Not-so-hidden agendas
Today’s NY Times gives us a j-school lesson in overcooked feature writing marked by barely hidden agendas and grating condescension (not unlike another story in the same spot in The Times that tried to make us sympathetic with a two-bit thief, which I lamented the other day). Today, Charlie LeDuff visits a Burger King in Dallas to try to urge sympathy for a woman who has a bad job but who also admits, way down in the story, that she “wishes she would have worked harder in school. Not gotten pregnant at 13. Again at 14.” Let’s dissect this one:
Off a bleak and empty interchange midway through the Dallas sprawl stands a Burger King. It’s past midnight, the rain sizzles on the parking lot blacktop like frying bacon. A young woman is working the lobster shift at the drive-through window. She is overweight and wears pink lipstick.“Nothing special,†she says of herself. “Nothing much.â€
Gloria Castillo is 22, married, a mother of two, a Latina from the rough side of Dallas. She is on the low side of making it.
The night is busy, and a mustache of perspiration breaks across her lip. She is alone with the fry cook.
Note the heavy atmospherics: rain sizzling like bacon (really?). Note the many ways to say that the subject is overweight and sweaty. He’s sympathetic to her yet also looks down at her. We bring you the great unwashed.
The customers are rude tonight, drunk and bellicose. One guy doesn’t want to pay for his food, figuring it ought to be free. If he had wanted to rob the place, Ms. Castillo says with a tight smile, it would have been easy enough; the window doesn’t lock here like it does at the McDonald’s.
And a literate thief reading the New York Times appreciates the tip.
From the car window, the whole fast-food experience is a numbing routine. Pull up. Order from the billboard. Idle. Pay. Drive away. Fast food has become a $120 billion motorized American experience.
No news there. It’s a big industry with lots of jobs, many numbing.
But consider the life inside that window on Loop 12 in West Dallas. There is a woman with children and no health insurance, undereducated, a foot soldier in the army of the working poor.
The reporter paints her as a victim, don’t you think? And he tells us to be sympathetic to her plight. She has a crappy job. He doesn’t yet tell us that she made the choices I listed above. She’s a victim here. Of what, I’m not clear. The atmosphere continues:
The fry cook sneezes on the meat patties. Cigarettes go half smoked. Cameras spy on the employees. Customers throw their fries and soft drinks sometimes because they think it’s funny.
So far, he has told us how to rob the place and why it ought to get health-department citations. More like this to come.
“I hate this job,†Ms. Castillo says with a smile. “I hate it.†It is her third drive-through job. First it was Whataburger. Then McDonald’s. Now here. It is becoming a career.“Burger King pays better,†she says. Even so, she has taken a second job: “It’s a bar. There’s a lot of white guys in there. I go and clean the restrooms. There’s three restrooms I clean for $150, and I do it in one hour and 30 minutes. One hour and a half.â€
Well, the job’s not pleasant, but $100 an hour beats bagging burgers.
Ms. Castillo is the daughter of an illegal immigrant who came to America from Honduras by bus 22 years ago, with Ms. Castillo gestating inside her. Her mother lives on a disability check now, and Ms. Castillo is the American who sees herself competing with illegal labor, labor that drives down her wage, she says.“I never worked with white people,†she says while putting a cup of soda and ice together. “Everywhere I go and apply, it’s always Mexicans, black or Chinese.â€
She surmises that the entire morning staff at her Burger King is illegal. “I can tell you everyone who works here in the morning works fake papers. No English. Nobody in the morning knows English.
“Somebody takes the order and then we tell them in Spanish.â€
Ernesto Hernandez, her manager, says that he does not know if he employs people who work with false Social Security numbers and that it is not his job to know if the numbers are real. “Call corporate,†he says in a thick accent. “They have that information.â€
Corporate did not return calls.
So now add that to the favors the reporter has done for this Burger King and its employees: He practically dares the INS to come and collect the day-shift employees and he doesn’t ask them whether they are illegals.
Whatever the truth of the matter, there’s a lot of ethnic friction behind the drive-through glass, Ms. Castillo says: “There’s a lot of hate.â€She hands the soda and a sack of 10 tacos to a guy in a Chevy who looks stoned. He doesn’t count his change. He drives away with one hand on the wheel, one in the sack of tacos.
