|
By Jeffrey
Lord
Spectator.org
Let's dish.
And a delicious dish it is. A stew of race, the New York Times,
media hypocrisy and double-standards. All inadvertently stirred by the lovely
and talented Times columnist, the white female Maureen Dowd.
You know all those fevered editorials they churn out over there at the
New York Times editorial board? Like, for instance, the hot fury published
on June 30 wonderfully titled "Firefighters
and Race."
In this jewel the Times editorial board makes its displeasure plain
in the very first sentence, huffing that the Supreme Court decision in favor of
the New Haven firemen has "dealt a blow to diversity in the American workplace."
This was followed by a July 14th column by Times columnist Dowd titled
"White
Man's Last Stand," to which we will return shortly.
But first, let's get the meat into the stew. You can just smell that sizzling
hypocrisy, can't you?
It seems the "American workplace" (to use the Times description)
that is the New Haven fire department has a higher percentage of minorities than
the American workplace that is…yes indeed… the New York Times editorial
board its very self. To be quite specific:
• The New Haven fire department, according to press accounts, is 43% black
and Latino. Or, if you prefer the term of art, 43% of the fire department is
"minority."
• The New York Times editorial board, according to the information
provided by The New York Times, is -- wait for it -- 12% black and
Latino. Or, again, 12 % "minority" if you prefer the term.
• The New York Times Op-Ed page team of columnists, an elite group
of which Ms. Dowd is a star, is 19% black and, again according to the Times
listing of its Op-Ed page columnists, 0% Latino.
That's right. At the core of the beating intellectual heart of the left-wing
establishment where such things are studied with the detail of Talmudic
scholars, the New Haven fire department is doing more than three times better on
race than the very liberal elites who have set themselves up as its sniffy
critics. Perhaps instead of seething about "Firefighters and Race" the Times
would have been better served by pondering "Editorial Writers and Race." Or
perhaps: "Too Black to Write; New York Times Column Writing and Race."
According to the New York Times, its editorial board has 17 members.
Of those 17, fifteen -- say again, 15 of the 17 -- are whiter than white on
rice. This includes the very white Andrew Rosenthal who runs it, carrying the
title of "Editorial Page Editor."
That's roughly an 88% white hiring record for Rosenthal. Frank Ricci and his
fellow white New Haven firemen would have had a better shot writing editorials
for the Times than fighting fires for the dwindling number of Times
readers in New Haven. After all, the percentage of whites at the New Haven fire
department is just 57%.
But don't worry -- tokenism is alive and well at the Times. "White
Rosie," as we'll call Mr. Rosenthal here with deference to a Dowd-like racial
sensibility, has managed to make room for one Mexican and the inevitable token
black to fill the other two seats in the Times version of "diversity in
the American workplace." Amazingly enough, that one black on the Times
editorial board matches exactly the number of blacks in the ranks of New Haven's
21 fire captains. One. There might still be a Latino captain in New Haven to
match up with the Times' Mexican -- but only thanks to the Supreme
Court and the hard-studying candidate himself, Lieutenant Ben Vargas. The
Times rooted to keep Vargas out.
The Times' double-standard on race in its own workplace came to
light as the result of Dowd's column attacking Supreme Court nominee Judge
Sotomayor's critics on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The "wise Latina's"
senatorial inquisitors, fumed Ms. Dowd in "White Man's Last Stand," were nothing
more than "white Republican men afraid of extinction" who traffic in "codes,
handshakes and clubs." Said Dowd: "President Obama wants Sotomayor, naturally,
to bring a fresh perspective to the court. It was a disgrace that W. appointed
two white men to a court stocked with white men. And Sotomayor made it clear
that she provides some spicy seasoning to a bench when she said in a speech: ‘I
simply do not know exactly what the difference will be in my judging, but I
accept there will be some based on gender and my Latina heritage.'"
OK then. Point taken. The Dowd standard -- and that of the Times --
is to judge people by race. Got it. Will do.
So how does the Times stable of Op-Ed columnists stack up against
the standards "White Mo" Dowd sets for the rest of us? You know, one's race
being critical in order "to bring a fresh perspective" and avoid the "disgrace"
of being "stocked with white men."
