That's the question that attaches to the following passage:

Here are some things you can do at the Maryland Renaissance Festival: You can drench a wench. You can hurl hatchets at tree stumps with red targets painted on them. You can ride elephants. You can participate in a game called rat-pucking, punting stuffed-rat toys across a lawn toward the gathered apron skirts of a matron assigned as the target. You can buy little puffy-tipped horns and walk around for the rest of the day with them attached to either side of your head, and no one will look at you funny. You can coast down a long wooden slide. You can't carry a sword, or even a realistic-looking fake, but you can buy a dull-edged wooden one to go with your knight's hood. You can attend lectures about Tudor-era crime and punishment, or medieval fashion. You (meaning you, legal adult) can walk around drinking a beer in what feels like a small town.

Well, the answer may not surprise those who've been following the new Washington Post Magazine.

The late-September re-launch of this not-that-storied publication was supposed to make it more friendly to both readers and advertisers. Shorter and lighter pieces, it was thought, would lead to a more profitable magazine, putting the Post a touch closer to viability in these terrible times for newspapers.

OK, fine. But do you really have to put the advertisement right in the article?

Photograph by PhotographLayne, Creative Commons Attribution License.

Washington is turning on all its institutions! The Burgundy Revolution is no longer stopping at Dan Snyder's door! (Though Sally Jenkins' column is.) TO WIT:

1) Washington Post Magazine chat turns into TOTAL BLOODBATH! Readers want to know: WHY DO THE ARTICLES LOOK LIKE ADS? WHY DID YOU USE THOSE FONTS? HOW IN THE HELL DID SECOND GLANCE MAKE THE CUT? Editors stammer, run inside, toss a Chuck Brown feature off the parapets. It's not gonna work!

After the jump, more evidence the whole town is going Montecore.

2) Thomas Boswell turns on the Nats, but maybe he's turning on all of D.C. when he calls it "the only top-10 market with the gall to act like a bottom-five town." REVOLUTION!

3) Cabbies in Adams Morgan turn on drunks! This is like Jason Linkins turning on bad writing!

4) The new Washington Post local homepage causes me to turn against remaining informed! Not because of the page, which I like, but because of this animated lady with a Smedneck accent who keeps popping up every time I return. Isn't there some kind of technology that ensures I see her only once?

What's next? A mob in front of Ian MacKaye's house demanding he apologize for Egg Hunt?

BIKE COMMUTING CORNER: Soon it will rain a lot. Get yourself some fenders. There are many expensive ways to do this, and I used to subscribe to them, but these days I'm high on the "chromoplastic" SKS fenders that you can pop on in a half-hour and that do just as nice a job as expensive French or Japanese ones that you need to pay some guy at City Bikes $30 to install after you nearly kill yourself trying to get a decent fender line that can be destroyed by a stick getting sucked up between your tire and fender. These will simply detach safely if that happens. Don't be the chump with the gnarvosis stripe up your back! Buy them from REI and they'll ship them to the store for free.

I gotta bounce! My sink is broken! Follow me on Twitter!

The big shots found a better recipient for a peek, as Washington media fiends found out today. FishbowlDC today prints full-on preview of the magazine, complete with killer information on new features and such. Matt Dornic, who wrote the item for FishbowlDC, says that the Posties were "very receptive to giving me an early look."

As well they should have been. Look at what Dornic said today about the new product:

Rave #1: "Inclusive."

Rave #2: "Editor Debra Leithauser, Art Director Janet Michaud and GM Jenny Abramson hit a home run."

Rave #3 (follows directly after Rave #2): "Flipping through the fresh but familiar pages of the new WaPo Mag is kind of like sitting down with an old friend for cocktails -- only, your friend got really hot since the last time you saw them."

Rave #4 (follows directly after Rave #3): "The features are fast but fulfilling reads. The tone is personal, not preachy. And the design is sexy yet sensible."