A sign on the window says: “Burgers for breakfast beginning at 8 a.m.â€
Hate is a strong word. Then LeDuff shifts from that to the mundane and uninformative observations of the feature writer. What does it mean that the guy doesn’t count his change or that burgers are sold at 8 a.m.? It’s a classic feature-writer’s trick: Empty the notebook of such details and act as if they mean something, even if they don’t.
LeDuff next proceeds to outline the difficulties of Castillo’s day — her pay, her schedule with her kids and husband, her efforts to go to school now, her habit of buying the kids fatty McDonald’s food: life. He concludes:
Around 2 a.m. work begins to slow down. This is the unpredictable hour. It could be filled with only the fry cook’s music, or it could be the hour that gunmen rob the place and lock them in the freezer. It’s happened before, she says. It happens dozens of times a month at fast food restaurants across the country.Tonight, it’s music. Gloria Castillo stares out the open window, allowing the wet air to blow inside. “I got dreams,†she says. “I’m a human being.â€
She looks at the crummy little house across the parking lot with peeling paint. “That would be good too, a little house. I don’t want much.â€
And just what are we supposed to take from this story? Are we supposed to feel guilty for her fate? Why? What are we supposed to do about this person with the crappy job and bad choices and hate for the immigrants who compete for those crappy jobs? Who says she doesn’t have dreams and isn’t a human being? We didn’t. But it’s practically assumed that we did. Why is this story in the national section of the national paper?
Tags: journalism
November 28th, 2006 at 4:37 am
[...] BuzzMachine [...]
November 28th, 2006 at 5:33 am
One thing that struck me: “I never worked with white people,†she says while putting a cup of soda and ice together.
Now, I watched the video presentation, and she said this. But she was at the window of the drive-thru. Did she “reenact” the quote for the video?
November 28th, 2006 at 10:09 am
” What are we supposed to do about this person with the crappy job and bad choices and hate for the immigrants who compete for those crappy jobs?”
“Hate is a strong word.”
Foreigners do not hate freedom, democracy or even the “American way of life”. It is the price other people have to pay for America to have that way of life - that is what has everybody so pissed off.
And just in case you didn’t understand what I mean, read twice the full story and think for a moment that ALL the USA citizens were once Europeans and they WERE not born in USA, but STOLE the LAND from the people who lived there before them.
And I CAN say it, because I an a European, but my grandfather was among the Italians who went to USA looking for a job and a new life.
They were allowed to live and bloom there, what they do not want to allow the new immigrants to do.
A good memory is something as rare as a good conscience.
November 28th, 2006 at 10:38 am
> ALL the USA citizens were once Europeans
Wrong.
November 28th, 2006 at 10:41 am
The $150 for cleaning those three restrooms must be per week not per day, which would translate into $20/hr if she did it five days a week or $14/hr (more likely) if she did it seven days.
November 28th, 2006 at 10:46 am
> ALL the USA citizens were once Europeans
Wrong.
You are right.
There were the Indians, but they didn’t finish so well.
Let me drop a pious curtain on it…
November 28th, 2006 at 11:03 am
I’m not sure what your point is Jeff. Do you object to the shoddy reporting and use of clichés? Or do you think that a profile of someone at the bottom of the economic ladder shouldn’t be in a national newspaper? Or do you feel that our emotions are being manipulated and that the person brought her fate upon herself ?
Suppose something magical happened and people working at fast food jobs suddenly were paid as much as mid-level workers (say $15 per hour). Would the job be any better? What is overlooked is that modern society has structured much work to be unpleasant and that how we could alter this is not even a topic for discussion. Those with poor working conditions (say in meat packing) ask for a slower pace and/or higher wages, there is never any discussion of how jobs are set up.
We have several problems.
1. Excessive economic imbalance between the top and the bottom.
2. Too much poverty and near poverty.
3. Poor working conditions with no effective way to remedy this (weak organized labor).
4. A focus on materialism and consumerism rather than improving the quality of life.
and, what I think is Jeff’s point:
5. Mass media that uses “conventional wisdom” as a framework for poor quality writing.
So should reporters and pundits be any wiser and more insightful than everyone else? Sorry, mediocrity is the norm, just like 100 IQ is the average. If we are lucky every once in awhile we get a social critic of real talent, but in general most people are average and produce average results.
November 28th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
So should reporters and pundits be any wiser and more insightful than everyone else? Sorry, mediocrity is the norm, just like 100 IQ is the average.
Hey, sounds like some of what Jeff’s been saying is starting to sink in…
November 28th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
> ALL the USA citizens were once Europeans
I had no idea that Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries had so many blacks and Asians.
