Stephanie Mencimer
Stephanie Mencimer is a columnist for Mother Jones. Mencimer works in the Washington bureau of Mother Jones, and describes herself as "a Utah native and graduate of a crappy public university not worth mentioning."[1] (The "crappy public university not worth mentioning" is the University of Oregon.)[2]
Mencimer is also a contributing editor of the Washington Monthly and a senior writer at the Washington City Paper.[1]
Mother Jones has assigned Mencimer to write about the Tea Party, a task she has described as meaning that she has "spent the last year hanging out with angry white people who occasionally don tricorne hats and come to lunch meetings heavily armed."[1]
Attack on "Newsweek"
Mencimer's writing has drawn fire over the years for inaccuracies. Stuart Taylor, a Contributing Editor at Newsweek and a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, described Mencimer's work in 2005 as "shockingly inaccurate and misleading."[3] Taylor went on to say about a piece Mencimer wrote that every criticism in it (of "Newsweek" magazine) "is false, misleading, or a difference of opinion masquerading as a correction of fact."[3]
Tea Party writings
Mencimer's writings about the Tea Party on Mother Jones include:
- "How Powerful is the Tea Party Anyway?" (December 1, 2010)
- "Will the Tea Party Pick the Next RNC Chair?" (December 2, 2010)
- "Tea Party: Shut The Government Down!" (December 17, 2010)
- "The Tea Party Targets... Sustainable Development?" (November 18, 2010)
- "Tea Partiers: The Most Oppressed Minority?" (November 17, 2010)
- "Tea Partiers: Can You Hear Us Now?" (November 2, 2010)
- "Living Large on Tea Party Air" (October 29, 2010)
- "A Secret Tea Party Donor Revealed" (October 28, 2010)
- "If You Can't Find a Tea Party Group, Does it Really Exist?" (October 25, 2010)
- "Is the Tea Party Movement Like a Pyramid Scheme?" (October 19, 2010)
- "Post-Beck Tea Party's Strange Bedfellows" (August 30, 2010)
- "Tea Partiers Freak Over Six Flags 'Muslim Day'" (July 30, 2010)
- "The Tea Party's March Madness" (July 23, 2010)
Themes explored in Mencimer's writings about the tea party include:
- Raymon F. Thompson, the founder and former CEO of Semitool, donated the use of his private jet to the "Tea Party Patriots" to facilitate a tour around the country. Mencimer believes that it was wrong for Thompson to donate the use of his transportation to "Tea Party Patriots", and wrong of the organization to use the donated flight time on a tour around the country in 2010.