In most things in life it is impossible to be both the giver and
the receiver. If a ball is thrown, there is a thrower and a
catcher. In a holdup, there is a robber and the guy with his hands
in the air. But the New York Times has managed to be both
perpetrator and victim — a victim who blames the perpetrator, who
is the same person as the victim.
With all of this happening, the sales of the Times did
not suffer, nor did it lose any advertising. In fact, the paper was
able to cut out the middle man in all of this coming and going. It
not only made the news, but reported on it and, in fact, for the
most part, gave itself an exclusive without anyone ever having to
leave his desk or even make a telephone call. It turned out to be
like a play, with one guy playing all the roles. The rest of the
press was relegated to merely reporting the story when the
Times itself was the story. Talk about phony reporting —
the Times was not only the story but it created the spin
on the story, so that all of the other media had only second-hand
reporting.
The Times, because of an affirmative action policy
taken to absurd extremes, hired and nourished Jayson Blair, a
reporter who was not only guilty of plagiary but who, in many
cases, simply made up the news. He was not so dumb. He figured out
a way to get an exclusive story and never have to leave his
apartment in Brooklyn. The Times’ reckless pursuit of a
policy of affirmative action cloaked him with protection from all
the scrutiny to which a reporter is usually subjected. Maybe at the
Times they call it something else, but affirmative action
is what it was. It was like when the media accused Mayor Bloomberg
of forcing the police to meet ticket quotas, and he angrily denied
the charges. He said they certainly did not have quotas to meet,
they merely had “performance goals.” It was no particular source of
comfort to the cops that the tickets they were forced to write were
to meet “performance goals” rather than quotas.
Let’s get real. Howell Raines, executive editor of the New
York Times, admitted that in hiring and supervising Blair he
acted “as a white man from Alabama.” What does that mean? If he
acted “as a white man from Alabama” 150 years ago, Blair would have
been his slave. Maybe a hundred years from now if he would act “as
a white man from Alabama” he would be Blair’s slave. The point
being that whether he acted “as a white man from Alabama” or an
Albino from Pittsburgh, today it should not have affected his
behavior and responsibility as chief executive of the world’s
leading newspaper. It should also be noted that the American
Society of Newspaper Editors is now asking newspapers to have 38%
employees from minorities by the year 2025. This sounds great if
there are 38% capable people looking around for newspaper jobs by
2025. Maybe there should be 90% minorities, maybe 10%, and maybe
people should just be hired or fired because of their performance
and ability — or maybe that the Albino from Pittsburgh should be
hired because the supply of them is limited.
There is no question that the Times’ was the
perpetrator of what occurred. Its mismanagement policies were
directly responsible for the Blair fiasco. But the Times
also played the victim. Media all over the world reported on how
the Times (now the victim) was misled and deceived by
Blair. After his resignation, the Times (the victim) acted
promptly to straighten out the perpetrator (the Times) and
deal with those mismanagement people who were responsible.
After Blair resigned, the present publisher, Arthur Sulzberger,
Jr. informed the entire staff at a “town hall” meeting on May 14th
that he would not accept Howell Raines’ resignation even if it were
offered. True to the tradition of accurate reporting, Mr. Raines
then offered his resignation which, of course, Mr. Sulzberger
promptly accepted. At the same time, Raines’ second in command
managing editor, Gerald M. Boyd, also resigned. Boyd is a black
man, and no sooner did he resign then the Association of Black
Journalists, through its president, Errol Cockfield, said, “There
are many black journalists who are questioning whether, in an
effort to restore its credibility, the Times has gone too
far.” Their clear point is that the Times pushed out Mr.
Blair and Mr. Boyd because of their race. The unworthy thought
crosses our mind that Blair and Boyd were just as black when the
Times hired them, as when they got rid of them.
The Times real underlying problem is in their hiring
practices. We have a solution. Since the people they hired to
report the news were actually writing fiction, they should have
hired a real fiction writer — Hillary Clinton. Also, with
her they would not have to worry about any plagiarism being
revealed. Virtually all celebrity autobiographies that have a
professional writer involved, state, “As told to” or “In
collaboration with,” or something of that nature. Even
politicians are not low enough to not credit the person
who worked on the book. But not Hillary. She obviously got some
poor saps who needed the money bad enough, or whose egos were
beaten down, to work on the book without any name credit. Since the
writers never claimed authorship, they can’t claim plagiarism.
If people thought Jayson Blair was so full of himself that he
cared little about the people he hurt, he could take lessons from
Hillary. In her book Living History, she related about
when Clinton admitted to her he lied about Monica — putting aside
the fact that everybody from the guard at the gate to the steward
in the White House kitchen knew what was going on. In her book she
said, “What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to
me?” Never mind that he lied to the whole country, that the
government was in a constitutional crisis and was virtually at a
stand-still, and tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money
had been spent on the various legislative and judicial processes
set in motion by Clinton’s lying. The only question that bothered
Hillary is “Why did you lie to me?” The funny thing is
that when a man cheats on his wife, the only one he has a right to
lie to is his wife. Why should he care if the boys at the bowling
alley or a hotel room clerk knows he’s a tom cat.
It is clear that both Hillary and the Times were in the
business of telling lies. The only difference was the
Times cost you $1.00 for a copy and Hillary’s lies were
for free. Now you have to pay $28 to buy the book and read about
it.
