Well you might be beatring your wife, which might be continuous and if so might indicate you have a wife-beating problem, and so when will you stop?
UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh wrote:
Well you both are making the large assumption of black being the key factor here, and further that white reporters have been, as a class, treated differentially.
Your string of hopeful ifs, rather transparent in their prejudices, are just that, ifs.
Please re-read your own post, Collounsbury. We were responding the Safire, who made a hypothetical comment based on that assumption. We both prefaced our comments with the word, “if”.
Safire’s comments came in the context of an overall fair minded assessement, yours are clealry reaching for some justification to continue your habitual smearing. Your “ifs” are an entirely different thing. Thsu my wife beating comment.
I see. Safire made an incorrect statement, but that’s OK, since it was in the context of fair-mindedness. I pointed out the inaccuracy, but that was an unfair smear. Whatever.
I guess that’s why Cecil’s masthead is
**FIGHTING IGNORANCE (except when the ignorance is in the context of fairmindedness) SINCE 1973 ** 
december, the “freude” in “Schadenfreude” means pleasure or joy (the “schaden” means damage). Why, might I ask do you feel joy or pleasure in reading of this incident?
In any case, to the extent that you do, you are most certainly feeling “schadenfreude,” which literarally means, joy in another’s damage or suffering. The idea of this being a guilty pleasure is optional: reflecting, perhaps, Safire’s high-minded assumption that anyone feeling such a thing would be a bit guilty about it. You may not be as high-minded as Safire would like his fellow conservatives to be; but you are nonetheless (by your own account) feeling schadenfreude.
I’m glad Safire’s around to testify for the quality of the Times’s reporting which, while fallible and inevitably subject to bias on both sides of the spectrum (since Times reporters en masse are far from the reflexive liberals some would take them to be), deserves to be taken seriously. I’m also glad–and not surprised, given that he’s an old-fashioned conservative–that he recognizes the benefits that diversity brings.
This is a sad incident: I suspect that no one thought Blair would do such a self-destructive thing knowing, as he had to have known deep down, that he’d eventually get caught. That’s not to exonerate a bureaucratic structure that needs fixing to prevent this kind of situation, nor any individual(s) who may have cut more slack than should have been cut. But it is to say that what motivates this kind of behavior is very complex and it certainly shouldn’t be spun as some predictable outcome of an affirmative action policy. It takes almost as much ingenuity, and sometimes as much effort, to invent and to plagiarize what appears to be a good story as it does to resarch and write a good story.
[sub]A little schadenfreude of my own I think it’s quite hilarious that Safire thinks the editorial page for the Times is leftish on economics–which it hasn’t been for about ten years–and quite baffling that he thinks civil liberties are an economic issue 
Well I guess when you’re a conservative, anything to your left may count as “leftist”–I’ve certainly seen lefties make the same mistake. [/sub]
december, do you really think you have earned the reputation on these boards of being thought fair-minded?
As I already said, I feel pleasure in the exposure of this scandal because I think it will lead to improved journalism. Also, I think that Sulzburger, Raines, and Boyd have been doing a lousy job of managing the paper. However, I’m very impressed with the Times’s approach to laying out the entire problem for the world to see.
Do you have any examples of bias on the right at the Times?
I agree that this is not a consequence of affirmative action in general. However, it may be a predictible outcome of the Times’s version of affirmative action i.e., within their culture and management style. E.g., [one Times reporter "called Sunday’s article a “whitewash” of how management - particularly Raines and Boyd - allowed Blair to work over several years despite dozens of published corrections of his work.
‘People felt that management had not been held accountable enough, and the story downplayed their culpability,’ said the reporter, who singled out Raines’ high-handed management style as a key to why Blair survived at the paper for so long."](http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/75604.htm)
There’s no reason why one cannot have minority outreach while maintaining or improving standards. The US military has done so. It’s much more integrated (racially and sexually) and much more effective than it was a generation ago.