Of the eleven columnists the Times advertises as its team of Op-Ed
page writers, nine are whites. Of those nine, seven are -- ouch! -- the
disgracefully whitest of white men! Which is another way of saying 81% of the
Times Op-Ed columnists are white (White Mo included) and 77% of the
columnist team is, to use White Mo's phrase about the Supreme Court, "stocked
with white men" -- guys like Frankly White Rich who are as white as sheets. If
one is obsessed with viewing everyone and everything in America through the
prism of race, then the 88% white New York Times editorial board and
the white paper's stable of 81% white columnists clearly don't read their own
editorials. No wonder Black Bob Herbert is so cranky all the time. One of the
two black tokens on the Op-Ed page, Black Bob is forced to work with more white
guys than David Duke. Black Bob would actually see more black faces if his white
bosses let him take the company limo and its black driver over to New Haven to
catch the next five-alarm. As for a wise Latina or Latino on the page? Nada.
That Times Editorial Board 15-2 ratio, however, is precisely the
kind of thing that supposedly drives White Mo crazy. Or at least when it
involves the Supreme Court or New Haven firemen and not her own turf. She
somehow must hope the rest of us have forgotten that neither White Mo nor the
whiteys writing those Times editorials with White Rosie wanted the only
black man now sitting on the US Supreme Court to be there at all. Justice
Clarence Thomas's very nomination, the Times foamed at the time in
language worthy of The Birth of a Nation, was designed to "incite." Got
that? You don't wanna put any black man on the Court who upsets the white
massa's of the Times by going the uppity route.
So too did White Mo's white editorialist sheet mates burn an editorial cross
or two to denigrate Miguel Estrada, the Bush choice for the U.S. Court of
Appeals in the District of Columbia. Fearing the Harvard-educated legal star and
Latino Mr. Estrada would get to the point that Sonia Sotomayor is at today --
the Times demanded that it was both "compelling" and "necessary" to
defeat a Hispanic man. Their unsurprising sentiments were the same as those of
their white male Democratic allies on the Senate Judiciary Committee. In an
internal Senate Democratic memo, Mr. Estrada was described as "dangerous"
because he was "Latino." Interestingly, this foreshadowed the thinking designed
to keep Lieutenant Ben Vargas out of a New Haven fire captaincy in spite of his
having passed the required test. Come to think of it, since the Times
was successful in its compelling need to keep Mr. Estrada off the bench, maybe
they could have a disparate impact on their Op Ed page by making him their
resident Latino columnist?
Judging the entire world through the eyes of race must be something of a
juggling routine if you work for the white boys of the Times. In 1900
the paper's white editorial board under the leadership of owner Adolph Ochs (or
"Adolph the White" as we'll Dowdize the family ancestor of today's white owners)
was ranting about "the menace of the rule of blacks." In 1991, the descendants
of Adolph the White believed putting a black man on the Supreme Court to rule
was inciting, if not menacing as Adolph warned. Inciting to what was left to the
imagination. Still, at least give Adolph's heirs credit for staying loyal to
principle. White Mo must arrive at work with a flask of Irish whiskey just to
get her liberal white guilt complex through the white day.
Then again, maybe not. Irish whiskey might remind of the embarrassing
biographical nugget that she herself is said to be the white love child of a
white male Irish cop and a white woman, both of modest means. (As a minor
Washington celebrity, White Mo makes the prints on occasion for reasons much
other than her column, various parts of her white life whitefully displayed.)
This is a problem at the race and class conscious Times, threatening to
cast White Mo in a harsh light that is unfashionably Palinesque. Which may
explain why the youthful Dowd of the 1960s is said to have denied the fact,
believing identifying White Dad as a White Pol was somehow more upscale than
admitting to the fact he was a White Cop. Doubtless it is uncomfortably related
to the reason White Mo and her pals are so upset by Sister Sarah. White Mo looks
at Sarah and sees -- young White Mo! Eeeeeek! White Trash alert at the Times!
Ohhhhhhh noooooooooooooo!
The fact that White Mo still works at the Times does come as a bit
of a surprise in the wake of her "White Man's Last Stand" column. Calling
attention to the white sheets who actually run the paper is surely not
appreciated. It is a rare thing to see a white girl who has spent a professional
and personal life courting white males bite the proverbial white male hand that
enables said white girl to live in the white enclaves of an overwhelmingly black
city -- and not only survive but thrive!
Her frustration is perhaps understandable. If you and the paper you write for
pretend to a racially advanced view of the world, yet the paper is still owned
by a white guy descendant of Adolph the White while the editorial board and
columnist section has a "mostly whites only" sign hanging on the workplace door,
your brain might short circuit too. Somewhere in her soul, you just know White
Mo longs to be Linda Chavez.
