BASHING BLACK CONSERVATIVES: Henry Hanks alerted me to an excellent article from The Wall Street Journal on the different ways right-leaning and left-leaning blacks are portrayed in the media. It's written by the always engaging John McWhorter, and his subject is the vastly different tone in two recent articles in the Washington Post -- a profile of Clarence Thomas and a profile of Cornell West:

Ms. Washington paints Mr. West as a man of confidence, ending with him crowing: "If they wanted to get someone they could crush, they got the wrong Negro." Messrs. Merida and Fletcher quote similar statements by Justice Thomas but can't let him speak for himself, instead asking: "If Thomas is unbothered by the harsh judgment of him, why does he spend so much time talking about it?"

I get it: Mr. West, whose response to a tough session with his boss was to turn tail, is a Strong Black Man. Justice Thomas, who has withstood years of withering profiles like this one, is a weak sister.

McWhorter gets right to the heart of this particularly ugly form of media bias:

Worse is that this bias is largely unconscious. The journalists and editors behind such pieces are neither rabid ideologues nor committed advocates. Guided by a tacit sense that the "authentic" black cries victim and the "compassionate" white plays along, they inevitably see dumping on Justice Thomas as neutrality incarnate, although they would surely bristle to see black public figures like Anna Deavere Smith or Randall Robinson submitted to such treatment in print.

It's a strong piece from one of our smartest writers about race. For more, check out McWhorter's work for the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.

SUING BLOGGERS: The National Review reports today on a case that all bloggers should watch closely: a libel suit against a blogger.

The Rose vs. Johansen dispute demonstrates how quickly passionate polemics undertaken by ordinary people on the Internet can unintentionally become a serious legal matter. Sandra Baron, a lawyer and executive director of the Libel Defense Resource Center in New York, says amateurs voicing their opinions on the Internet have brought on an "astronomical" rise in civil libel suits in recent years.

"It's obvious that individuals are unaware of the risks of libel and invasion of privacy, and don't realize that what they're saying on these websites could set themselves up for libel lawsuits from individuals and entities from around the world," Baron says. "We've gotten a number of calls here, either by or on behalf of individuals who had no idea that what they were saying on these chat boards and blogs could subject them to litigation."

The article also steers readers to sites where bloggers can get bare-bones advice on libel laws.

'THE LEFT & 9/11': Here's an interesting article from The Nation. It's a thoughtful study of the confusion that has swept the Left in the wake of last year's terrorist attacks. The Weekly Standard noted this piece the other day, and Lee Bockhorn wrote an equally thoughtful column on The Nation's article. Here's an excerpt:

As a conservative, I'm certainly not shedding any tears over the left's post-9/11 crisis of belief. Yet I'm almost--almost--compelled to sympathy when reading Shatz's tortured chronicle of leftist angst and confusion. It's not everyday that an event occurs that is so consequential that it literally pulls the rug out from under one's essential beliefs about how the world works. (Of course, you might think that leftists would have been prepared to deal with such an intellectual crisis, having had to confront the ignominious collapse of communism barely more than a decade ago. But why confront such challenges, when you can retreat to the snug ramparts of tenure?)

The first generation of neoconservatives was famously described as "liberals who had been mugged by reality." Unfortunately, even the most honest of today's leftist thinkers seem prepared to endure many such muggings, even on the massive scale of September 11, rather than admit what the neocons eventually realized: On almost every important question--whether touching upon the unchanging limitations of human nature, the fragility of social institutions, or the messy necessities of a serious foreign policy--the left was (and is) just wrong, plain and simple.

Both articles are well worth your time.

SO LONG, BOB GREENE: I'm sure everyone has heard that Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene, owner of one of the worst toupees in the history of journalism, was forced to resign after admitting he'd had improper sexual contact with a teenage girl a couple of years ago. Well, here's a follow-up that says he'll probably have a tough time finding another newspaper job. (You've got to wade through virtually the entire article to get to the "nut graf.") And I liked this comment from a Chicago radio personality who was running an "audio blog" about Greene's newspaper work:

Popular radio host Steve Dahl, who, with Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, made comic fodder of Greene's often-sentimental columns in a weekly "Bob Greene Watch" segment on WCKG-FM (105.9), said he was surprised by Sunday's announcement.

"I always thought he'd get fired just for being a bad columnist," Dahl said.

If I remember correctly, wasn't Dahl one of the guys behind the "Death to Disco" rally at Comiskey Park in 1979 that turned into a riot?

HELP FIGHT BREAST CANCER: My mother died of this terrible disease several years ago, and science is still a long way from a cure. But you can help. Susanna Cornett will be taking part in the Race For The Cure this weekend, and she needs donations. Please give. It's a most worthwhile cause.

DIVERSITY UPDATE: The Las Vegas City Life explores the lack of diversity in Sin City newsrooms. It's the same stuff we've been hearing for years -- lack of skin-tone diversity is a bad thing. But the mind-set that animates that idea, which has been elevated to sacred-cow status in our culture, is flawed. Let me attempt to explain why.

To believe the diversity experts, journalists "of color" bring a unique set of experiences that differ so radically from the experiences of white Americans that the presence of minorities in the newsroom is vital.

Now, no one is arguing that we should block minorities from newsrooms. I simply want the hiring process be fair to everyone involved, and too often it is not. The heart of the matter is this: What is the essence of that mythical, elusive, "African-American experience"? Far too often, it simply boils down to any experience or tenuous connection to a history of discrimination. Now, this may have been true 30 years ago, but in our modern world, where racism is the gravest American sin and our society has been radically changed and improved by the civil rights movement, this is a simpleminded approach. Albert Murray nailed the evolution of this victimist attitude more than 30 years ago in The All-American Skin Game:

Blackness as a cultural identity was all but replaced by blackness as an economic and political identity -- or condition, plight and blight. U.S. Negroes, that is to say, were in effect, no longer regarded as black people. They were now the Black Proletariat.

It's been my experience that many white newsroom managers still seem to regard all black people as part of this mythical Black Proletariat, even if the minorities they try so strenuously to hire are invariably from middle-class or upper-middle-class backgrounds that differ very little from their own. They are black people who we can safely assume have not faced the obstacles that were placed before their parents and their grandparents, so they bring very little in terms of experiences with brutal racism to the table. They are expected to simply express a monolithic "blackness" that echoes the sociological certainties of white liberals and their black allies.

But what about the "cultural diversity" aspect of the argument? It seems to me that the best aspects of the black American experience are already the heritage of all Americans. Indeed, they define what it means to be an American of any color in many important ways. Stanley Crouch wrote about it eloquently in his excellent The All-American Skin Game:

Just as it is quite easy to see how Negro style has affected our music, our language, our humor, our dance, and even our ways of walking and performing sports, we cannot deny the impact Afro-Americans have had on this country's movement toward the realization of the ideals that cluster in the heart of our democratic conception. In a long and tragic series of confrontations, black Americans have had to scale, bore through or detonate the prejudicial walls that have blocked access to the banquet of relatively unlimited social advancement that we acknowledge as the grand inspirational myth of American life.

Crouch also takes a shot at the idea that newsroom diversity is required to "inspire" minorities:

Nothing in my own experience or in the experience of Afro-Americans I have met or read about corroborates the idea that, to any significant extend, people of color are capable of being inspired only by their own race or sex. To suggest that is to distort the heroic engagement that defines Negro history, a good measure of which has always been about struggling with any exclusive conception of human possibility or human identification.

And there you have it. Mainstream American culture is already staggeringly diverse, largely because of the 400-year presence of Africans on these shores. The drive for "diversity" actually has more to do with the redistribution of wealth than anything cultural, and those who claim otherwise are simply being dishonest.

'A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER': Andrew Cline, proprietor of the excellent Rhetorica blog, points out a Richard Cohen post-9/11 column that is very moving. Check it out. And please add Cline's blog to your links. He brings a scholarly perspective to the issue of media bias, particularly when he points out that there's more to bias than mere political inclinations.

STILL MORE ON 9/11 AND THE MEDIA: Yesterday, Jay Nordlinger spoke at a conference in Greece on the media in the post-9/11 world. National Review published his remarks today. Here are some of the best excerpts:

Above all, I think that covering and commenting on this war has meant an end to pretending — an end to pretending that everyone's a friend, or potential friend, that every grievance is just, that a certain kind of hatred can be appeased, that America is to be blamed for humanity's woes, that radical Islam is just another viewpoint, that there is never right and wrong, only personal subjectivity. When the prime minister of Italy said that a free, open, pluralistic society is better than a closed, stifled, lied-to one, everyone professed shock and indignation. This is the kind of pretending that gets harder to do.

And this:

I must say that I've become less patient in the last year — less patient with an unthinking anti-Americanism; less patient with an absurd moral equivalence, or abdication, in the mainstream media. Shortly after September 11th, the head of ABC News declared that it wasn't for him to say whether the attack on the Pentagon was justified. (After criticism, he backtracked.) The New York Times published an article about a homicide-bomber and one of her victims: "Two Young Lives," said the headline, "United in Tragedy." Famous intellectuals like Guenter Grass declared that 9/11 represented the comeuppance of the rich.

