Jay Carson

Jay Carson writes about media and culture for online publications, magazines, and newspapers in the Washington D.C. area and elswewhere.

Below are excerpts from two of my latest:

1. Jason Cherkis: These three paragraphs say everything about Obamacare:

A middle-aged man in a red golf shirt shuffles up to a small folding table with gold trim, in a booth adorned with a flotilla of helium balloons, where workers at the Kentucky State Fair are hawking the virtues of Kynect, the state’s health benefit exchange established by Obamacare.

The man is impressed. “This beats Obamacare I hope,” he mutters to one of the workers.

“Do I burst his bubble?” wonders Reina Diaz-Dempsey, overseeing the operation. She doesn’t. If he signs up, it’s a win-win.

2. It seemed like a month would not go by without a similar letter of complaint to the paper. Examples here and
here and here.

Perhaps the most damning was from Barbara Rice, an attorney, who wrote:

"The writer, Jason Cherkis, pestered me to answer questions about my divorce, asked if I had sex with my boyfriend, and used profanities -- all in an apparent effort to have me say or do something inappropriate in response. When I didn't, he simply fabricated a quote to get back at me for complaining for his bad behavior towards me and discredit me if I were ever to say a word about what he did.

Even a famous musician (at least in D.C.) got involved. In 1999, Washington City Paper writer Jason Cherkis profiled the popular band Thievery Corporation. Jason Cherkis repeatedly referred to the group as "jet-setters."