It is remarkable when you think of it. To get Dowdy about it, White Mo's
social life has occasionally made the New York Post's Page Six gossip
column over the years. Why? Because she was linked to -- yes - white guys. These
stories never tie her to, say, the rakish and black Marion Barry. No Black Diddy
for White Mo. It was white Barbara Walters who did the deed with the first black
Senator of the 20th century -- a Republican to boot. White Mo just always popped
into the gossip columns displaying this thing for white guys. There was the
white actor Michael Douglas episode. Douglas, the son and grandson of white
Russians, is now said to be married, interestingly enough, to a white Welsh
woman. There was time with the white male Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West
Wing. The Great White Sork at least wrote a part for a black person, albeit
as the president's body guy, not the president.
Then there were the stories about White Mo and Times white guy, the
now Ex-Executive Editor Howell Raines, he of the Blair Niche Project.
For those readers who came in late, White Raines hired a young writer of
African-American descent named Jayson Blair not because of his writing skills
but because, in typical left-wing fashion dating back to slavery, White Raines
judged people by skin color. A fellow white Timesman allowed that race
was indeed "the decisive factor" in White Raines's decision to hire Black Blair.
The niche the Black Blair was discovered to have filled was plagiarism flavored
with fabrication, and the resulting scandal cost White Mo's white male friend
White Raines his job.
Current white Times owner Arthur "Sheets" Sulzburger, Adolph the
White's designated white man, moved quickly to contain the damage. Befitting the
white descendant of the original white family patriarch who owned the paper when
its similarly white editorialists were foaming about "the menace of the rule of
blacks" Sheets replaced White Raines with one Bill Keller. Keller is, you
guessed it, a white guy so white you couldn't pick him out of a snowstorm.
Sheets was taking no chances about that "menace of the rule of blacks" thing
great-white-grandpa Adolph furrowed his brow over. No sir. Not at The Times.
Not on his white life. To reinforce the fact managing editor Jill White -- ah --
sorry, that would be Abramson, would be brought in, she too a whiter shade of
pale. Abramson had co-written a hit-piece on the infidel black Clarence Thomas,
which made her an especially white choice to replace the late Gerald Boyd, a
rare Times executive who was actually black but alas was dragged under
by the racial obsession of White Raines. That must never happen again, white?
What's a white girl to do with all this whiteness in her life? What else?
Party with white people!
According to the news reports of the Obama inaugural period, the guest list
for White Mo's Georgetown house party had more white guys standing obediently in
line to get in the door than are still active on the Ku Klux Klan's roster. The
White Man's real last stand, it seems, was at White Mo's. The line included
whiteys Tom Hanks, Tom Brokaw, Larry David, David Geffen, Rahm Emanuel, Andrew
Sullivan (the latter accompanied by someone appropriately named Tone) and…well,
you get the idea. There were surely some blacks or Latinos there in a capacity
other than serving the canapés, even if they didn't get their names in the
press. No word if the Latino let through the door was Carlos Slim, the green
Mexican the Times has been forced to rely on as, what else, a White
Knight?
One wonders with all this inner turmoil over white men why White Mo ever
accepted her White Joe. Sorry, that would be the Pulitzer Prize, named, but of
course, for the white male newspaper baron Joseph Pulitzer. The stories that won
White Mo her White Joe revolved around White Mo's intuitive understanding of a
White Willy in the White House. Shocking! But come on. Seriously. Can't this
woman scoop out black guys? Latinos? Where's the White Joe for filling us in on
the sex life of the Yellow Kim Jong Il? Why no fling with, say, the fling-crazy
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio "Brown Tony" Villaraigosa? Its always white guy, white
guy, white guy with White Mo.
Perhaps White Mo takes the time to ponder these problems while secluded in
the upscale white enclave of a city that the last census figures reported was
61% black. White Mo's white Georgetown precincts, according to census data from
2000, were a Klavernesque 3.8% black. Heaven forbid that she'd have her house
parties in the 'hood over in Anacostia (97% black) or even Capitol Hill, which
was 46% black in the same year all those hated Bushies began flooding the
neighborhoods to get down with the even more despised Reaganites still there
from the 1980s. Reaganites living side-by-side with African-Americans? Stop the
white liberal presses! Call the stereotype police!
In fairness it really isn't fair to single out White Mo on matters racial,
even though she has led us there. White Mo's white woes are in fact emblematic
of the mainstream media in general, a place where judging people by skin color
is a cherished value as long as it's New Haven firemen under the microscope. But
not so much -- actually not much at all -- if it's their white media job, their
white paper, their white television network or their white Internet site that is
to be subjected to this scrutiny.
What do you see on your television or computer screen when you watch some of
the prime-time news and commentary shows?