This is the sort of thing for which all my patience is spent. I think a robust — even bristling — impatience is now the appropriate stance.

Just go read the whole thing.

MORE 9/11 FOLLOW-UPS: Jonathan V. Last of the Weekly Standard looks at some of the best -- and worst -- writings that came out on the anniversary of Sept. 11. He's got the links to prove it. Well worth your time.

9/11 WRAPUP: Editor & Publisher has a roundup of how the nation's major newspapers handled the Sept. 11 anniversary. Check it out. I read the special section the Los Angeles Times published yesterday, and thought it was very well done. (It was in one of the bathroom stalls at work, which was strange; usually, there's a New York Post.)

BEAM HIM UP: Alex Beam (no, not this guy....I think) jumps on the "conservative pundits have more fun" bandwagon with this piece.

Is it true, to paraphrase the famous Clairol marketing campaign: Do conservatives really have more fun? The answer is yes, incontrovertibly so. Who would you rather be? Me, plodding through errands on my bicycle, sporting my pathetic ''One Less Car'' T-shirt, or one of the many SUV drivers who blast exhaust in my face as they roar off to fill up on cheap gas?

Of course, the rest of the piece is predictably snide. Beam suggests that conservative pundits are having more fun because they're not doing any serious work, and he has nothing to say about their liberal counterparts who do the same. In particular, he makes Paul Krugman out to be a paragon of journalistic virtue, when there are a couple of bloggers who have made it a part-time job to regularly dissect his offerings. But Beam makes it a fun read nonetheless.

THAT FATEFUL DAY: I don't have any dramatic stories about running from a building in flames or anything. My story of Sept. 11, 2001 echoes those of the vast majority of Americans.

I was on vacation with my family in Cherry Grove, S.C., a beach town on the quieter north end of South Carolina's Grand Strand (that's Myrtle Beach, if you're unaware). The Amazing Techie Girlfriend couldn't make this trip; she was working in Arlington, Va. -- approximately 1 mile from the Pentagon.

I awoke at a little after 9 a.m. on that fateful day. I staggered into the den of our vacation house and, out of force of habit, clicked on the TV. There, on every channel, was the World Trade Center on fire. It was difficult to tell what had happened, because news anchors were talking via phones with eyewitnesses. My sister came into the den a few minutes later, and I said, "Hey, check it out. A plane hit the World Trade Center." She looked at the screen and said, "MM...that says planes hit World Trade Center. Planes. More than one."

That's when the knot began to turn in my stomach.

A few minutes later, a news flash said the Pentagon had been hit.

The knot grew even tighter, because my girlfriend was way too near to that site. I immediately tried to call her, via office phone and cellphone, but had no luck getting through because the lines were overloaded. I wouldn't get through to her for another six hours.

When the first tower collapsed, my stepmother and her daughter began to sob uncontrollably. My stepsister's husband, a police officer, seemed deep in thought, perhaps realizing that his job would have required him to be in that building. My father, sister and I simply stared in disbelief. When the second tower fell, amid TV discussion that 200,000 people worked at the World Trade Center complex, I knew that this would be the most horrific event in our history. It was certainly the most terrible thing I'd ever seen. We all thought that there were 50,000 bodies buried under that rubble, and perhaps 1,000 more at the Pentagon.

We continued to stare at the TV in shock for a couple more hours, and I kept trying to call my girlfriend. Couldn't get through. My sister, who lives about 35 miles from Cherry Grove, suggested I take a ride out to her house to help her feed her dogs. I went, because she has a computer, and I would use it to try to e-mail my girlfriend.

The drive over was surreal. The weather that day on the South Carolina coast was not like the perfect morning we had seen get defiled along the upper East Coast. It was overcast and gray. But what was really bizarre was the radio. There were no commercials. There was no music. Every station had gone over to news coverage, either their own or one of the TV networks'. That's something I've never experienced in my lifetime, and hope I never experience again.

When we got to my sister's house, I continued to try to call the girlfriend. Still no success. I jumped on my sister's computer and sent out e-mails to my girlfriend's various accounts, and waited an hour for a reply. There was none. I tried to assure myself that she was safe, and that she was simply quite busy.

We drove back to Cherry Grove, and no one in the house had left their spots in front of the TV. I went straight to the phone, and finally reached my girlfriend. She was fine. She was very upset, and understandably so.

She saw the Pentagon explode.

She had co-workers who were on the freeway that runs next to the Pentagon when they saw the plane slam into the building. Flying debris had damaged a coworker's car.

I told her to be strong, and that I was coming back there tonight. She insisted that I stay with my family. (I stayed that day, but ended up cutting the vacation short because I was worried about her.)

After a couple more hours of TV watching, the family decided to go out to eat. We went to a cafeteria that specializes in the comfort food we'd known our whole lives -- fried chicken, turnip greens, macaroni & cheese, fried squash and okra, corn bread, iced tea and pecan pie. The place was full of diners, but very quiet. It was like a dinner party after a funeral.

It was 7 p.m. It was the first food I'd eaten all day, but it provided little comfort. The knot in my stomach wouldn't go away for several days.

It's back again today.

But it won't be for long. We have rebuilt the Pentagon. We have defeated the Taliban. We have killed or arrested hundreds, maybe thousands, of potential terrorists. We're stronger and more united than I can remember in my 36 years.

We will triumph. It won't be easy, but we will.

God bless America.

HIGH-TECH MOONING YIELDS MORE THAN 2,500 HITS: Earlier today, I posted a gag photo of myself bending over a la Dawn Olsen in an attempt to show off my, uh, assets and garner more hits. And I'll be damned if it didn't work. Some bloggers, including Glenn Reynolds (who steered the vast majority of those hits my way), questioned whether this stunt was going to damage my credibility. (Being an anonymous blogger, I have next to none of that anyway, according to a lot of people out there.)

I think they're missing the point I was trying to make.

What I was trying to do was tweak Dawn's nose over the suggestion that male bloggers harbor some sort of sexist bias against female bloggers, and also to remind her and other bloggers not to take themselves and their blogs so seriously. Allow me to explain.

One of Dawn's complaints was that the big-time male bloggers didn't link to her and drive more traffic in her direction. I found the charge doubly ironic considering 1) she posts nude and semi-nude photos of herself regularly on her site, virtually GUARANTEEING that people who aren't linked to her are going to stop by and look on a regular basis and 2) her statement that her blog averages something like 600 hits a day WITHOUT the benefit of an Instapundit link. By way of comparison, I'm linked on Instapundit and only average about 200 hits per day. I think the main reason I'm not getting more hits is because I'm not posting as much as I was when I started this thing back in January, and I quit blogging for a while back in April. In fact, I nearly gave up blogging.

That's where the "don't take yourself too seriously" part comes in.

I ceased blogging because I was burned out on it. From January to April, I posted 7 days a week. Lots of long essays and such. I enjoyed it, but I came to realize that it felt too much like a job -- and my regular job is stressful enough. So I quit. I posted an announcement to that effect, put together a "best of" post, and went back to living.

But then something wonderful happened. After a couple of days away from blogging, I got a ton of supportive e-mails from fellow bloggers saying, "Come back." Glenn Reynolds wrote, basically saying "Don't give up yet; I've just added you to my blogroll!" I rescinded my blogging resignation, but I decided to post less material, and to post less often. Now, I post just a couple of items a day, and I only blog 5 days a week -- Monday through Friday.

I'm glad I stepped away from life-or-death blogging. Yeah, I still check my hits a few times a day, but I've come to realize that blogging is just a hobby -- nothing more. Sharp political and social commentary is wonderful, and I've enjoyed all the great writing I've read over the past year, but you can't take yourself too seriously. Hence, a couple of beers with the Amazing Techie Girlfriend and a discussion of Dawn's outburst led to some high jinks with a cheap-ass digital camera and the plumber's-buttcrack shot that graces the post below.

And that's all I have to say about that. Regular blogging resumes tomorrow, a somber anniversary of one of America's darkest days. Go forth and blog appropriately, but remember -- on Thursday, life returns to what now passes for normal. Blog accordingly.

Or not.

SHORTEN YOUR REPUTATION-SAVING LETTER, PLEASE: The "Weekly Standard" has an excellent, in-depth piece on the New York Times' coverage of anthrax "person of interest" Stephen Hatfill. David Tell looked through some of the documents Hatfill's lawyers have to back up their client's claim of innocence. Besides time cards proving Hatfill was working in Northern Virginia on the days the anthrax letters are believed to have been sent from New Jersey, the most interesting documents are the letters to the Times' editorial department. Hatfill's lawyers tried repeatedly to get column inches to rebut the accusations of Nicholas Kristof, only to be met with silly pronouncements to the effect that "sorry, we don't allow letters to the editor to exceed 150 words."