Another example of how Europeans are utterly clueless when it comes to understanding America. Or maybe they haven’t figured out how to use Google yet.
November 28th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Proportion of white people in the United States in 2000: 71.8%
And falling.
November 28th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Seeing this story quoted on this site makes for an incredibly intriguing contrast/comparison.
Think about it.
November 29th, 2006 at 2:30 am
“I had no idea that Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries had so many blacks and Asians.”
I think that if we Europeans do not know how to use Google, sometimes Americans do not know History.
The Blacks were IMPORTED there against their will, let’s drop a curtain on it too, (but yes the trade of the Slaves was mostly done by Europeans) and the Asians came much later.
That means that :
1) America was discovered by a mistake by Cristoforo Colombo, who, knowing that the earth was round, but ignoring its size, thought to reach the Indies going in the opposite direction.
Infact the aborigens in America were called Indies.
2) Since they soon found out it was a rich country they slowly took possession of it, in ways that today we wouldn’t describe as “moral”.
3) I just pointed out that when you are rich you easily think that “everything is due and your right”, which is NOT THE CASE.
And I am not an idealistic or religious person (or communist).
I am just objective.
And it wouldn’t hurt sometimes to try to see life from another point of view.
For example from the point of view of the ones who clean our toilets.
November 29th, 2006 at 8:53 am
And just what are we supposed to take from this story? Are we supposed to feel guilty for her fate? Why? What are we supposed to do about this person with the crappy job and bad choices and hate for the immigrants who compete for those crappy jobs? Who says she doesn’t have dreams and isn’t a human being? We didn’t. But it’s practically assumed that we did. Why is this story in the national section of the national paper?
Jeez, Jeff, have you never understood that sometimes it matters for journalism to hold a mirror up to life, and society, so it can see itself? Must everything be the chatting of the likeminded to each other? Are you saying you’ve already considered the life of people like this, and that you’re confident every reader of the NYT - even the kids who are proudly reading it for the first time, feeling grown-up - knows it and is completely comfortable with it?
The little details aren’t “J-school”. They’re what brings a piece to life. They’re the grit in the pearl of realism.
What are you supposed to do about the person with the crappy job? Well, what? Empathise with them. Consider whether the things you do help them. If nothing you can do can help them, why is that? Maybe it’s that this piece of journalism makes you feel uncomfortable, but you think the discomfort is because you don’t like the detail. The detail is the point.
Consider: would you feel less dissatisfied if the piece had been about the victim of some natural disaster, who had seen everything taken away, left only their dreams? Why? Because the arc of the story’s better? But some arcs are bigger than others. This is a small story, but it’s repeated endlessly; yet overlooked just as much. That, I repeat, is the point.
November 29th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
RE: What does it mean that the guy doesn’t count his change or that burgers are sold at 8 a.m.? It’s a classic feature-writer’s trick: Empty the notebook of such details and act as if they mean something, even if they don’t.
Jeff, I don’t think every detail in a story has to “mean something.” If see a picture of someone in a place you haven’t been, say Darfur or Ramallah, there are lots of details that tell you something about the place. Maybe the color of the sky, the kind of bricks or stones they build with, how the people are dressed. Those details might not “mean” anything, but they give us a feel for the place. If every detail we write into a story has to pass a test of meaning, much of what we’ll be reading will be dry, colorless and, above all, short.
November 29th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Granted, following a line describing the job as being in a hate-filled environment with a description of a guy who is hungry and doesn’t care to count his change is not the most effective way to compose a story. Like, maybe an example would have been better. But I’m guessing this reporter spent one part of one shift at the location in order to write the story, and it happened to be a night void of robberies (but it could have happened! and, like, apparently it does happen!) and hate, and instead filled with stoned guys who just want a midnight snack. So the author made do with what was presented; and he used his descriptions and evocations to indicate that the essence of the story is still the same — great event or not.
I agree with Steve B. and Charles above that the less-meaningful details, even when not supplemented with the definitions that tell us exactly what the details signify, are still important for the whole story. In this case it may not have been done with perfect execution, and it may seem like he was striving a bit to fill in the story he already wanted to write, but I don’t think he should be criticized too harshly for the inclusion of details and descriptions that aren’t immediately rife with importance.