Here's a test. Think of these faces as promoted on the liberal cable networks
MSNBC and CNN: Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, Dylan Ratigan, Joe
Scarbrough, Mika Brzezinski, Chris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, Larry King. Wolf
Blitzer. John King. Lou Dobbs. Think of the faces reading you the news on the
broadcast networks -- Charlie Gibson at ABC, Katie Couric at CBS and Brian
Williams at NBC. A PBS fan? That would be the estimable Jim Lehrer. Sunday news
shows? George Stephanopoulos at ABC, Bob Schieffer at CBS and David Gregory at
NBC. Quick: what color are the faces attached to these names?
Ahhhhhhhh…right on white. You got it.
Seventeen mainstream media news shows -- hosted by eighteen very white faces.
To do the percentages, that's 100% of these shows being hosted by whites. For
that matter , the next time you catch a live feed of the white White House press
secretary's daily briefing, count the non-white faces in the White House press
corps staring back at the white man on the podium. You have one hand, don't you?
Fox is not included in this line-up because of the obvious: as its liberal
enemies love to point out, Fox is not liberal. Whether you believe Fox to be
"conservative" or "fair and balanced" -- in either case, racial quotas are
neither. Fox is the place where Latino Geraldo Rivera stars in his own
prime time show. Shockingly there are lots of people out there in the Fox
audience who think of Geraldo as -- brace yourselves -- Geraldo. Just Geraldo.
Not Geraldo Hispanic. Not Geraldo Latino. Just Geraldo Rivera, journalist.
Imagine that.
If the rest of these white media stars mentioned above were treated the way
Sonia Sotomayor treated the white firemen in New Haven, they would have spent
the last few years suing just to keep their jobs. And losing.
Which brings us back to White Mo Dowd. White Mo, the white girl who won the
white prize for writing for the white paper with the white owner, the white
editorial board and the white columnists. White Mo, who parties in a white
neighborhood of a black city with white movie stars, white journalists and lots
and lots of white guys .
Why, this white boy wonders, is this very white woman still writing this very
white column for the very white Times in the first place? Why isn't her
column given to some hot young aspiring-to-be-wise and very liberal Latina
instead of White Mo? Why do white guy columnists get most of the column inches
at the white run Times? Why not replace all of them -- maybe all but
one, just to be quota-ish -- with black guys and dolls, Latinas/Latinos and an
Asian or two to liven things up for poor Black Bob? If the Times were
really up to its own imaginary standards, it would hire a gay black or
Latina/Latino to replace the Frankly White Rich, he who tries hiding his
whiteness by writing volumes on gays. Heck, why not just throw anti-gay bigotry
under the bus and give Frankly White's white column to the straight-forwardly
gay if unfortunately white Andrew Sullivan, he who brought Tone to White Mo's?
Wouldn't that be Rich!
Why is the idea of ceding her column to a young Latina presumably a "no go"
with White Mo? Why no gay Sullivan for straight Rich? The answer is the same as
it has always been from -- white liberals: do as I say, not as I do.
White Mo will be staying at the New York Times because there is not
the slightest intention to quota her out of her job in the same way White Mo and
her white buds at the Times wanted to quota white fireman Frank Ricci
and his white colleagues out of theirs. If one is to adopt White Mo's standard
of judging by race, there is at the Times precisely what White Mo
professes to see elsewhere but curiously not in her own work place: a white
"code" and a white "club." The white guy owning the paper will hold on because
his white family, the white heirs and heiresses of Adolph the White, want it
that way. The white guy running the white editorial board will not be running a
less than majority white board, the list of columnists will never be all
non-white, and the blindingly white Bill Keller and Jill Abramson will still be
two things: white and in charge. Forever and ever, 'til death do them part,
white yesterday, white today and white through all of white earthly eternity as
long as the Times shall live. (Which may be less than eternity, but
that's another story -- sort of.) To adopt White Mo's take on life, it's the
New York Times rendering of the white code of the white club. And White Mo
not only knows that white code -- as with a lot of pretty white girls who know
that code -- she's captain of the white club's cheerleaders.
Put this way, all this sounds crazy, no? While I may not agree with White Mo
and her white pals, they are experienced journalists. You'd have to be crazy to
just sweep in and deny all these white people in the Times and the
wider media their jobs just because of the color of their skin.
Isn't that right, Lieutenant Ricci?
Home | Articles | BLOG | Quotes | Photo Gallery | Favorites | Stupid Frogs Game | Store | Feedback | Search | Subscribe | About Us
|