Amazing. Here's a guy accused of a heinous, unprecedented crime that had the entire nation on edge last fall, yet his efforts to refute those charges are treated in the same manner as a crank who is complaining that they took "Apartment 3-G" out of the funny pages.

'ASS' THEORY PROVEN CORRECT: I was right. If you post a picture of your ass on your blog, you can get linked to the Instapundit and your hits will go through the roof. Thanks for the inspiration, Dawn! Now it's your turn. More ass shots, please!

EQUAL BLOGGING OPPORTUNITY: In light of today's recent debates regarding sexism in the Blogosphere, I felt it only necessary to provide a little balance in the coverage -- or uncoverage, if you will.

Yo, Dawn! Puffy ain't never had any of this either.

BRAVE JOURNALISTS: I know it's not something you hear about every day, but Deroy Murdock honors the brave men and women who ran toward the World Trade Center disaster to report it to the world. It's a good piece; check it out.

FUGITIVE UPDATE: "Editor & Publisher" plays catch-up on the story of the controversy that engulfed the Philadelphia "Daily News" after it published photos of fugitives wanted for murder and all of those wanted turned out to be minorities.The new angle: a "Daily News" columnist criticized the paper for twice apologizing for reporting the truth:

In an ironic turn, the Philadelphia paper received criticism from one of its own columnists -- not for running the photos but for apologizing. Michael A. Smerconish wrote, "The capitulation of the Daily News does nothing but prove that, as a society, we remain unwilling to broach any subject that involves substantive dialogue about race." Smerconish also called the resulting discussions and protests over the photos "a bogus debate" because it ignores the issue of why so many of the fugitives were black.

And why are we unwilling to talk honestly about tough issues such as race? Because it is exceedingly unpleasant to be called a racist, and calling people racists while avoiding painful solutions seems to be the main thrust of the modern civil rights movement. This echoes a Stanley Crouch column that I blogged way back in February. In a piece published in the "Los Angeles Times," (sorry, link has expired) Crouch wrote:

Between 1994 and 1999, 45,000 black men and women were murdered in this country. Do we ever hear the civil-rights establishment address this? Hardly. What we hear about is "warehousing" young black men in the penal system, the racist nature of our courts, "stigmatizing black youth" or "the stereotyping our young" by mass media. This suggests that the only lost black lives important to our professional protesters are those taken at the hands of white cops or white racists.

Amen to that.

A ROUGH YEAR: The "American Journalism Review" looks at the amazing roller-coaster ride of "The Wall Street Journal" over the past year. The paper's headquarters, located across from the World Trade Center, was so heavily damaged that the staff were forced to work in temporary offices for months. Then came the murder of Daniel Pearl. Then came a wave of corporate scandals.

It's time for a vacation.

GREAT POWERS: I'm swamped with duties today, including tending to an ailing car, so I've got just one item. As usual for Friday, it's William Powers' "National Journal" column on the media. This week, he looks at the "Sept. 11 fatigue" that seems to be gripping many journalists, and he tells them to get over it:

Skepticism isn't just a personality quirk of journalists; it's a core value, the wellspring of all our best work. But there's smart skepticism and dumb skepticism, and as we near the fateful date, let's try to keep them straight. In one sense, we media people have an unusually clear understanding of the coverage -- it's our stuff, after all -- and are uniquely qualified to condemn it. We know all too well the motivations, including competitive and monetary ones, that lie just beneath the surface of everything we do. Let's face it, for us, Sept. 11 is more than a historic event. It's one of those rare, world-changing stories that can make a career -- a potential source of rich prizes, book and movie contracts, and all the other goodies that add up to media fame and fortune. In short, it's a professional opportunity. This crass reality is no secret, but we're more aware of it than most people, because we live with it every day. And it colors how we view our own work. When hundreds of people are crawling over each other to sell their Sept. 11 product, as they are now, a little jaundice is healthy.

But just a little. The problem with much of the Sept. 11 queasiness is that it's based on a false model. I refer to the O.J.-JonBenét-Princess Diana Theorem, which says that the greater the mass appeal of a story, the more likely it is journalists will cover it to excess. A corollary holds that all such stories inevitably become larger than they deserved to be.

This model holds up pretty well when you're talking O.J. and JonBenét, but Sept. 11 is an entirely different kind of story. Some news events are so enormous, so rich in authentic human significance, that it's actually not possible to exhaust them. They include all the great wars and revolutions, some natural disasters, and a handful of other events in which good and evil seem to be vying in various guises, with the fate of huge numbers of people, even entire civilizations, hanging on the outcome. Why, after all these years, do people still snap up books and watch movies about the Civil War and the Holocaust? A first-class story always remains a first-class story, no matter how many times you come back to it.

Y'all have a good day. And pray that I don't need a new alternator.

SOUTHERN HYPER-LIBS: I've been following Andrew Sullivan's discussion of Howell Raines as an example of a Southerner who tries to be "more left than left" to fit in with his northern colleagues. I don't know if that's necessarily the dynamic here.

Most liberal Southerners (and I was one of them for many years, as was my mother) tend to overcompensate in one specific area: race. Given the shameful history of the region, it's understandable, but it can be cringe-making to observe.

The best response I've seen to Sullivan came from Geitner Simmons, proprietor of the excellent Regions of Mind blog. (I'll be adding it to the blogroll momentarily.) In this post, he brings up an important point: The presence of Raines and others could also be attributed to a long and honorable history of crusading Southern journalists. He cites Hodding Carter, Ralph McGill and Jonathan Daniels. To that list, I would add a name that is generally associated with just one influential book: W.J. Cash, author of "The Mind of the South." Beginning in 1935, Cash worked for several years at the "Charlotte News." In the introduction to the 1991 Vintage edition of "South," Bertram Wyatt-Brown writes:

The Charlotte News was one of the South's most liberal-minded papers. Cash's lively articles exposed the depravity of lynchings, the appalling record of poor policing, homicide, and poor health conditions in Charlotte's African-American slums...Moreover, he favorably reviewed the fiction and poetry of authors associated with the Harlem Renaissance as a way of challenging white notions of black intellectual inferiority...Recognizing his talent, the owners of the News promoted him to associate editor in 1937.

For more on the Southern-lib newspaper tradition, I recommend Albert Murray's excellent "South to a Very Old Place." It's a delightful, stream-of-consciousness travelogue through the American South circa 1970. During his journey, Murray swings by Greensboro, N.C., to talk about Jonathan Daniels with Edwin Yoder (who later moved on to the "New York Times" and greater fame). He goes on to visit journalists in Atlanta, where Ralph McGill crusaded for desegregation. Later, he visits Greenville, Miss., to meet Hodding Carter. It's an immensely enjoyable book, all the more so because Murray, a black man, joyously embraces the universality of his Southern heritage, a heritage he rightly views as mulatto rather than strictly segregated despite a history rife with violence and injustice.That aspect of Southern life -- the cultural miscegenation that went on for years, and continues to this day -- gets lost when the focus is solely on the horrors of slavery and discrimination, but it's very humanizing, and it should be remembered and celebrated.

RIPPING THE 'TIMES': Michael Ledeen blasts the "New York Times" for clueless reporting on the fragile political situation in Iran.Check it out.

It should not be necessary to remind our leaders, in government and in the media, that Iran is the mother of modern terrorism, the creator of Hezbollah, the protector of al Qaeda, the engine of Islamic Jihad, and the supporter of Hamas. The president has given three magnificent statements about the evil of the Iranian regime and the bravery of the Iranian people. Both as a matter of national strategy and as a question of national honor, we should be helping the Iranians battle their oppressors, just as we supported the Yugoslavs against Milosevic and the Poles against the Kremlin.

Failure to do so will cost us heavily in the coming war. In the past few days, an additional 200 al Qaeda terrorists entered Iran via Zabol. The Iranians are providing them with false passports, with which they will travel to Lebanon to join their comrades. Their intentions are not known, but they will swell the growing ranks of a terrorist army in Lebanon that can be deployed against American armed forces, or against Israel. The Iranians have provided their new ally, Saddam Hussein, with a substantial number of missiles, and they have recently opened a new front company in Dubai to lease about two dozen Bell helicopters which, when cannibalized, will provide spare parts for more than a hundred Iranian helicopters that have been grounded for years.

Yet the American government contents itself with occasional speeches from the president, and the New York Times regales us with fairy tales about a make-believe Iranian pol.

Faster, please.

BREAKING THE LAW: The "Boston Globe" has a follow-up to one of yesterday's most interesting news stories: the smuggling of weapons onto airplanes by reporters from New York's "Daily News." There's some tut-tutting from airline representatives (big surprise there) and a journalism-ethics-type person (who cares).

Personally, I think this is a great story. Obviously, surreptitious newsgathering should only be done in extraordinary circumstances, but after Sept. 11, we should all realize the danger that hijacked jumbo jets can pose. Here's what "Daily News" editor-in-chief Edward Kosner said:

''There's a compelling national interest in doing this,'' he said. ''Technically, you're breaking the law, but there's no intent to break a law. This is a serious issue and a serious moment, and, all things considered, this is the right thing to do.''