Safire wrote: “The Times’s editorial page, which is dovish on defense, leftist on economics and (with the exception of civil liberties) resolutely wrongheaded.” As I read it, Safire meant two separate thing: the Times editorials are wrongheaded on everything except for civil liberties. The Times economic view is leftist. He didn’t say that civil liberties is an economic issue.
I grant you the Times doesn’t extol socialism. However, their editorials generally agree with the Democratic Party on economic issues. E.g., the current tax cut debate.
No, you do not, you spin.
Safire advanced an opinion that under a certain set of circumstances might be incorrect - I hardly think Safire’s libertarian sentiment that Times management was free to value diversity of its work force as a strength and promote it can be reasonably construed as meaning it is free to engage in legally discriminatory practices.
However it does speak volumes to your prejudices that you can twist it this way.
No, you siezed on a means to turn it into yet another occasion for you to beat a certain drum with a string of highly prejudicial ifs to reach a conclusion.
I think all fair minded readers can easily read your freude, which has not even the grace to have the guilt.
Look, I was disagreeing with Safire’s legal point. I said it was a quibble. I didn’t disagree with him about the value of diversity. In fact, I strongly agree as to the value of diversity.
P.S. I have been reading the New York Times for over 50 years. It is the most prestigeous paper in the country, and perhaps the most prestigeous in the world. It’s incredibly difficult to create an institution of such high quality as the New York Times. It took many decades of effort by innumerable reporters, editors, etc.
I am heartsick over what I see as a decline in quality under the current management. I think the management has earned their embarassment. And, I think the embarassment will lead to journalistic improvements.
Collounsbury you are too intelligent to stoop to veiled accusations of racism.
This is not at all an obvious deduction. Even though you marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the late '50s, I gotta question your motivations if this is an obvious deduction to you.
The obvious deduction, I think, is that his tremendous personal charisma played a role in his hiring, which the article does specifically say.
Indeed, I found the article’s emphasis of Blair’s race to be reprehensible. Imagine if a white editor hired a white reporter who engaged in the same con games. Do you expect that the article would mention the reporter’s race over and over and over again? What if a Jewish editor hired a Jewish reporter: can you imagine the same level of emphasis on race?
Evidence may come out that Blair’s race figured into his hiring (no, a speech mentioning him as a prominent black reporter doesn’t count – that’s equally likely to be after-the-fact self-aggrandizement on the part of the NYT). Until that evidence comes out, it is highly inappropriate to conclude that his race was a significant factor.
Especially when the article mentions his tremendous personal charisma. If you’ve ever dealt with a con artist in the workplace, you’ll know how dangerous that charisma can be.
Daniel
december, very briefly as I have a busy day.
As to civil liberties: you’re right. Safire’s sentence was ambiguous but I see now that he probably didn’t intend for the parenthetical statement to apply to “economics” but only to “leftish.” Usually he’s a clearer writer than that! (The truth is that civil liberties are such a complicated issue that it doesn’t break down into right vs. left. Many conservatives are much less libertarian than are many liberals. But whatever.)
As to economics: no the Times’s editorials on the economy aren’t left at all; and neither are the Democrats. Under Clinton mainstream Democratic party economics shifted to fiscal conservatism. I guess these days its fair to call fiscal conservativism “mainstream” or “center” but that’s as far as I’m willing to go.
There isn’t anything left at all about current objections to Bush’s taxcuts: in fact it’s largelhy to do with a fiscal conservative doctrine that some leftists disagree with under certain circumstances: the idea that a balanced budget is paramount. Putting that aside, the list of objections to the taxcuts is that they 1) that they’ll increase the deficit dramatically 2) that they won’t stimulate the economy as they’re being said to and 3) that whatever jobs they will create aren’t, therefore, worth the costs. It’s a straightforward cost/benefit analysis based on fiscal conservative doctrines and, to a degree, on empircal knowledge of how the economy works. Any honest economist, including conservatives, will tell you that these taxcuts won’t stimulate the economy: Bush’s own CBO said as much, and Alan Greenspan is clearly not on board. That’s also why you have so many Republicans balking at these taxcuts.