Rave #5 (follows directly after Rave #4): "The outcome? A truly solid product for Columbia Heights hipsters, McLean mommies and everyone in between."

Rave #6: "Date Lab, First Person Singular, restaurant reviews from food critic Tom Sietsema, Gene Weingarten's 'Below the Beltway,' Second Glance, Crossword puzzles and the insightful long-form pieces are still alive and well in the new WP Mag."

No way the Post ad department could have phrased it better.

If the Post mag people are half as good at journalism as they are at PR, this new publication will be more than just sexy, sensible, and solid. I, for one, am just going to take Dornic's word for it---this new publication is amazing, the best ever. In Date Lab terms, I am giving it a perfect "5."

A seasoned consumer of news had every reason to furrow a brow at the XX Files column in last week's Washington Post Magazine. The first-person essay touts the author's one-woman campaign against kiddie thieves in a local pharmacy.

Here's a sampling: "As the child scurries past me with his pilfered beverage, I reach out for the hood of his coat. I pull him in and press my hand on his back. 'Put it back,' I say. Though he's the one in trouble, my own heart races. A whimper seeps from his mouth; a gurgle of stuttered syllables follows. 'I'm s-s-orry. I'm s-sorry,' he repeats."

It's a powerful, well-told episode, but how do we know it ever happened?

First of all, the neighborhood isn't identified by name---only as a "well-to-do neighborhood of popular restaurants that serve not food but 'cuisine' and shrimp that is never spicy fried but 'Crispy Dangerous.'" The police officer hanging out at the store isn't identified by name---only as a cop whose "stern countenance is surpassed only by a severe haircut and biceps so chiseled that any squirming thief could be brought to his knees with one arm twist." The beverage being heisted by the kid isn't identified by brand---only as "orange soda."

Fanta? Sunkist?

One more: Not even the store is mentioned by name---only as a "chain pharmacy." And the Post didn't even attach one of those anonymity explainers here, which could easily have been worded as follows: "The chain pharmacy requested anonymity over fears that publicizing its troubles with teen pilfering could depress sales of Diet Coke."

And lurking behind all this anonymity and uncheckable data is columnist Wanda E. Fleming, author of one of the most embarrassing episodes in the mag's history. In January, Fleming wrote a column in the same space titled "Suspended Disbelief," about the travails of a friend's husband who'd been accused of child molestation by a girl. The man accepts a plea, spends some time in jail, and comes home to find out how it feels to be treated like a monster.

Except it didn't happen that way. The man hadn't accepted a plea agreement but, rather, was convicted in a trial. Another critical point: He didn't have just one accuser; he had "more than one" accuser, according to a black-eye-inflicting editor's note by the magazine's editor at the time, Tom Shroder. "The inescapable conclusion is that the man’s guilt was not as ambiguous as presented. No names were used, but the families of the victims only too readily recognized the circumstances and were understandably upset by the implication of the story," wrote Shroder.

Not exactly your garden-variety, Page A2 correction.

Weeks later, Fleming wrote a blog post about the problem with her piece: "In a 750 word 'personal essay,' much is omitted."

Despite all that, Fleming managed to regain favor at the magazine in time for her piece on petty theft from a pharmacy. One commenter wondered how she'd pulled it off so quickly:

This story asks us to believe an unverifiable anecdote; normally, that's okay, but this writer does not deserve that trust. In her last contribution to the XX Files just a few months ago, this writer totally misrepresented the facts about a child molestation case, resulting in a correction and an abject apology from the magazine editor in his column. What gives? Why are we supposed to believe this?

I put the "What gives?" question to Debra Leithauser, the current editor of the magazine. I asked whether Fleming was put through any extra paces, whether staff had checked out the pharmacy, whether the security people were interviewed, and so on.

This is the answer that came back: "As editor, I am responsible for what appears in the magazine. Right now, I am focused on the future, and we have an incredible new magazine launching next week."