Obviously, different people will have different ideas about what a "compelling national interest" is. But the weapons-smuggling story, in my opinion, fulfills the media's watchdog function. By forcing the airline industry to be accountable for their security issues, it could lead to safer flying in the future. And that's good journalism.

THEY WERE THERE: "Editor & Publisher" has first-person interviews with journalists who were in close proximity to the World Trade Center attacks last year. It's a powerful testimony to the horrors of that day.

A NEW BLOG: Welcome the Sabertooth Journal. Check it out.

WE'VE GOT PAGES TO FILL -- FIND THAT BACKLASH! The "Wall Street Journal" has a piece on the media's obsession with the mythical "Arab backlash" that is expected to break out any day now. And he points to a far-too-typical double standard that has surfaced:

Soon after Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were identified as the culprits in Oklahoma City, they were linked with the far-right militia movement. And that in turn sent the press baying after conservatives, religious fundamentalists, anti-big-government libertarians, Rush Limbaugh and anybody else with whom they disagreed. ...The media can claim that they were only doing its job after Oklahoma City by investigating the possibility that the bombing may have had a broader social significance. Just three of America's leading newspapers, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, have run at least 400 articles chronicling the militia movement since that attack, according to one quick search of the Lexis/Nexis database.

But would the Times, or any other paper, turn the ... formula around to ask what they might have missed by focusing so intently on the "nuts" during the past eight years? It has been no secret, for example, that many Arab-American groups were maintaining close ties with Palestinian and Muslim terror groups, yet not much was written about it. And you might think last week's indictments would trigger some sharp questions about how four young Arabs could operate so freely in America, much less inside the secure area of a major metropolitan airport....Yet on the same day the indictments were announced, one Detroit daily gave equal play to a story headlined "Metro Arabs Question Charges," quoting an array of local Arab-American leaders who worried that the grand jury's action "wrongly fuels hostility against Arabs," in the paper's words...But if four members of the militia movement had been indicted for plotting attacks on innocent civilians, it's unlikely their friends would have been able to find space anywhere in the American media to lament the "discrimination" against them. The right wing, as well all know, is paranoid. All others are potential victims of plots to take away their civil rights.

THE REAL BEVERLY HILLBILLIES: Here's a story I missed the other day. It seems CBS is planning to create a reality-TV version of "The Beverly Hillbillies." Rod Dreher of the "National Review" heaps some well-deserved (and deliciously politically incorrect) invective on the idea:

How charming. Ship the toothless poor white trash in from Appalachia, set them down amid immense luxury, and watch the dopes make inadvertent fools of themselves in front of the rich and beautiful. The Real Beverly Hillbillies they're calling it. Some fun that'll be. Yes sir, southern white people — the kind who tend to own guns, believe in God, love their country and vote Republican — are Hollywood's niggers.

As a Southerner working in a northern environment, it continually amazes me how prevalent these attitudes still are. When I first started my job, I had several co-workers comment on my accent or come over and ask me really silly questions. For example, they assumed I was an expert on country music (I'm not; I like it more than I used to, but don't know a whole lot about it) or that I was intimately familiar with huntin' & fishin' & shootin' (I've never been hunting, and I've only been fishing once or twice in my life; I don't own a gun, and can count the number of times I've fired one on my right hand). When I'd tell them that I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in a large Southern city, they seemed disappointed rather than surprised. It's not as if they aren't aware that such places exist. Instead, it's almost like they were hoping I'd have been raised in the kind of colorful small town they've read about in novels. Sorry, folks; I'm more "Brady Bunch" than "Dukes of Hazzard."

WE'RE SORRY WE REPORTED THE TRUTH PART II: Here's a story I missed the other day before I started my long weekend. Remember last week's story on the "Philadelphia Daily News" apologizing for reporting the unfortunate fact that all of the city's current fugitives wanted for murder are minorities? Well, the paper has done it again. This time, it came in the form of a formal apology from managing editor Ellen Foley that appeared in the paper's news pages. (It was published amid pressure from something called the Coalition for Fair News Coverage.) Check out this surreal passage:

The front page photos from last Thursday sent the message to some readers that only black men commit murder. That was a mistake.

In addition, the stories didn't address a key question: Why are there no white suspects on the loose? That also was a mistake.

Our first story should have looked harder at this question. The Daily News apologizes for the error.

So now we must have affirmative action for murder suspects so that minorities don't get their feelings hurt. And once again, the message is clear: Never underestimate the power of white guilt. For the umpteenth time, take it away, Bill McGowan.

GREAT POWERS: Once again, William Powers of the "National Journal" has an excellent column. This week, he looks at the disconnect between columnists at big-time papers and their counterparts at smaller outfits. At the smaller dailies, editorialists view the coming conflict with Iraq very seriously -- regardless if they're for it or against it. On the other hand, columnists at the big-time papers regard the whole thing as a game, part of the never-ending whirl of politics and commentary.

MORE ON LEFTY-RIGHTY: Jack Shafer has an excellent follow-up to that piece I cited yesterday on the comparison between "The Nation" and "The Weekly Standard." It's a look at left-leaning journalists who are envious of the fun their right-wing counterparts are having:

The image of Powers tapping covetously on the window of the right-wing funhouse is a thing of wonderment. But he isn't the only envy case out there. The Nation's Christopher Hitchens, whom Powers applauds in his piece as one of the few "memorable" Nation writers (along with Alexander Cockburn and John Leonard), consummated his right-wing envy in the '90s by switching sides on a few key issues. The left-talking, right-hitting Hitchens infuriates the left rank-and-file by excoriating Bill Clinton as "corrupt," opposing abortion, and supporting war against "Islamic fascism."

Go read the whole thing. It's great. And while you're at it, check out this link from John Rosenberg, proprietor of the excellent Discriminations blog. He used to work for "The Nation," and he discusses his experiences there. And check out the passage he slipped by the editors in 1991. It's downright subversive, John.

AGAINST THE 'POST': "The Weekly Standard" blasts "The Washington Post" for "burying" a story on the sheltering of Al-Qaeda operatives in Iran. Christopher Caldwell makes some good points (the Post's story has some fascinating information that could cast doubt on Iran's degree of cooperation in the war on terror), but I believe he doth protest too much. For one thing, I'm not terribly surprised by this news. After all, we know bin Laden's cronies are operating freely in areas of Pakistan, and they're probably doing the same in other countries, too. That's not to say we shouldn't be pressuring Iran to be more cooperative, but it's a pretty thin reason to bash the Post. Here's why:

But none of these is the big shocker of the Post story. The big shocker is that it ran in the middle of the front page, below a story about how Washington, D.C.'s bid for the 2012 Olympics had failed. You cannot get more parochial than this. The Post gets the scoop of the year and buries it under a human-interest story that wouldn't make page one if it had occurred in Jefferson City, Missouri ("Show-Me State's Olympic Dreams Dashed"). Did anyone seriously think D.C. had a chance?

I haven't seen the front-page configuration of the paper, but I think that's still pretty prominent front-page play. Shoving it inside would be burying the story. And the Olympics? Heck, I thought D.C. had a hell of a chance to get the Games. Either way, that's a huge story for the Post's core readership.

TIMES-BASHING: Cynthia Cotts of the the "Village Voice" claims conservative charges that the "New York Times" is using its influence to turn public opinion against a U.S. attack on Iraq are unfounded. Basically, she says, "So what?" and "Bravo." She also claims that conservatives are doing a little spinning regarding Henry Kissinger's recent comments in which he appeared to be coming out against attacking Iraq. (Did the Times commit an "error" when it compared Kissinger's position to Brent Scowcroft's? Or was it doing its own spinning? I dunno. I don't have time to look into it today.) Check it out.

UPDATE: "The American Prospect" has a longer look at the Kissinger controversy.

A 'NATION' CHALLENGED: Via Romenesko comes this link from "L.A. Weekly" that compares left-wing rag "The Nation" to right-wing rag "The Weekly Standard." The winner? "The Weekly Standard."

In his embarrassing new book about Stalinism (he discovered it was murderous), Martin Amis shrewdly observes that the fall of communism liberated his pal Hitchens' writing by ending its ritual genuflections and obligatory defensiveness. The Nation itself enjoyed no such liberation. And so, rather than rethink the possibilities of a "progressive left" (to use one of its prize terms), the editors have remained content to belabor what its readers already know (e.g., Bush is a bum) while avoiding tough-minded journalistic coverage of the left. It settles for easy analysis, like suggesting that Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney lost her renomination bid simply because of the Jewish money sent to defeat her. Is this really true? The left would be better served if the magazine investigated such claims rather than merely assuming their truth, although this would involve actually going to Georgia.

Just go read the whole thing.

BILL IS DUE: I'd like to welcome a new blog with an awesome name. It's Bill's Content (get it?), and it's the product of Bill Dennis, a veteran journalist. Check it out.

