Chris Beam's well-received piece imagining a news article written by political scientists has inspired Conor Friedersdorf to imagine a news article written by sociologists:
NEW ORLEANS — Absent from the dialogue surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which began on April 20, 2010 following an explosion that killed eleven workers, are the roles of class, race and especially gender. Due to the environmental devastation wrought by the catastrophe, which is likely to fall heaviest on the working poor, it is understandable that attention is largely focused on efforts to plug the oil well undertaken by British Petroleum, a corporation founded in imperial Britain to exploit the oil resources of people of color.
It is not insignificant to cleanup efforts, however, that even today BP’s leadership lacks adequate gender diversity, its board of directors being made up of fourteen persons, only one of them who self-identifies as a female, and all of whom earn significantly more than the median income in Louisiana, Alabama, and even the relatively privileged residents of coastal Florida. ...
Asked for comment, a White House staffer who requested anonymity out of habit said that Barack Obama has no intention of resigning from the presidency due to job dissatisfaction or any other reason. “The President has a long list of agenda items that he is eager to accomplish,” said the staffer, alluding to the recent re-articulation of policy proposals made as an attempt together together into a cohesive whole the disparate discourses of Democratic candidates competing in the mid-term elections.
Both the textual and sub-textual paradigms emanating from the White House are likely to shift after election day.
I foresee a progressively less-amusing internet trope. By the time this devolves into "What if biologists wrote the news?," we're all going to want to kill ourselves. In the meantime, Friedersdorf's piece is pretty darn good.