DANIEL J. FLYNN: Before GQ’s Writer Got Duck Dynasty’s Phil, He Got Me.

Magary’s Deadspin piece on my Values Voter Summit speech begins, “The first thing I saw was the abortion truck.” “Let’s start with the crossbow, because the crossbow is huge,” reads the opening line of his GQ article on Phil Robertson. It’s not just the strange stylistic similarities–the informally abrupt announcements, “The first thing” and “Let’s start with”–that jump out. The substance of both opening lines amounts to the same cautionary note to the urban, metrosexual readership: the subject of this article is not like you. So, rather than understand or debate him, let’s point and laugh. Magary highlights a cultural lightning rod–abortion in one instance, weapons in the other–to proclaim his subject’s status as “the other.”

Drew Magary’s identikit articles, imposing the same template upon very different subjects, reflect a joyless, assembly-line writing that shapes subjects into precast molds instead of understanding them as unwieldy individuals prone to sending long-form journalism into unanticipated and interesting directions. Ideology has that cookie-cutter effect on writing.