SIGNORILE WATCH: Michelangelo Signorile takes on Mickey Kaus and bloggers in his latest screed. It's another example of the dishonesty and hypocrisy that characterizes so much of his work.

First, he praises Media Whores Online (!?) as a place to find truthful political commentary:

As irreverent and provocative as MWO is, however, everything on the site is accurate, if coming from a clearly and admittedly liberal perspective. It doesn’t traffic in the broad distortions for which the vast right-wing conspiracy is famous. I suppose that might be considered a matter of opinion, one that should be taken with a grain of salt coming from someone left of center (so check it out and make up your own mind). But one thing that is absolutely true of MWO is that you won’t find anything even remotely close, in terms of an incitement to violence, to the rants of Ann Coulter and her legions.

Henry Hanks was all over this yesterday, and there's not a whole lot more I can add the excellent research he's done to refute Signorile.

Siggy then takes aim at bloggers, specifically Mickey Kaus for a recent post that suggested we may see a rise in political violence from the left because of the conservative tack the country has taken in the wake of 9-11. Kaus based his post on some outrageous comments he saw on left-leaning message boards. Here's what Siggy wrote:

Kaus’ downward progression, however, should be a lesson to all bloggers. He is an example of the lazy, self-indulgent and arrogant whirl that bloggers can spin themselves into over time, pressured to continually pump out quick, cuter-than-cute and/or inflammatory copy, in the hopes that something, anything will stick in a Web world in which what you wrote yesterday–or a few hours ago–is already at the bottom of the page or maybe even archived in the bowels of the site....If that kind of guilt by association is the standard we’re all to use, then what are we to say about Slate and Mickey Kaus himself?

"Lazy, self-indulgent and arrogant...quick, cuter-than-cute and/or inflammatory...in the hopes that something, anything will stick...guilt by association." As we'll see, the parts highlighted in bold more accurately describe Signorile's own work over the past few months.

For example, he suggested that John Walker, the "American Taliban," was driven to hate his homosexual father -- and into the arms of the Taliban -- by "the ingrained, religion-based hatred of homosexuality in American society." Apparently it wasn't possible that the far more ingrained, much more deadly religion-based hatred of homosexuality that manifests itself in radical Islam was what undermined Walker's liberal, Marin County upbringing. (Indeed, almost every column Signorile writes serves to tar conservative Americans -- roughly half the population -- through guilt by association with the worst fringe elements of the religious right.)

Another example: Signorile claimed that because Gary Bauer and other right-leaning pundits are on TV at all, the entire case against liberal media bias is a myth.

Yet another example: In a tour de force regarding the "arrogance" of the Bush administration, Signorile claimed Judge Charles Pickering was "an extremist who cannot be trusted to uphold civil rights" when even the liberal "Washington Post" editorial page was claiming such criticisms were beyond the pale. In the same piece, he called the use of nuclear weapons the Pentagon's "secret wet dream" and dubbed the brave fighters of the Northern Alliance "human shields" that the U.S. "used" in a cowardly manner to overthrow the Taliban.

But perhaps the ugliest example came in mid-May, when Signorile, writing about the assassination of Dutch right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn, ignored the Nazis' mass murder of homosexuals in order to score political points against American conservatives:

In much of Northern Europe, where homosexuality has been far more accepted for far longer and has been met with little political resistance, you can even be gay and be a right-wing fascist (just like Ernst Rohm, Hitler’s SA chief in the Nazi Party, was). So trotting out Fortuyn’s homosexuality as proof of anything is relatively meaningless.

Absolutely unbelievable. As I pointed out in my post on the subject:

Ernst Rohm may indeed have been homosexual, and it's rumored that others in Hitler's inner circle may have been deeply closeted gays. But even high school students know the Nazis sent thousands of European homosexuals to their deaths in concentration camps. Indeed, they were among the first groups rounded up when Hitler assumed power. Has Signorile forgotten that the little pink triangle he might wear as a source of "pride" is the symbol the Nazis forced homosexuals to wear in the death camps? It was the equivalent to the yellow Star of David that Jews were forced to wear. It's amazing that a writer so interested in the gay experience could have forgotten about that.

Signorile also claimed David Brock's "Blinded By the Right" is above reproach in a piece where he called Matt Drudge a "nasty faggot" and completely ignored overwhelming evidence that Brock had been a pathological liar since at least his college days.

Signorile obviously has a right to say whatever he pleases, but when he starts criticizing people for excessive political rhetoric, it's important to remember that he's one of the very worst offenders, a shrill propagandist who engages in nasty Stalinist tactics and does little to elevate political discourse in this country.

BATTLING BIAS: Romenesko links today to a piece from "Philadelphia Weekly" about Herb Denenberg, a gadfly who has been pestering the "Philadelphia Enquirer" about what he sees as the paper's anti-Israeli bias. It's a pretty good read, but it has some problems. Denenberg is presented as a bit of a loon and a loose cannon affiliated with a right-wing Jewish organization (the Zionist Organization of America). Meanwhile, the opposing view is offered by the Palestine Media Watch, which is presented as a highly professional organization that's just trying to set the record straight.

Apparently, groups like this aren't worth contacting for a story about media bias and the Middle East. Just let one zealot spouting conspiracy theories speak in their place.

STUPID STUFF I'VE OVERHEARD AT WORK: Here's Part II of my series. (Check out Part I here.)

THE SCENE: A midsized newspaper in the American South a couple of years ago.
THE SETTING: A hard-working copy editor (me) is laying out Page 1 on a Mac. The constantly meddling, Michigan-raised executive editor is, as usual, hanging over the copy editor's shoulder like impending death, observing every keystroke. He's oblivious to the "Dilbert" comic strip taped to the monitor that depicts the Pointy-Haired Boss screaming "Click it! Click it now!" as he hangs over Dilbert's shoulder. But this guy is irony-proof and charm-free, so what can you do?

ME: (typing word "preconceived" in headline)
EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Hoo! Say, don't you think that's kind of a big word? I mean, you might could use a word like that if we were a little further up Nor...
ME: (prudently nonchalant, but with slightly raised eyebrows) I'm sorry?
EXECUTIVE EDITOR: (ass-covering, backpedaling tone in voice) I mean, I just don't know if that word is, uh, appropriate for our core readership.
ME: (a native Southerner trying to control rage, doing a pretty damn good job) Well, I don't think it's that big a word...
EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Well...
ME: (trying humorous approach) I mean, we get all those letters from those retired English professors who wish we used more "sophisticated" language in the paper. Ha. Ha. Ha.
EXECUTIVE EDITOR: OK, I guess. We'll let it go. Yeah, let it go.
ME: Alrightee then!

 
Progressive journalism: It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?

MORE ON POLICE-MINORITY RELATIONS: I received an e-mail from the mysterious Strib Watcher yesterday with more information on that melee in Minneapolis after the police accidentally shot a young boy. I'll reprint the e-mail in full:

You might want to compare an aspect of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's coverage of the riot (or, if you like, "melee") to the St Paul Pioneer Press'.

The Pioneer Press reported the allegations of Don and Sondra Samuels, residents of the north Minneapolis Jordan neighborhood:

Don and Sondra Samuels, who have lived in the neighborhood for four years and have picketed against drug dealers in the house where the warrant was executed, went to 26th and Knox as soon as they heard about the problems.

"The raid (by police) was absolutely legitimate," Sondra Samuels said.

The Samuelses, who are black, were upset that they heard "a lot of race rhetoric. This was a race riot," Sondra Samuels said.

"There was a comfort level in the crowd with the violence that was taking place," said Don Samuels.

"It was a little bit scary the way the police withdrew," Don Samuels said. "If I were a law-abiding white resident and the police withdrew like that I would feel abandoned."

"I heard some scary language," Don Samuels said. "Clearly this was not my community talking. Those people giving voice to the community were totally anathema to the life I want to live."

(Here's the link to that story.)

While the Star-Tribune did publish a picture of Samuels, they did not report this claim. But that doesn't mean at least one Strib columnist didn't interview him:


Doug Grow: Seeking easy answers again

Don Samuels, a black toy designer who lives in Jordan with his wife and two children, says my theory is superficial.

Samuels is an activist, one of those who wanted the house that police raided closed down. He doesn't like thugs of any color. He supports the police.

(Here's the link to that story.)

Interesting. But not what the Pioneer Press reported, either.

The media should give people like Don and Sondra Samuels more coverage. If the police begin neglecting certain parts of American cities in order to placate "activists," the victims will be people like them.

COMMENTS RETURN -- FOR NOW: I've signed up with Haloscan, and it was pretty painless. We'll see how long it holds up.

BYE BYE, COMMENTS: My experiment with blog comments is over for the moment. I had a service up and running the other day, but then started getting the "comments temporarily unavailable" thingee on my posts. Well, I visited the company's Web site, and it's gone. Maybe I'll try another service later.

