Blog Why Jim DeRogatis is wrong about @MayorEmanuel

Yesterday, Punk Planet founder Dan Sinker came out to The Atlantic as the man behind the @MayorEmanuel tweets. The Twitterverse went into full spaz mode, and Sinker was soon surprised as media outlets camped out on his lawn in Evanston.

Today’s news, though, is Jim DeRogatis’ harsh take on @MayorEmanuel on his blog, where the longtime music editor and co-voice of Sound Opinions rips into his Columbia College colleague Sinker, saying he’s an irresponsible journalist and professor (punctuated by a photo of him sitting all cool and cross-legged on a table) and that he was “conspiring with a celebrity politician to make him look ‘even cooler.’” “Really, Dan?,” DeRogatis writes. “You call this the new journalism?”

Commenters on the article have fired back, writing, “Being a punk fan doesn’t obligate a person to rid themselves of a sense of humor,” and saying that Sinker never called this project “new journalism.” All of this is absolutely true, of course, and DeRogatis does Sinker a disservice to ignore his other projects, like CellStories.net, where he posts a different fictional tale daily, to be read on mobile devices. Sinker is not, as that commenter points out, one thing only—a journalist—any more than the rest of us are defined by our jobs alone.

It’s easy enough to blow off DeRogatis’ argument and say the big guy doesn’t really get it. He is, as Sound Opinions listeners would know, prone to hyperbole, and this could totally be a case of link baiting, as in, say something controversial, and get a bunch of web hits. On the off chance that DeRo actually believes, in his heart of hearts, that Sinker’s failed in his journalistic due diligence, though, we have to respectfully disagree with him.

First, there’s the fact that it was fiction and not journalism. That’s a given. It was entertainment and not hard-hitting policy reactionism. Avid readers saw @MayorEmanuel as more than just a cuss machine, but rather as a character in a larger story, and one that, while loosely tied to Chicago, was in no way actually Chicago. There was a duck involved, for Christ’s sakes.

Sinker wasn’t out for glory, really. Is it his fault that media camped on his yard? Sure, he came out right after the election, but when a $5,000 donation to charity is at stake, you can’t really blame the dude. He did it in a distinguished publication, and one that’s not Chicago-based, thus taking the discussion of our city to a national level. And while this reporter is obviously biased, working at The A.V. Club, that Twitter account proved that this city does have a sense of humor about itself. Chicagoans aren’t constantly jealous of New York or crying over the Cubs. We like beer and jokes and think our pizza’s pretty great. We’re also ridiculous as a city sometimes with our corruption and faults and silly Blagojeviches. We know it, and that’s totally okay.

There is an inherent danger in making any joke public, as DeRo noted by citing one of Sinker’s students who said she’d vote for Emanuel just based on how funny that Twitter account was. To be blunt, you just can’t blame Sinker because that one kid’s a dumbass. Voters aren’t always smart. They voted for Clinton because they liked his hair or for Sarah Palin because she talked folksy. At least they voted, right? We can’t expect everyone to be smart, informed citizens, but at least that student knew that there was an election and maybe that Rahm Emanuel was a candidate. Baby steps.

On that same tip, when DeRogatis chided Sinker for not “pushing hard” and asking about DeRo’s pet issue, Emanuel’s ties to Ticketmaster/Live Nation and Lollapalooza, well, he just missed the boat again. Not only was that not Sinker’s responsibility, as he wasn’t acting as a journalist, but, well, there’s not conspiracy everywhere. Yes, it’s absolutely important to address and acknowledge Emanuel’s ties and what Lolla has done to this city, rather than just getting all giddy that we have this three-day musical orgy, but @MayorEmanuel wasn’t the place for it, period. Sinker might want to do that elsewhere now, and he still can. These things aren’t mutually exclusive. As a bonus, even, more people might care, because now he has that name notoriety he might not have before. After all, how many Twitter followers did @DanSinker probably get yesterday alone?

The Internet has no limits or bounds, and there’s literally endless web space for anyone to write about Ticketmaster, Lollapalooza, race politics, sex, or make jokes. That Sinker is a media darling today for his Twitter account is great and everything, but it doesn’t take away from any future debate or dialogue we might have about serious issues. DeRo, ask your questions. @MayorEmanuel, say fuck a bunch and then disappear into a vortex. There’s room for both, and in a balanced society, there’s value in both.

Any way you look at it, DeRogatis missed the point, and he did it loudly, as always. @MayorEmanuel was a satire, a gag, a farce, fiction. It never purported to be hard-hitting journalism, and it let a whole bunch of Chicagoans who were already probably politically aware enough to care about David Axelrod laugh a little bit, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.