debate or another. You have a much more important job which is to share information that can help other people learn about the world around them and how they want to interact with that world. But it does require some humility and I think that a lot of journalists… you know, we all struggle with that.
On work, marriage and children:
Rare: That must be a bit of a load for you, writing and having two children under foot.
MZH: Yeah, but that is something people should think about more: how to balance career and if they want to get married and have kids. Writing is not a bad way to be able to do both, because you can pick your own hours. But it’s a challenge and my husband has been extremely helpful, too. He and I both agreed that we wanted to both have careers and children so we’ve worked quite hard at taking care of all the responsibilities. It gone quite well thus far.
Rare: You say that people should think about this. When should people start thinking about this? Because this seems to be one of those decisions that keeps being pushed back in peoples’ lives.
MZH: I didn’t marry until I was in my 30s. But I had been thinking about since I was a teenager. It’s kind of funny. I assumed I would be getting married earlier, and I didn’t. But I did think about the types of careers that would balance out. I knew that I wanted to marry. I knew that I wanted to have children if at all possible. And I wanted to be an economist because I thought an academic career would go well with having kids. And when that changed, I still thought, what would go well with being married and having kids and all the prizes that come along with that?
I have a bunch of friends who… I don’t know if they never thought about it or frankly nobody ever tells you to think about it. I was actually very lucky because my parents did encourage me to think about it. A lot of people, it like they are almost told, to think about it is wrong. So I have a ton of frustrated friends. They’re frustrated either because they find it hard to work along with having kids, or it’s hard to have kids along with work. They have these careers or career paths that are sort of all-encompassing. And it’s difficult to try and make partner at the same time you have a newborn. Just thinking about the path you want to make can be very beneficial.
Rare: When we speak of having “the talk” with children it seems to always refer to graphic sex talk, but it seems that modern parenting doesn’t include discussions of these life decisions much.
MZH: Yes. We had someone write something for The Federalist about how parents spend so much time thinking their kids’ education or about what college they are going to get into. And they don’t put a lot of thought into, or have discussions about, getting the right spouse. What’s funny about that is that a lot people’s outcomes are dependent on making good marriage decisions. So they should be spending at least as much time thinking about that as which state they want to go to.
On the manosphere and the “don’t marry” movement:
Rare: Do you follow the “manosphere” [men’s rights sites, pick up artist sites, etc.] as you write about sex and marriage.
MZH: I write about sex related issues enough to come across items on the manosphere, as you call it, or on the feminist bases a bit. I do find that while there are things of value in these places, I come at things from a different angle.
I think that a lot of times both feminists and men’s rights activists are speaking from a place of grievance. They are, maybe quite understandably, quite upset. But for me as a Christian an important step is forgiveness. Not seeing where others have gone wrong but working on improving ourselves first and foremost. Which is not to say again that I don’t think these grievances are illegitimate, I think frequently they are legitimate, it’s just that I don’t see it as a helpful path for eventual happiness.
Rare: Looking at these sites, many give the advice [to young men], don’t marry, there’s noting in it for you, you stand to lose everything, including your children your house everything, that can all be gone in a moment’s notice, so there’s no point for you to sign on the dotted line and say “I do.” How do you react to this?
MZH: I’ve seen this a ton and there is a logic in it. It does totally make sense that you’re sick of that treatment, then fine, I don’t need to do this. And the culture we have in terms of sexual liberation enables such a thing in a way that wouldn’t have worked in previous generations.
It is kind of like if you are dealing with a bunch of people on the playground who are treating you horribly even though you brought the ball, you say fine I’m taking the ball and I’m going home. It does solve the immediate problem but it is not the best long term solution for happiness and for fulfilment and greater meaning.
Again, I’m approaching this from a different ethic. I do not believe that it is good for men and women to be alone. It is good for them to be together. So, certainly you shouldn’t marry the wrong person. And you should put a lot of effort into marrying the right person. But I think that marriage is a wonderful gift from God and it’s a great aid to have a teammate and to grow a life together.
So I understand the sentiment. It’s the exact mirror of the Jezebel sentiment that loathes men in so many ways. But it is ultimately unfulfilling.
Read the Rare profile of Hemingway here.