WATCHING THE 'WASHINGTON POST': That's the job of Postwatch, and he's all over it with this entry comparing the fawning, dishonest coverage given to an anti-white slavery reparations rally the other week to the no-holds-barred, honest reporting of an equally racist neo-Nazi rally. Good work, Postwatcher.

WELCOME TO DISCRIMINATIONS: Here's a blog I highly recommend. It's Discriminations, and it deals with many subjects that crop up frequently on this blog. Welcome, John and Jessie.

SOMEBODY LOVES COPY EDITORS: It's Dr. Ink of the Poynter Institute. In a short piece, he makes some excellent points about the importance of copy editors to newspapers. But the funniest comment came from a poster in the reader's forum:

I've been in the biz since 1987 and have yet to see a sexy copy editor. They're hunchbacked mutes who live at home with their widowed mothers and eat an early supper at the same diner every day and order the same thing every day.

Ouch. I have to admit that I see a bit of myself in this comment. Not the hunchback, living-at-home part, but the eating-an-early-supper-every-day part. In my former job, I was forced to eat dinner at like 4:30 or 5 p.m. every day, and I had a rotation of three or four diners that I frequented. Some of my co-workers thought this was quite funny. I was just trying to do what I had to do to get the paper out.

It's not like that nowadays, though. No sirree. Yep, I eat at my desk every day, because I'm that slammed.

BEATEN JOURNALISTS SPEAK: Romenesko has a couple of follow-ups to the story of the reporter who was covering last week's race riot in Minneapolis and caught a beating. This story features a couple of talking heads dispensing shibboleths of liberal racism:

Tim Gleason, dean of the University of Oregon's school of journalism and mass communication, offered two explanations for why journalists become targets. "One can't ignore the simpler answer which is these reporters just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," Gleason said. But he suggested race can play a role in such incidents. "White reporters can easily become a symbol of the white establishment," Gleason said. Thursday's incident involved mostly white journalists entering a mostly black community. "Does the minority community view these papers and TV stations as part of the community or as not representing their communities?"

Hmm. Mr. Gleason sounds like he's coming dangerously close to suggesting that beating up reporters is the best way to influence media coverage of "neglected" communities. (He certainly doesn't seem too upset about it.) Robert Mugabe would understand. But an actual working journalist had a nice rejoinder to this:

Scott Libin, KSTP-TV news director, on Friday voiced frustration in finding a balance. "Had we not covered the shooting of this child, would that have shown more respect for the community? We're there to tell the story of what happened."

Another academic from the Poynter Institute offers this classic apology for violence:

Angry people don't split hairs about journalistic objectivity. "I think that in a moment of indiscriminate violence, people default to the least common denominator. And that would be race," said Keith Woods, who teaches coverage of race relations at the Poynter Institute, a St. Petersburg, Fla., school for journalists. "It wouldn't have mattered at that point what those folks were doing. (The assailants') idea of what it means to be a journalist could include everything from Jerry Springer to … National Enquirer," Woods said. "They don't see the champion of the little people. Their idea of what a journalist is is so diffuse. It's not enough to stop a brick."

It's hard to imagine Mr. Woods so casually dismissing the beating of a black reporter by a mob of white racists. I think what he's actually saying is this: Black Americans are little more than children. They are a defective people because of the pervasive racism of this society, so we can't expect them to behave in any other way. Indeed, we should understand it and accept it, not judge it. Albert Murray described this attitude in his excellent "The Omni-Americans."

"So barbarous is the anthropologial value system to which contemporary American social science seems to be geared that so far as the technicians who survey Negro communities are concerned, people without affluence and power are only creature-like beings whose humanity is measured in terms of their potential to accumulate material goods and exercise force with arrogance...It demonstrates again that other Americans, including most American social scientists, don't mind one bit what unfounded conclusions you draw about U.S. Negroes, or how flimsy and questionable your statistics, or how wild your conjectures, so long as they reflect degradation."

In a related story, here's a piece on a female reporter in Minneapolis who received a savage beating 10 years ago in a situation very similar to the recent riot. In the 17th graf, we discover this little nugget:

Franklin Powell, then 17, was convicted of assault and served prison time for the May 1992 attack on Sandidge. In an odd twist, it was Powell's dog that was shot and killed by police Thursday and his cousin, Julius, 11, who was injured.

There are a lot of unanswered (or unasked) questions here. Was it Powell who released the pit bull on the police officer, causing him to shoot the dog and leading to the ricocheting bullet that hurt a young child? Seems like an important aspect of the story to me.

WE'RE SORRY WE REPORTED THE TRUTH: Pathetic. A day after running a front-page story on fugitives wanted for murder in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia "Daily News" is apologizing. Why? Because all 27 fugitives in the story were either black, Hispanic or Asian, and that didn't sit well with many minorities in the city.

Attorney Sharif Street, the mayor's eldest son, said yesterday's front page would make life tougher for every young, African-American male in Philadelphia. "I'm not so much focused on the text of the story but more on the imagery of the front cover," said Street, 28. "It damages the quality of life for the average male my age because it portrays us as the enemy of society."

He's got it wrong. Murderers like those pictured in the newspaper damage the "quality of life" for poor black people far more than the police and media do. The Daily News should be applauded for going to extraordinary lengths to identify these killers, and this story should be hailed as an example of great public-service journalism. But that won't happen. Instead, it's possible the Daily News will back away from tougher crime coverage out of fear that they'll offend the same minority communities that disproportionately suffer at the hands of black and brown criminals.

Take it away, Bill McGowan.

'JESUS FUCKING WEPT': Editors and writers often have a testy relationship. It's part of the business. Reporters will complain that some minor change to their oh-so-perfect prose ruined the entire piece. Editors will point out that said passage didn't make any sense, and making sense is Job 1 in the news business. Generally, things end well. But sometimes they don't. Here's an example.

A journalist by the name of Giles Coren wrote a book review for the "Guardian" that included the following sentence:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Very clever. All 26 letters of the alphabet in a 35-letter sentence.

But an editor changed it to "The quick brown fox jumps over A lazy dog," making it a into a 33-letter sentence. Here's Mr. Coren's response to the crime. (Thanks to Tim Blair.)

REPORTER COMMITS SUICIDE: I was saddened to read about the death of Allen Myerson, the "New York Times" reporter who jumped to his death from the roof of the Times building in Manhattan. The "New York Post" is reporting that he was having marriage and financial problems.

RON ROSENBAUM GOES TO J-SCHOOL: And he doesn't like what he sees:

But I do think much of the debate I’ve seen has been on the wrong question. You have the snobby litterateur types who say, in effect, "I’m so smart and talented that I never needed anything as plebeian as journalism school." And then you’ve got the reverse snobbery
of "I came up from copy boy to coffee runner at the police shack, and the only real school for real journalists is Experience."

My feeling from my experience at J-schools is that what most needs to be examined is not the existence of J-schools per se, but the kind of unexamined assumptions about nonfiction writing, about truth and "objectivity," that one can find deeply embedded in what is taught about journalism....I’m not the only person to observe it: Recently a friend of mine, a very successful and gifted editor who often interviews and works with J-school graduates, summed it up quite eloquently when he said, "They beat the voice out of them."

If you're interested in this sort of thing, read the whole piece. It's worth your time.

'ALL THE NEWS THAT IS FIXED TO PRINT': That's the great closing line from this "National Review" piece, which piles on the "New York Times" for its slanted coverage of a possible Iraq attack. But deeper in the story is an interesting (and new) angle on the Times' bias regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

On July 30, the editors ran an op-ed by Peter Hansen, the director-general of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA). The piece was an unusually open and quite craven plea for money, Hansen arguing that UNRWA is the best vehicle for relieving the humanitarian suffering of innocent Palestinians. Hansen made several claims in the piece — the standard UNRWA party line — most of which were patently false.

But most readers could not have been expected to detect Hansen's mendacity, again for reasons of short memories and wholly understandable information deficits. Specifically, they could not have been expected to know that Hansen led all cheerleaders in mid-April in the campaign to invent a "massacre" myth over Israeli military operations in Jenin. This is what he said in an official UNRWA press release, dated April 18: "I had hoped that the horror stories of Jenin were exaggerated and influenced by emotions engaged but I am afraid these were not exaggerated and that Jenin camp residents lived through a human catastrophe that have few parallels in recent history." In other words, Hansen tried to persuade the world that, even after there was time for early reports to be vetted, a "human catastrophe" with "few parallels in recent history" had occurred in Jenin.

Knowledge of Mr. Hansen's activities regarding Jenin would have given New York Times readers some background against which to judge his op-ed contention that UNRWA "is committed to ensuring that its installations remain free of militant activity." I offered this background to the Times in a letter to the editor. I thought it the least I could and should do; for some unexplained reason, however, my letter was not published.

Of course, in the liberal universe that is the Times newsroom, the U.N is always a force for good in the world, so its causes should be promoted unquestionably.