November 29th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Gosh, folks, it’s not about the quality of the writing / writer / justification of some of the tools of the trade in this article, Europeans, economics, intoxicated customers, toilets, etc. …
It’s the entire idea that we’re supposed to be — WHAT? — when we read [borrowing from New England's supposed newspaper for supposed writers here] about a woman who has to get up at 3 in the morning to walk through a dangerous neighborhood and for another two miles to get to her job at Wal-Mart to feed her multiple kids from multiple fathers. At the end of this 1,500-word exercise published two summers ago, my bride turned to me and said, “So frakking what?”
I don’t think Jeff’s rejecting the concepts of Christianity and compassion; I think he’s saying we’re tired as editors of assigning and tired as readers of reading these nonsensical articles about people living with the circumstances OF THEIR CHOICES, composed by colleagues and fashioned by other colleagues to “evoke emotion” — translation: make you, the reader, feel as though you have to atone for someone else’s choices. The editors and reporters gaze skyward with smiles on their faces and that warm feeling that they’ve done something good for someone. They have — they paid a newsprint supplier for four columns of waste.
“There but for the grace of God go I.” True. I’ve been there. The grace of God comes with a big shovel and a good pair of gloves. You use all three to dig as long as it takes until you’re out. Bring us that story, Mr. LeDuff, and don’t forget to assign the art.
December 3rd, 2006 at 10:23 am
“What are we supposed to do about this person with the crappy job and bad choices and hate for the immigrants who compete for those crappy jobs?”
I want to answer this question by posing another one:
What are we supposed to do about this blogger, who thinks a 13 year old immigrant girl is fully responsible for getting pregant and that society shouldn’t be bothered with helping her raise her two kids and yet getting some kind of education that would enable her to get jobs above fastfood level?
I hope if you revisit this story you may be able to find an answer for this. Of course, you first have to admit to yourself that your approach to this story wasn’t only extremely cold hearted, but that your dislike for the way the reporter told it got your better judgement, for instance regarding this detail:
“Well, the job’s not pleasant, but $100 an hour beats bagging burgers.”
For god’s sake, Jeff, stop living in a bubble. Nobody gets $100 an hour for cleaning restrooms (sole exception may be some well proportioned hookers who do it naked). Nowhere it is said that the $150 are for one and a half hours work. More probably, this is the pay for a week or even a month. Really, didn’t your common sense tell you that $100/hour sounds unrealistic?
Wll, did you really want to paint yourself as a cold-hearted, arrogant elitist jerk, Jeff? If that was your intention, congratulations, job well done…
December 3rd, 2006 at 10:35 am
“I think he’s saying we’re tired as editors of assigning and tired as readers of reading these nonsensical articles about people living with the circumstances OF THEIR CHOICES, composed by colleagues and fashioned by other colleagues to “evoke emotion†— translation: make you, the reader, feel as though you have to atone for someone else’s choices.”
Shorter überidiot Jim Hattis (formerly of WaPo???): 13 year old girls are fully responsible for screwing up her lifes when getting pregnant. And US citizen don’t want to be bothered with the downsides of their society.
And just one other point: “So frakking what?†Yes, really, what can be done to prevent teenage girls from becoming pregnat prematurely and against the consequences this has for their education, their carreer and their whole life? This is a question concerned citizen should ask their politicians! It’s not the editor’s and reporter’s job to give answers (and I can imagine the outcry from ignorants like Jarvis and Harris if the media would openly root for reasonable social policies).
December 3rd, 2006 at 5:20 pm
I think he’s saying we’re tired as editors of assigning and tired as readers of reading these nonsensical articles about people living with the circumstances OF THEIR CHOICES, composed by colleagues and fashioned by other colleagues to “evoke emotion†— translation: make you, the reader, feel as though you have to atone for someone else’s choices.â€
If you’re tired of hearing about the other people living with the consequences of their choices, than you’re tired of the human race, literature, art, and media as a whole, because that is the root of all stories everywhere.
What you mean is that you’re tired of having to be bothered with the existence of the less fortunate. You don’t mind hearing about Steve Jobs and Donald Rumsfeld’s choices, of course. They’re the same individual choices and they turn out wrong often as well, but you can ignore that against the buzz of wealth and glamour that so much resembles your own life, right?
Then go work for fuc*ing Maxim magazine, or Car & Driver, or one of a million available hedonistic outlets where the illusionary protagonists leap from one height of titillation to the next peak of self-absorbed success.
In the meantime, leave the vapid, transparently shallow sneering at better media outlets alone until you can come up with a substantive criticism.