As media critic, I am responsible for critiquing what has appeared in the magazine. Unfortunately, I cannot critique stuff that will appear in the magazine in the future, unless I am given access to galleys.

In rebuffing questions about Fleming, Leithauser is in good company. Questions in hand, I contacted Managing Editor Raju Narisetti (who oversees the magazine), Managing Editor Liz Spayd (who doesn't oversee the magazine), and Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli. The questions remain unanswered.

It's unclear whether the silence is the first step in the Post's implementation of the Brauchli Doctrine (i.e., newspapers spend too much time explaining themselves) or whether the Fleming issue is just too sensitive to touch.

Perhaps it's all just a resource question. The Post, after all, has suffered through four buyouts this decade, and maybe they don't have the people to fact-check any freelance columns, even one filled with anonymous characters and penned by someone who prompted an editor's note.

So I took it upon myself to track down this nameless pharmacy and figure out whether Wanda Fleming had ever nailed some fresh-faced kid trying to steal a generic orange soda. Fleming herself is listed as living near the Tenleytown commercial strip, and the "Crispy Dangerous" shrimp she refers to appears to come off the menu of a Thai restaurant in Tenleytown.

Next stop, Tenleytown CVS. I show the Washington Post Magazine story to a clerk at the store. He skims through, as customers pile up behind him. "That's what it sounds like," he says, acknowledging the problem identified in Fleming's column. He requests anonymity, like everyone else in this whole damn affair. When I ask him about the incident in which Fleming busts some kid, he says he doesn't remember it.

That means nothing, of course. No clerk can possibly monitor everything that goes down in a store. There are only two people who know whether that incident happened---Fleming and the unnamed alleged thief.

I head over to Fleming's house, hoping to have a long sit-down to discuss the incident and perhaps track down the boy and the cop---anyone else who can corroborate this story.

Fleming opens the door. I identify myself as a reporter for Washington City Paper and note that I've tried to contact her via e-mail and phone. Fleming closes the door, saying, "I'm not speaking to anyone."

His feelings about Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli aren't nearly as charitable. "Marcus should quit while he's ahead," says Mendelsohn.

What accounts for this rankling? Comments by Brauchli in Howard Kurtz's news-breaking story of Tuesday morning. In explaining why the paper didn't run Mendelsohn's piece on Lindsay Ess, Brauchli said this: "While the piece was beautifully photographed and nicely constructed, it was also similar to other pieces we had run in the magazine recently," Brauchli told Kurtz.

Just what pieces were those? Brauchli cited one such "similar" story in a Monday evening interview with me: A piece by Caitlin Gibson on a 13-year-old girl with dwarfism who was struggling to extend her limbs. "I'm not into hammering readers with repetitive stories on similar themes," says Brauchli.

First things first: The No. 1 editor at the Post appears to be committing what the towering former Washington City Paper Senior Editor Tom Scocca calls a "false plural." The limb-extension piece appears to encompass the entirety of his showcase of "other stories." A more precise articulation would have been "another story."

Second things second: Mendelsohn argues that the story of the 13-year-old undergoing limb extension and his story aren't actually similar. "I haven’t seen any other stories about a quadruple amputee who’s teaching fashion at VCU," he says. Comparing the two, argues Mendelsohn, shows an insensitivity to the handicapped. "It's lumping disparate disabilities in the same group....That's like saying we did a story about an Asian last year" as a reason for turning down further stories on Asians.

Maybe. Certainly Brauchli could have been more general on the matter, saying that the consensus among editors was that mag fare focused too much on death, destruction, and misery. But Brauchli's grouping together the two limb-related stories seems like a fair journalistic judgment. Readers don't make the fine distinctions that Mendelsohn makes about how his piece may differ from the other one. Their thought process goes more like this: Oh, another story having to do with arms and legs and pain.

Even so, Brauchli has been a touch schizophrenic in his references to Mendelsohn, switching between two distinct personas: Wise Executive Editor and Unwise Executive Editor.

