Daniel Okrent, appointed to a newly created Public Editor job at The New York Times in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, steps down Monday. His parting column addresses topics he never got around to covering, including this parting bomb.
Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales "called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' " nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. Before his retirement in January, William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess.Ouch, that's going to leave a mark.No one deserves the personal vituperation that regularly comes Dowd's way, and some of Krugman's enemies are every bit as ideological (and consequently unfair) as he is. But that doesn't mean that their boss, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., shouldn't hold his columnists to higher standards.
I didn't give Krugman, Dowd or Safire the chance to respond before writing the last two paragraphs. I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist.
13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did - [New York Times]
Via Alarming News
Permalink | Linking Blogs | Sphere: Related Content | Digg this! | FARK It!
Filed under:
Media
Comments (9)
What could "higher standard... (Below threshold)1. Posted by Scott Campbell at Blithering Bunny | May 22, 2005 6:46 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
What could "higher standards" possibly mean when applied to Maureen Dowd? I mean, Krugman and Safire could be improved, but what is there to even work with in Dowd's case?
1. Posted by Scott Campbell at Blithering Bunny | May 22, 2005 6:46 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on May 22, 2005 18:46
2. Posted by Remy Logan | May 22, 2005 6:58 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Holy Crap! I was wondering why Okrent was leaving, now I know.
2. Posted by Remy Logan | May 22, 2005 6:58 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on May 22, 2005 18:58
3. Posted by Kathy K | May 22, 2005 8:50 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
"I didn't give Krugman, Dowd or Safire the chance to respond before writing the last two paragraphs. I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist."
Or a impersonate a blogger? Just sayin'...
That didn't hit me quite the same way it hit you, did it?
3. Posted by Kathy K | May 22, 2005 8:50 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on May 22, 2005 20:50
4. Posted by 89 | May 22, 2005 8:52 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Remy: You being funny? Okrent has reached the end of his "term", and that's why he wrote this parting column.
4. Posted by 89 | May 22, 2005 8:52 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on May 22, 2005 20:52
5. Posted by bullwinkle | May 22, 2005 9:16 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Uh, King Abdullah of Jordan admitted last week that he had tried to get Saddam to turn over Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Jordan since before the war, if that's not a pretty clear connection between al Qaeda and Saddam what exactly does it take? Safire is right. Zarqawi wasn't the only al Qaeda member Saddam was harboring, and the NYT staff would know it if they bothered to read their own paper.
5. Posted by bullwinkle | May 22, 2005 9:16 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on May 22, 2005 21:16
6. Posted by tony | May 22, 2005 10:02 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Note to self:
Use the word "vituperation" in more daily conversation.
P.S. - Take martial arts class to protect myself from those that want to kick my ass for being so self-aggrandizing that I feel the need to use words like "vituperation".
6. Posted by tony | May 22, 2005 10:02 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on May 22, 2005 22:02
7. Posted by Bennett Haselton | May 22, 2005 11:29 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Public Editor, my ass.
The New York Times has an article on their web site saying I was fired from Microsoft, when I actually quit. So I called the Public Editor's office and gave them the phone number for a woman at Microsoft's alumni group who had my employment records. They called her and she told them I wasn't fired, I quit, and the article was wrong.
After that, the Public Editor did -- nothing. They are still refusing to change the article even after I told them that one of my employers saw the article and thought I had lied about my employment history.
Full story:
http://www.PublicEditorMyAss.com/
7. Posted by Bennett Haselton | May 22, 2005 11:29 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on May 22, 2005 23:29
8. Posted by Remy Logan | May 23, 2005 2:58 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
89,
Not being funny. I really didn't know why he was leaving. Either way, I'm amazed at what he wrote. I imagine taking Dowd and the rest of the crowd to task for their damn-the-facts writing must of been the job from hell.
8. Posted by Remy Logan | May 23, 2005 2:58 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on May 23, 2005 02:58
9. Posted by invadesoda | May 23, 2005 11:19 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
That's great! Maureen Dowd's status as a tragic figure is well known, but it nice to see that idiot Krugman get a slap, too.
9. Posted by invadesoda | May 23, 2005 11:19 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on May 23, 2005 23:19