The more left objection to the taxcuts is to do with their regressiveness and the fact that the so-called double taxation on dividends is nonsense since a lot of these corporations aren’t paying any taxes to begin with due to loopholes and IRS laxity. But you will not find the NYT editorial page making much of this at all. (Krugman does; but they do not; and the articles by and large either subordinate or ignore the issue.)
As to evidence of a right/conservative slant on economics, yes I do have good evidence. Though it’s to do with the reporting not the editorial page.
This is one of my favorite columns: every week [url=http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7759Dean Baker, a left-liberal economist goes over the week’s reporting in the NYT and WP and comments on what he thinks is accurate and what isn’t.
Just read your last post on preview december. All I can say is, “gavolt.” Gotta run.
My accusation is neither veiled nor stooped. It is to the point: you have an obsession on the point of AA and on the point of liberals, and also the Times.
There may well be a solid argument to be made on poor internal controls and hubris, and maybe even on AA in the Times. It would be better if not done on innuedo.
Darn! Here’s Dean Baker again.
I agree.
The point is we can only imagine it. In fact, I don’t know of any comparable case, where another reporter was hired by the Times without even graduating from college and then retained on staff and promoted after a number of instances of fraudulent reporting became known to management.
The lengthy Times article was a bit contradictory. It denied that race was a factor, but it also said that he was hired out of an internship program that was used for minority outreach.
There’s no question that his charima played big role in this scandal.
Collounsbury, perhaps you think the National Press Club also has an obsession on the point of AA in the media, since they gave their 2001 award to McGowan’s book, **Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism. **
No, that’s not the point. That would be the point if the NYT had hired three or four con-artist reporters and they’d all been black reporters hired by black editors. But when it’s happened exactly once, the point is that we haven’t even circumstantial evidence that race was a factor in these poor decisions.
There’s plenty to lambast the Times for in this case, including gross mismanagement. I agree that senior management needs to get a real shakeup over this. But until we see evidence that AA played a role in helping this liar keep his job, we shouldn’t make assumptions.
Daniel
December, I think the problem is that Race was one of, if not the first reasons you pointed to as why this happened. Without any other evidence and plenty of “if’s” and “seems”.
Your argument is seems to be, and please correct me if I’m mistating you, that because of Blair’s inexperience and errors, the Times (editors) must have been using “diversity” as their main reason for not firing him. That in keeping him on, they felt that they were ‘protecting’ diversity.
I would agree with that, except they were other non-white reporters to chose from, NY is not a black-free zone. They could have quietly let Blair go and replaced him with another QUALIFIED person and still lived up to their committment.
They didn’t…why? Because he was black? Sorry, I don’t buy it. The only reason you keep someone unqualified on, is if firing them will hurt you more than letting leave on their own. Diversity can be replaced, pride can’t.
He conned them.
I say that they were proctecting THEMSELVES. That the Times (editors) were covering their own asses. That once they figured out they were conned, the “marks” decided to keep their mouths shut to avoid embrassment and losing their own jobs.
Using race as a reason why this happens…misses the main issue. The brakedown of the various quality control measures in reporting. It’s now a business of pretty faces and double-dealing…something that Race plays little part in.
Race is misdirection.
You are right that I merely assumed that diversity was an issue. One reason was that the field of journalism has had documented problems in this area. A number of such instances are described in the award-winning book Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism.
Note that the the problem could have stemmed in part from the way diversity was handled at the Times. It may have messed up the management process to a degree.
E.g., the Times has called this “communications problem”, because in some cases people who knew about Blair’s past faults didn’t tell his current manager. Or, to put it another way, the current manager didn’t ask the past managers. It’s conceivable that the managers’ inaction might have been encouraaged by a perception that they could be getting themselves in trouble by getting involved in a contentious issue involving an minority.
No question about that.