That makes sense to me. I really enjoyed the personal anecdotes and I thought they made the article a lot stronger for me, but a dry gas mask review would have also been an excellent, albeit different, article.

No, it's actually you who is the one who is misunderstanding.

The product review, while it does stand on its own, is not the main purpose.

The point is to render absurd the incredulous comments from Pam Bondi, "How did these people go out and get gas masks?" Bondi did not ask this question to receive an answer, "oh, they go to Home Depot and get model X-54-Whatever." The point of her question was to cast aspersion on the protestors, to attempt to delegitimize their grievances by painting them as paid, professional agitators. It's the sort of "I'm just sayin'" bullshit rhetoric we've all had to deal with from racist uncles at Thanksgiving for the last 25 years.

Jeong's article works by failing to engage Bondi's comments on Bondi's grounds. Jeong's use of product review as a structure for her article is a conceit that treats Bondi's comments as a legitimate request for product reviews, side-stepping the concept that only paid professionals could ever know anything about gas masks, because information on the Internet is and wants to be free.