"I never know what I'm going to do for the Post next. Two weeks ago I had a piece on Homeland Security. This is one of my pig ongoing projects. How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack"
About this Quote
The most revealing word here is "pig" - almost certainly a mangled "big" - because it accidentally captures the muddle the quote is trying to dignify. Quinn is performing a familiar Washington-media posture: the columnist as perpetually surprised by her own output, guided less by a reporting agenda than by the churn of the next slot. "I never know what I'm going to do...next" reads like spontaneity, but it also telegraphs a system where attention is reactive, topic-to-topic, crisis-to-crisis, with institutional memory outsourced to individual personalities.
Dropping "the Post" is credentialing shorthand: this isn't just writing, it's writing from inside the capital's prestige machine. The name stands in for authority, access, and a certain claim to national relevance. Then comes the swerve into Homeland Security and terrorism preparedness, a subject that, especially in the post-9/11 media economy, carries built-in gravity. Quinn frames it as an "ongoing project" - a phrase that signals seriousness and continuity - yet the timeline ("Two weeks ago") makes the continuity feel more like episodic programming than sustained investigation.
The subtext is less about terrorism than about the columnist's role in narrating it. By emphasizing "how unprepared we are", she positions herself as both alarm bell and concerned citizen, tapping a durable civic anxiety. It's a neat rhetorical move: the writer can claim urgency without needing to specify evidence, because the fear is already culturally preloaded. In that sense, the quote isn't just about national security; it's about how Washington talk converts diffuse dread into publishable purpose.
Dropping "the Post" is credentialing shorthand: this isn't just writing, it's writing from inside the capital's prestige machine. The name stands in for authority, access, and a certain claim to national relevance. Then comes the swerve into Homeland Security and terrorism preparedness, a subject that, especially in the post-9/11 media economy, carries built-in gravity. Quinn frames it as an "ongoing project" - a phrase that signals seriousness and continuity - yet the timeline ("Two weeks ago") makes the continuity feel more like episodic programming than sustained investigation.
The subtext is less about terrorism than about the columnist's role in narrating it. By emphasizing "how unprepared we are", she positions herself as both alarm bell and concerned citizen, tapping a durable civic anxiety. It's a neat rhetorical move: the writer can claim urgency without needing to specify evidence, because the fear is already culturally preloaded. In that sense, the quote isn't just about national security; it's about how Washington talk converts diffuse dread into publishable purpose.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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