Wise Executive Editor: "While the piece was beautifully photographed and nicely constructed, it was also similar to other pieces we had run in the magazine recently," Brauchli told Kurtz.

Skinny: Good move to credit the freelancer with good work. He's the little guy.

Unwise Executive Editor: "We're not running 10,000- or 15,000-word articles anymore. It's not because we don't value subtle writing and long-form journalism. But great journalism is not defined by story length or extended, novel-worthy dialogue."

Skinny: Bad move to discredit the freelancer. He's the little guy. Let's break this down into a couple of subcomponents:

a) It's true that Mendelsohn handed in a draft of about 10,000 words. That's what writers do after they've spent a year immersing with a subject. But when a freelancer hands in 10,000 words, it's not an "article," as Brauchli suggests, but rather a "draft." And drafts get broken down by editors, cut to pieces, shrunk, tightened, whatever. There are tens of editors at the Post who could have taken Mendelsohn's draft and distilled it into something far more digestible. For Brauchli to say length is an issue here is a pure cop-out.

b) Why is Brauchli slamming "extended, novel-worthy dialogue"? For one, he sounds like a traditional newsman hammering a precious, self-indulgent writer. Not too generous.

For another, why slam extended, novel-worthy dialogue? Seems to me I encounter some of that from time to time in the Washington Post. Just a few weeks ago, for instance, Post reporter J. Freedom DuLac did a fine story about D.C. lawyer Patrick Hand struggling to organize a tour for '60s band Love.

Here's an excerpt:

Steve Baenen, wearing a Deep Purple concert T-shirt, approaches the table where Hand has set up shirts, CDs and posters. His long hair pulled back in a ponytail, Baenen has made the two-hour drive from Green Bay, because "it's hard to find a trippy show anymore." He buys $30 worth of CDs. Hand gives him a concert poster that still lists the three original acts.

"What happened to the Prunes?" Baenen asks.

Hand: "Not enough advance sales. Not enough money to pay for everything."

Baenen: "That's a bummer, man."

Hand: "It is a bummer."

Now that's novel-worthy!

Brrrr.

This week's shocker: Erik actually enjoyed "One Ring Circus" from the Post magazine's wedding week edition. Wonder what the Sexist would say....

Meanwhile, the burning question: will the In Towner ever see "the warm side of [our] divide"? Tune in next week to find out....

Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube version.

Last week, the Washington Post Magazine debuted the "XX Files," a weekly feature that will spotlight personal essays by female writers. The first piece was awesome---a story about how bullshitting can land you naked in a Finnish embassy sauna, by local poet Sandra Beasley. In an online chat today, Beasley and Washington Post Magazine editor Sandy Fernandez answered some questions about the new column.

Beyond the usual fanfare and old-middle-school-classmate appearances, the chat also featured questions from readers wondering if designating a feature specifically for women writers was a bit, well, regressive:

Falls Church, Va.: Isn't XX Files a bit of a throwback to the days when Style was the "For And About women" section? In 2008, do we really want to present women's voices as something Other---something separate from "normal" voices---to be segregated and literally put in the back of the magazine?

and

Washington, D.C.: Is it just me, or does the XX Files read a bit like those old "Women's Sections" I've read that newspapers used to have? The ghetto's updated for the times, but it's still a ghetto.

Fernandez's response: "I think there is a limiting aspect to 'ghetto' that isn't there for 'XX Files.' In the olden days, they said the Style section was a ghetto because it was the 'only' place in the paper that published women, or published on topics of interest to women. These days, we welcome women in all sections of the magazine. Except for Gene's page--that's strictly a Gene ghetto."

I think the feature's great; I'm interested in any writing about women's issues that manages to avoid "When Your Boobs Act Weird" and "The Girlfriend Habit That Will Deepen His Love" territory. What do you think: Should the Post send this feature back to the kitchen?