Joan Walsh

Joan Walsh
Born Joan Maureen Walsh
(1958-09-18) September 18, 1958
Occupation Editor, writer, journalist

Joan Maureen Walsh (born September 18, 1958) is an American author, editor, writer, and blogger. She was editor-at-large of Salon.com before becoming National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation,[1] and is an MSNBC political analyst.

Career

From 2005 through 2010, she was the editor-in-chief of Salon.com, a San Francisco-based American liberal politics and culture website. She is the author of What's the Matter With White People? Why We Long for a Golden Age That Never Was, published in August 2012 by John Wiley and Sons. The paperback version was published by Touchstone/Simon and Schuster in April 2013, with the subtitle: Finding Our Way In The Next America.

After joining Salon as its first full-time news editor in 1998, Walsh became managing editor in 2004. She had previously worked for In These Times and the Santa Barbara News and Review. She has written freelance articles for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The Nation.[2] In Autumn 2015 she left Salon to become National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation.[1]

Walsh writes frequently on current American political topics, typically in blog form at Salon. Criticisms of the Iraq War, the George W. Bush administration, and conservatives have been featured in her posts. She regularly appears Hardball with Chris Matthews and All In with Chris Hayes, and she has debated conservative guests including Pat Buchanan, Liz Cheney, Dick Armey, David Frum, and G. Gordon Liddy. She also appeared on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Ed Show, as well as CNN's Larry King Live, Campbell Brown and D. L. Hughley Breaks the News.

Walsh made her second appearance on The O'Reilly Factor in June 2009, discussing the murder of George Tiller and her views on the responsibility of journalists and the impact of their words in controversial matters.[3]

Other areas of interest include education, community development, urban poverty issues, and baseball. She has published two books, Splash Hit: The Pacific Bell Park Story and Stories of Renewal: Community Building and the Future of Urban America.[4]

Hillary Clinton Endorsement

Walsh endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2008 and the 2016 Presidential Democratic Primaries. She declared the 2016 endorsement in an article titled, "Why I’m Supporting Hillary Clinton, With Joy and Without Apologies."[5] Some praised the article for articulating the feminist stance for a Hillary Clinton presidency, while others criticized the article for failing to list substantiative policy differences between Clinton and her primary opponent Senator Bernie Sanders and for portraying Sanders' supporters as misogynists.[6][7]

She was further criticized when she implied that the Bernie Sanders campaign contained a racist undercurrent for losing the minority vote in most states, despite gathering large support from young minority voters and attracting prominent black surrogates such as Killer Mike, Erica Garner, Cornel West, and Spike Lee.[8] She also implied that Bernie Sanders' support might have been coming from racist working class whites who were punishing Clinton for her role as Secretary of State in the administration of the first black President of the United States, Barack Obama.[9]

A backlash against these types of racial arguments developed on social media around the hashtag #BernieMadeMeWhite, where people of color parodied the criticism against the Bernie Sanders campaign by tweeting things such as, "Ever since I voted for Bernie, I've been bingewatching Friends.#BernieMadeMeWhite," and, "Golly, I started to support Sanders and now I am allergic to gluten! #BernieMadeMeWhite #FeelTheBern."[10][11] The originator of the hashtag, Leslie Lee III, identified Walsh as "one of the chief purveyors of this line [of criticism]" and described one incident on MSNBC as especially egregious, "[Walsh] spoke about the whiteness of a Sanders rally in Washington — just as a camera panned over a group of Hispanic voters holding a sign that read 'V-I-V-A-B-E-R-N-I-E,' and moments before Sanders was introduced by Sikh leader Hira Bhullar."[12]

On Twitter, Walsh dismissed accusations that she had erased people of color who supported Bernie Sanders, "I'm sorry they feel erased by the demographic data provided by exit polls."[10][13] However many responded that it was hypocrisy to dismiss their argument as she had made exactly the same argument when she spoke of young female voters in her Clinton endorsement, "I know Bernie is leading among millennials by a lot right now in the polls. Nonetheless, millions of millennials, including millions of young women, are supporting Hillary Clinton. And my daughter...is one of them. I find it increasingly galling to see her and her friends erased in this debate."[5]

References

  1. 1 2 Walsh, Joan (2015-09-25). "Jeb goes full Mitt Romney: Man of inherited wealth and power says African-Americans want "free stuff"". Salon.
  2. ↑ "Joan Walsh: About Me". Salon.com. Retrieved May 29, 2007.
  3. ↑ Walsh, Joan (June 12, 2009). "Why I went on "The O'Reilly Factor"". Salon.com. Retrieved June 16, 2009.
  4. ↑ Montopoli, Brian. "Joan Walsh on Losing Subscriptions Over the Ohio Election, Conservative Ideological Crusades, and Being Compared to Judith Miller". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved May 29, 2007.
  5. 1 2 "Why I'm Supporting Hillary Clinton, With Joy and Without Apologies". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  6. ↑ Bruenig, Matt (2016-01-28). "Joan Walsh to Young Bernie Sanders Supporters: Get Off My Lawn". In These Times. ISSN 0160-5992. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  7. ↑ "Joan Walsh (Inadvertently) Makes the Case That Anyone Not Supporting Sanders Is an AntiSemite". Daily Kos. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  8. ↑ "What's Wrong With Bernie Sanders's Strategy". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  9. ↑ Powers, Doug. "'Second-hand racism'? Joan Walsh encouraged to keep speculating why Hillary isn't winning". twitchy.com. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  10. 1 2 Viebeck, Elise (2016-03-28). "How #BernieMadeMeWhite became a rallying cry on Twitter". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  11. ↑ "#BernieMadeMeWhite: Meet the Black writer who called out the media for erasing people of color". www.rawstory.com. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  12. ↑ "Behind #BernieMadeMeWhite | Jacobin". www.jacobinmag.com. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
  13. ↑ "Joan Walsh on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 2016-04-01.

External links

Media offices
Preceded by
David Talbot		 Editor in Chief of Salon.com
2005–2010 		Succeeded by
Kerry Lauerman
New title Editor at Large of Salon.com
2010–present 		Incumbent


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