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All the News That Fits We Print
We live in an age of instant global misinformation. Accuracy matters. Integrity matters.
For the New York Times, Thursday, June 5th, became a day of reckoning.
Executive Editor Howell Raines, 60, and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd, 52, resigned their posts. The letters of resignation
were accepted by Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the current publisher and the son of retired publisher Arthur Sulzberger,
Sr.
Joseph Lelyveld, 66, the retired former Executive Editor and 14 year veteran of the Times, was named interim executive
editor.
So a key question in Washington and New York on Thursday evening is: What do you think?
In his article "Socially Acceptable Bigotry," Willy Stern gives this summary of the cold logic of Left-leaning
bigotry:
- "I'm very smart. I'm well educated. So are most of my friends. I give generously to liberal causes. I'm
a kind and caring human being. I defer to nobody in my exemplary set of values. I care about equality. I believe
in a just society. These values are integrated into the core of who I am. I work diligently to teach these values
unto my progeny. … 1) We're a lot smarter than they are; and 2) We're better people than they are. Therefore, I'm
right. They are wrong.
This brings us to the young Mr. Salzberger and his desire to introduce an aggressive and overt liberal ideological
bent to the news pages of the Times. "Fact, accuracy, thoroughness, balance," says columnist John Ellis,
"must all be sacrificed on the tedious, embarrassing and ultimately pathetic alter of political correctness."
After PC, the second factor is fear. Since 9/11, there is a special kind of fear in the land of the elites, according
to columnist Frederick Turner. What would happen, he asks, if there is real discussion? Just as the Constitution
suggests, we might engage in listening to a fair expression of different arguable viewpoints from different sides.
When that happens, as it does more and more these days, it produces a kind of fear that is becoming a liberal trademark.
The first is a fear for one's future, one's career. Liberal snobbery asserts itself among the radical intellectuals
we find at the university, in the school system, the press, the judiciary, charitable foundations and a coterie
of wannabees in government, the "caring" professions and even the "hipper" realms of the corporate
world.
In this world, one must never be seen as standing alone. If a person is perceived as somehow out of step, gossip,
secret caucuses and even official administrative action await. The Czech dissident Milan Kundera calls it the world
of the "internally exiled."
The second fear, says Turner, is a fear of losing one's class standing, of a loss of caste. True terror belongs
to those who are shunned by the in-group. Over the years, positions of the Left have been exploded one by one through
evidence and rational deliberation. To be a part of the upper crust, one needs the continued existence and allegiance
of a peon class. It won't do for the military to succeed. Fire and police cannot be heroes. School vouchers cannot
lift the poor to the middle class. What if education put an end to the urban poor? What if tax relief and individual
control of the privatization of retirement programs such as Social Security produced a majority of Americans who
were sufficiently wealthy that they no longer considered themselves victims? How can the upper crust be bountiful
in a world without victims?
What has destroyed public trust in the Times? It is not the men who were fired. It is not the lefty views of the
executive and managing editors. Writing in The Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery sees a parallel at the Times with
the declining royal lines of Europe. What she calls "… those self-worshiping clans and their surly and talentless
children." The great patron of political correctness, Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, Jr., is not an
example of something new or progressive. He is an example of something quite ancient.. "The old spoiled rich
white boys from prominent families, who tend to accede to positions of power, without talent, without being tested,
and sometimes without having a clue."
And so it is with "Pinch," an even dimmer bulb that his father "Punch." Here is the complete
opposite of liberal enlightenment - an unassailable family prince, a Henry the Sixth who banned integrity in the
name of political correctness and thereby managed to publish a paper that lost readership during the Iraq war.
You don't have to be upper crust to know that this high tech new world has Google. Misinformation can be checked
instantaneously, too.
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