Toles on DC

The Post cartoonist sits down with Buffalo’s ArtVoice:

AV: Compare the environment for journalists in DC to the environment in Buffalo.

TT: In terms of local issues, it’s not much different–in fact it’s very similar. In terms of national issues, it’s very, very different. In some ways good and some ways not so good. When you’re doing national issues from a distance you get a perspective on them that sometimes you lose when you’re right here.

On the plus side of being here, it’s hard to describe the level of interest and the flow of information in this city—overtly and in casual conversations–to the degree that you have a highly different sense of what’s going on, who the players are, how they’re relating to each other, and an audience that is eagerly attuned to all of this inside baseball. I’ve likened it to sitting in the front row of the movie theater. It’s good and bad in all the same ways: You can see the nostril hairs here much more clearly, but there is a certain distortion that comes with being so close.

Another aspect–I mean, there are many–but the social network here does tend to add another level of distortion. So many people here know so many of the other people involved so well that sometimes, I think, objectivity suffers. There comes to be a language with which issues are spoken of. It’s a circumscribed language, in that certain points of view just aren’t represented. They become sort of off-limits, as if they’re in bad form. You hear discussions, back-channel discussions–so-and-so said such-and-such to somebody; these things often throw additonal light on what’s going on. But then again those channels are often abused and disinformation is sent out through those. The density of information and interest is so high here–you can find out a lot, but the context of everything is sometimes quite confusing.

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