Just about Angela de Jong
Watching TV for your work and then writing a piece about it: a job that sounds like a dream, but in reality moves closer to purgatory. Because say goodbye with your hand to your social life and get ready to bend over backwards because as soon as you peek above the grass, it gets mercilessly cut down. Being a famous Dutch person is already a task, writing about them and then getting both the public (because everyone has an opinion and that's allowed) and the famous person in question to pour over you, that's a real job.
Enter: Angela de Jong. Love her or hate her, but a few things must be said.
1. She does it under her own name
No cowardly or humorously invented pseudonym where one day Henkie writes the column and the next day Saskia does. No, just Angela de Jong who gathers her words together every day.
2. She is smart
She followed a university study (coincidentally the same as mine: Film and TV Studies) but has always had a lovely, invisible batch of honor from winning De Slimste Mens that gives her an extra boost in tough discussions where no one dares to dismiss her as ‘the lady with an opinion’. The knives are often sharpened, but it is always a fair fight.
3. She is absolutely objective
Where many people are tempted by a nice fee of a few hundred euros for a TV program, Angela always shows up ‘for nothing’ from Rotterdam. And while she joins as an expert and doesn't really have anything to promote, except for her column, which is pretty much the most read part of the Algemeen Dagblad.
4. She is not afraid of the devil
Not of Gordon, not of John de Mol, not of Johan Derksen. She engages in conversation, sits at the table with the men of Vandaag Inside and remains calm, mature, and wise. She can also easily criticize someone she praised to the heavens the day before. Maybe not so cozy, but fair. And she never promised to get friendship tattoos with the famous Dutch people she writes about.
5. I often agree with her
Just as I ask myself the question ‘What would Jackie do?’ regarding style issues, I often think about media matters: what does Angela actually think about it? Often I find my agreement with the oracle from Rotterdam.
6. She has self-deprecation
Proof: her guest appearance last night at Even tot hier. The presenters warned each other when mentioning the name Johan Derksen: ‘Every time you say Johan Derksen, Angela de Jong comes around the corner.’ And there she was, for a funny cameo in their studio before she was kssssj-ed away again. That's just humor. And self-deprecation. Angela, when you're under fire again, I hope someone shoves this piece under your nose because I'm glad they still exist; people with an opinion and no anonymous account.
Image: BEAU