MINDING CHICAGO'S MEDIA: Via Romenesko comes this column, a critique of Chicagoland media by "Chicago" magazine. The first item is the real grabber. It's about how two newspapers, presented with the exact same Census information, reached dramatically different conclusions:

Sun-Times headlines:
“Boom Shared By All Races in Chicago”
“Unlike in New York, Economic Surge Here Benefitted All, New Figures Show”
“Lincoln Park Becomes Wealthiest Community”
“Prosperity Spread Across City in 1990s”
“All Racial Groups Took a Piece of the Pie”

Tribune headlines:
“Rich ’90s Failed to Lift All”
“Income Disparity Between Races Widened Greatly, Census Analysis Shows”
“Not All Shared in Boom Decade”

Sun-Times lead:
“Lincoln Park is the city’s wealthiest neighborhood, while development on Chicago’s south and west sides more than doubled income levels there, new census reports show.”

Tribune lead:
“The economic boom of the 1990s bypassed poor minority communities in the city, as many predominantly black neighborhoods on the South and West Sides remained mired in poverty as deeply entrenched as a decade earlier, according to 2000 census data released Tuesday.”

Very interesting...

FANTASY IDEOLOGY AND 9/11: The terrorists of 9/11 weren't fueled by abject poverty or other material causes. They were carrying out a grandiose public-relations campaign, aimed at the Arab street, to showcase the righteousness of their cause. Because of that, we must seriously re-evaluate our goals in the war on terror. That's the fascinating thesis behind this long essay from "Policy Review." Some highlights:

The terror attack of 9-11 was not designed to make us alter our policy, but was crafted for its effect on the terrorists themselves: It was a spectacular piece of theater. The targets were chosen by al Qaeda not through military calculation — in contrast, for example, to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — but entirely because they stood as symbols of American power universally recognized by the Arab street. They were gigantic props in a grandiose spectacle in which the collective fantasy of radical Islam was brought vividly to life: A mere handful of Muslims, men whose will was absolutely pure, as proven by their martyrdom, brought down the haughty towers erected by the Great Satan. What better proof could there possibly be that God was on the side of radical Islam and that the end of the reign of the Great Satan was at hand?

And this:

Let there be no doubt about it. The fantasy ideologies of the twentieth century were plagues, killing millions and millions of innocent men, women, and children. The only difference was that the victims and targets of such fantasy ideologies so frequently refused to see them for what they were, interpreting them as something quite different — as normal politics, as reasonable aspirations, as merely variations on the well-known theme of realpolitik, behaving — tragically enough — no differently from Montezuma when he attempted to decipher the inexplicable enigma posed by the appearance of the Spanish conquistadors. Nor did the fact that his response was entirely human make his fate any less terrible.

Just go read the whole thing. (Link via Arts & Letters Daily.)

FAKING THE NEWS FOR FUN & PROFIT: Here's an entertaining story. It's about the old "New York Sun" (not these folks), which in 1835 invented a "news" story about life on the moon. The hoax gave the paper's circulation a tremendous boost. It also launched a new era in American newspapering:

Readers didn't hold a grudge. The Sun's circulation surged, even without fake headlines. Daily sales hit 30,000 in 1836. By the next year, there were a dozen more penny papers in New York, geared for the average reader rather than the elite. The hoax had given birth to a new industry. But old habits die hard. In 1897, the Sun ran an editorial entitled, "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus." It never retracted that piece either.

WHO'LL STOP THE RAINES: Howard Kurtz has a good column today on conservative criticism of the anti-war slant of recent coverage in the "New York Times."

Conservatives have declared war on the war coverage of the New York Times. The charge is being led by the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and columnist Charles Krauthammer, who argue that the Times is using its front page to mobilize opposition to a U.S. attack on Iraq. And some on the right have put Executive Editor Howell Raines in the bull's-eye, saying that the former head of the paper's liberal editorial page is behind the slanted coverage.

UPDATE: The Mugger weighs in on Raines and the Times. It's typically scathing. Give it a look.

REFORMING THE LEFT: Camille Paglia pens a scathing column on the Left's loss of moral capital:

The language of leftism is out of date. It desperately needs reconstruction and revitalisation, if the Left is ever to regain its proper status as a voice of ethical critique of materialistic modern society.

So true. As much as I hate to admit it, we DO need a Left that can provide that critique, as long as it comes within the framework of our American political heritage of individual (as opposed to group) rights. From where I sit, a serious Left can check the worst excesses of the Right, and vice versa. Unfortunately, as Paglia's piece points out, the Left seems to have lost its way since the moral triumphs of the civil rights movement.

MISSING-CHILD MANIA: Slate has a story today on the media frenzy in England that surrounded the story of two missing children. It seems it was a bit much for even the over-the-top English papers, which have produced some hand-wringing analysis pieces.

TEARING INTO THE 'TIMES': Charles Krauthammer rips the "New York Times" for its heavily slanted coverage regarding a possible U.S. attack on Iraq:

Not since William Randolph Hearst famously cabled his correspondent in Cuba, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war," has a newspaper so blatantly devoted its front pages to editorializing about a coming American war as has Howell Raines's New York Times.

LEARNING FROM THE 'TIMES': Here's an interesting story. The "New York Times" and NPR are joining forces to propagandize the students. (I'm sorry. That was a typo. The Web site actually says it will be "engaging high school students in informed political discourse.") Here's the press release:

NYTimes.com and National Public Radio on Wednesday announced the launch of Justice Learning, a civics education Web site for high school students and teachers based on NPR's radio program, "Justice Talking."

The Web site will use content from "Justice Talking" and related lesson plans and articles from The New York Times Learning Network, a free service for teachers, parents, and students in grades 3-12.

Justice Learning is designed around eight distinct civics issues that are updated twice a year. Current issues include affirmative action, civil liberties, death penalty, gun control, juvenile justice, and Web censorship.

Sounds all well and good until you visit the Justice Learning Web site and click around a little bit. Soon, you discover that the "lesson plans" are astoundingly one-sided. They're supported by editorials and news stories from the "Times," which provide a gloss of high-minded objectivity to the whole affair. (Not to mention a mighty nifty product placement with a captive audience.)

This might be a valuable program if there were more dissenting voices brought into the debate. But there aren't. Instead, it seems that students will be encouraged to regurgitate the left-liberal positions they've been spoon-fed. So much for newspapers being disinterested observers of the American scene.

THE SPORTSWRITER & THE CONGRESSMAN: Remember the story about the "L.A. Times" reporter who was fired for sending an e-mail to a Republican congressman? The "New York Press" has its take on the story. Check it out.

THE DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS: Via Poynter comes this interesting piece on the future of your daily rag in the Internet age. Check it out.

WESTERN MEDIA -- TERRORIST DUPES? "National Review" has a piece about how the Western media has been too quick to accept the Palestinian version of Mideast history. It's a bit longish, but it provides a lot of historical background on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Check it out.

BLAME THE NEWSROOM: A departing "Philadelphia Inquirer" editor lays the smack down regarding the marketing-driven crises affecting newsrooms today:

"From a leadership perspective, the Inquirer of 20 years ago was building a culture that the leadership of today is seeking to dismantle," he says. "Back then, reporters came in thinking big--they were trusted by the leadership and allowed to try and fail if that's what it took to get good stories.

"A lot of thought went into the journalism instead of the ancillary issues of money and circulation. Twenty years ago the management protected the staff from that. Today the newsroom has been made to feel responsible for circulation problems, and it is my belief that is not the newsroom's fault."

Just go read the whole thing.

'FOG OF NEWSPAPERING': Jack Shafer explores the various angles of why Iraq attack plans have been "leaked" to the "New York Times" recently. Here's the summary:

If ... the leaked Iraq invasion plans are part of an aggressive Bush disinformation campaign, who among us would have any sympathy for the Times? "Times Duped by the Pentagon" is both a wonderful and horrible prospect to imagine.

WEIGH-IN SWITCHES SCALES: Justin Sodano has moved to Blogfodder. Adjust bookmarks accordingly.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: I hate to rip off Andrew Sullivan's creation, but here goes. It seems Susan Sontag is up for her award again after her most recent outburst. After watching three traditional Iranian plays at Lincoln Center, here's what she had to say:

The plays concerned child martyrdom—indeed, one ended with the bloody beheading of a ten-year-old—and during a post-production symposium Sontag congratulated the festival director for importing the dramas to the U.S. “You’ve done something incredible,” she burbled. “To view these works was a privilege and a duty for us who don’t live by the contemptible rhetoric of the Bush administration. The last thing in the world we want to do is cooperate with the jihadist mentality of this administration.”

She might have used the favored pejoratives of the Left: “Eurocentric,” “exclusionary,” or even “crusader-like,” but that would not have been good enough for Sontag. Thus her use of “jihadist,” deriving, of course, from the Arabic word for “holy war or spiritual struggle against infidels.” Manifestly, Sontag did not intend to imply that George W. Bush had converted to Islam. She meant that the present U.S. government was as zealous and vengeful as . . . but the lady preferred not to connect the dots. Nor did acolytes who applauded her tirade during a post-production symposium.

DON'T MESS WITH...DELAWARE? Fritz Schranck, proprietor of the excellent Sneaking Suspicions, fact-checks Jonathan Chait's ass regarding a story about Delaware and the state's income from gas taxes and tolls. The usually excellent Mr. Chait got a couple of facts stunningly wrong. Fritz works for the Diamond State (never knew it was called that) and knows his stuff on this particular issue. Check it out.

'BUTTERFLY MEETS BAZOOKA': Here's an interesting story. It seems that an "L.A. Times" sports writer got fired for dashing off an angry political diatribe to a Republican congressman. The guy's mistake was sending the e-mail from his workplace e-mail address.

The Times' policy, as written in the employee handbook, is that the company e-mail system is not to be used for personal reasons. (That's nice, but it's hard to imagine that Times employees don't e-mail friends and spouses, or occasionally book airline fares online. Doesn't everybody?) My phone message seeking comment from editor John Carroll eventually made it to Times spokesman David Garcia, who said he cannot discuss personnel-related issues. You can't blame them for ducking on this one.

I think the "L.A. Weekly" folks missed part of the handbook. Ours includes the bit about not using the company e-mail for personal reasons, and yes, it is abused widely and regularly. But our handbook also includes a policy against using the company's electronic communication system for political or business purposes, which I think most newspapers would consider a much bigger no-no. Granted, the "L.A. Times" overreacted, and probably should have disciplined the guy in some other, less drastic manner. (Heck, the guy covers prep sports in a bureau. It's not exactly the same kind of conflict of interest it would have been if he reported on government or politics.) And the congressman should have eased up. I'm sure he gets hundreds of angry e-mails a day. But our sportswriter should have known better than to send his diatribe from work.

STATS NEWS TO ME: I missed this update of the excellent Web site of the Statistical Assessment Service, but go check it out. It's one of the most valuable (and apparently underappreciated) sources of criticism about the ways the media screw up statistics. Check it out.

MEDIA BIAS UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru rips "Time" for a biased news article (not opinion piece) on the possibility of the U.S. invading Iraq. Here's the lede:

Although President Bush has a "near obsession with extinguishing Saddam," his administration is divided into two camps — "one pragmatic, the other jihadist." That's not an editorial in The Nation. It's Michael Duffy writing an alleged news article in Time. (It's in the issue with the cover story on how the Bush administration could have prevented 9/11 if only it had listened to the tough counsel of Sandy Berger. Gee, wonder who the sources were?)

Just go read the whole thing.

BUBBLE BOY: William Powers has another useful column today. It's on news coverage of the real estate "bubble" and whether it's going to burst. Check it out.

KURTZ ON KIDNAPPINGS: Howard Kurtz weighs in on the media's recent hypersensitivity to child kidnappings. Check out this lede:

Are we all in the exploitation business?

Are journalists basically vultures who pick at the carcasses of tragedy victims?

And are politicians also getting into the act?

Yeouch! Kurtz also provides lots o' links to the ongoing discussion about this issue.

UPDATE: The Instapundit noticed this story, too, and excerpted the same block quote. Damn, that dude's fast.

'PATIO MAN': I found this link over on Dave Copeland's fine blog. It's an article by the excellent David Brooks on the boom in "exurbs," those suburbs beyond the suburbs that are attracting more and more residents. It's longish, but like almost anything Brooks writes, well worth the time.

DUMB DIVERSITY: Here's a story from Poynter entitled "Diversity, Democracy and the J-School Professor." It's about the value of "diversity" in journalism education. As you might expect, there are a lot of wrong-headed assumptions about American society in the piece. Here's an example:

At stake is not just the contents of a course or the education of a student. At stake is journalism's ability to tell accurate, complete stories about a society steadily morphing from monolithic myth to boundless mosaic.

When has America ever been a "monolithic myth"? In his excellent "The Culture of Bruising," essayist Gerald Early provides one of the best attacks against the "diversity" and "hard multicultural" mind-set I've ever read:

Diversity is in fact part of the American myth; we are probably the only country in the world to make such a big deal over the fact that our culture, like everyone else's, is a synthesis. The problem with multiculturalism today, the paradox it presents, is that the more we see diversity, the harder it is to discover synthesis ... Multiculturalism has this distinct purpose from the liberal perspective; it is the liberal's intellectual assault against the stigma and anonymity of mass culture.

At the time I blogged this, there was one comment posted about the article at Poynter's site. Here's part of that comment:

I thought we were all the same. I thought we weren't supposed to make an issue of race, color, and creed. But now we're supposed to "celebrate diversity."

Amen to that. Our commonality supercedes our largely superficial differences, no matter how fascinating those differences may be. I think the popular phrase "unity in diversity" should be changed to "diversity within unity." That's much closer to the human truth of America.

LOPEZ UPDATE: Yesterday, I pointed out this Howard Kurtz article about the decline of local columnists in American newspapers. The focus of Kurtz's piece was Steve Lopez, a local columnist for the "Los Angeles Times." Well, people much more familiar with Lopez's work than I am weighed in with their opinions of Lopez's work.

The guy makes $300,000 a year? Jesus Christ, that's outrageous. I consider my income comfortable considering that the cost of living is rather high where we reside, but Lopez's pay is SIX TIMES what I make now, and my current salary is DOUBLE what I was making about four years ago (albeit in an area with a much lower cost-of-living index). And the guy only has to write three times a week?

In the words of a former co-worker, that's a gravy train with biscuit wheels, folks.

BLASTING THE 'TIMES': The "National Review" goes after the "New York Times" for its sloppy, incomplete reporting on the possibility of removing Saddam Hussein from power. And the "Weekly Standard" piles on. Check 'em out.

DECLINE AND FALL OF LOCAL COLUMNISTS: Howard Kurtz has an interesting article today on the decline of the big-time local columnist in American newspapers. The Mike Roykos are gone, mostly replaced by bland, cutesy writers guaranteed not to offend:

Across the country, many metro columnists are polite or parochial or tend toward soft-feature blandness. Some newspapers seem to dole out the slots on demographic grounds -- fielding a white man, a woman and a minority -- who play to their constituencies. Few register on the outrage meter. Unlike op-ed pundits, who often deliver opinions from Olympian heights, metro columnists are supposed to be out in the streets, more reporters than pontificators. But as journalists have become more firmly entrenched in the upper middle class -- writing books, sending their kids to private school, moving from market to market -- many readers have come to view them as out of touch with the community. And in a Web-surfing age, with newspaper readership continuing a 30-year slide, writing something that makes people argue over the breakfast table is harder than ever.

The focus of Kurtz's piece is Steve Lopez, a columnist for the "Los Angeles Times." In a revealing exchange, Lopez describes the mind-set that William McGowan rails against in "Coloring The News."

After City Council member Nate Holden put a couple of pals on the payroll until they could find real jobs, Lopez showed up at his office with a résumé. "People said, 'You're going to take on one of the most visible black politicians in L.A.' Hell, yeah," Lopez says. "Why not? I don't care what color he is." And during the 10th anniversary of the L.A. riots, Lopez came up with a different angle. "Every possible story was covered except 'Where's the apology from all the people who looted and burned their own neighborhood?' " As he churns out three pieces a week, Lopez says he gets the greatest response on "politically incorrect" subjects -- the kind that other Times writers must treat delicately because of journalistic constraints. "You have all these people wandering around the building talking about the truth, and the truth is not in the newspaper," he says. "Here you come with a column where there are no such rules and restrictions and you can just let loose. You can take this two-fisted approach and not have to worry about the tone and whether this is appropriate."

If only more journalists could be as candid as Lopez about the suffocating attitudes inside far too many of America's newsrooms.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS: Slate points out a huge correction in the "New York Times" regarding a error-riddled travel piece on Israel. (Special note to readers from England: There's a spanking angle!) Check it out.

BLASTING THE 'POST': Also in the "National Review," Michael Ledeen rips the "Washington Post" for its failure to notice the coming revolt against Islamist tyranny in Iran. Ledeen has been all over this story for months, yet it has gotten little play in the mainstream press. The Post story Ledeen cites is an example of why.

CRIMINAL LIBEL: Here's a "Washington Post" editorial on a little-used but still-controversial law that is on the books in several states. Just read the whole thing.

NO SURPRISE HERE: A recent survey from the Pew Research Center finds that the public's distrust of the media has returned. Only 49 percent of those surveyed think the press "stands up for America." Meanwhile, those inside the media worry that they've been standing up for America too much. Again, the huge disconnect between many in the media and the public they claim to work for is revealed.

A BLOGGING CLEARINGHOUSE: Check this out. MSNBC plans to launch "Weblogs Central," a list of blogs that is divided into subjects. This should be interesting. Wonder which blogs will make the list? (Link via Romenesko.) Looks like it's another example of the possible growing importance of blogs.