Posted on 05/17/2003 12:54:13 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
So apparently, Jayson Blair's biggest crime is not that he cheated and misled. It's that he cheated and misled while black.
That's the unmistakable implication of much of the criticism that's been leveled at the young man in recent days.
Not that he doesn't deserve condemnation. As you may have heard, Blair lied and plagiarized his way through dozens of stories in the course of nearly four years as a New York Times reporter.
Last Sunday, The Times cataloged the sins of its now ex-employee in a grim four-page report. In it, we learn that Blair claimed to have reported from places he had not been, claimed to have interviewed people he had not met and claimed as his own, passages he had not written.
The magnitude of the transgression is magnified by the stage upon which it unfolded. Blair wasn't working for just any old fish wrapper, but for the most venerated newspaper in the country. Yet somehow, its editors allowed themselves to be snookered by a 27-year-old.
Journalists sifting the wreckage of Blair's career have been harsh in their judgments and I don't blame them. What's offensive is that so many have cast his failures in terms of race. For instance, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen writes that Blair is emblematic of a newsroom culture ''that cherished diversity . . . so much so that journalistic standards were bent.'' Cohen is far from the only one expressing that -- I use the word loosely -- thought.
Columnist Andrew Sullivan even suggested on his website that the episode reflects the PC newsroom's abject fear of offending minority journalists.
Frankly, my boss didn't seem particularly worried about offending me last time I asked for a raise. Maybe I should have reminded her that I am black. If Sullivan is right, she'd have opened the company's coffers and told me to take what I need.
The catch is that Sullivan is not right. He is, as Mama used to say, wrong as two left shoes.
For the record, Times editors say they initially brought Blair into the newsroom because they were wowed by him. They offered him a slot in an internship program that was being used to help the paper diversify its newsroom. He rose swiftly from there.
It is upon this slim reed that Cohen and others have perched claims that diversity has hurt The New York Times. The charge is otherwise unsupported.
Which is not surprising in the least. Race is its own planet. The pull it exerts warps perspective and distorts truth. So that a celebrity accused of killing his wife becomes tabloid fodder but a black celebrity accused of killing his white wife becomes the fulcrum of a national debate on race. Not domestic violence, mind you, but race.
Similarly, some people would have us believe the Jayson Blair story is less about the need to reexamine newsroom safeguards than about the color of one man's skin. Less about the decline in workplace ethics than about newsrooms forced to hired unqualified blacks.
And if you don't think the weight of that is felt by every black woman and man in the newsroom, you're kidding yourself. Just Wednesday, the managing editor of The Times, who is black, had to defend himself against charges he had mentored Blair. Mentored.
I've frequently said that to be a black professional is to be always on probation, every day expected to prove that you belong. People always ask me what I mean. This is what I mean. This, exactly.
In recent years, white writers Dennis Love of The Sacramento Bee, David Cragin and Eric Drudis of The San Jose Mercury News, Stephen Glass of The New Republic and Mike Barnicle of The Boston Globe have all been charged with plagiarism or fabrication. Yet to my knowledge, neither Cohen, nor Sullivan nor anybody else wrote stories linking them to journalism's history of discrimination. Nobody asked whether that history has forced editors to hire unqualified white men.
Maybe they'll write that essay next time it happens.
No, I won't hold my breath.
_____________________________________________________________
Florida blacks eye boycott over graduation exam ***"These kids have done what they are supposed to do," he said. "They have gotten the credits they need. They have done community service work. This test is damaging kids psychologically, because there is too much weight to it."…………………. The students being supported by the activists have been given six chances to pass the test with a passing test score of at least 40 percent, but have failed at least one element.
But no matter how many chances are given to pass, a single test should not determine a student's future, said Adora Obi Nweze, president of the Florida NAACP.
"There is more to education than writing an answer," she said. "You have students that can do so many other things, and all should be used to determine if they should be promoted."***
Pitts with his usual whacked out take on reality.
That Blair was in a position to do what he did because of his race isn't debateable.
Yet Pitts tries anyway.
Pathetic.
I bet if Pitts boss was a white liberal male, he would have gotten that raise!
Or maybe, he wouldn't be writing for the paper at all. That's what's really sticking in his craw.
"Blair was reassigned and promoted, often over the doubts and objections of editors, in part to honor the shibboleth of diversity - Blair, who is black, won his first job as an intern in a diversity program."
Journalists who defend affirmative action have groused that such comments are unfair, contending folks can't make Blair the poster boy for the perceived pitfalls of diversity.
But that's not what's being done. People are questioning, quite appropriately, whether Blair's faults were overlooked simply because he's black. If they were, that's just as wrong as not hiring him because he's black.
The one question not being asked is why the Times simply didn't go after a more experienced black reporter from the start. There are far more seasoned African-American journalists here at the Sun, and at other papers, who can write as well as Blair, have more years in the business and don't have a flair for fiction. The Times would have done well to seek out, and hire, one or more of them.
Of course, hiring a more experienced black reporter would have meant the Times would have had to shell out more money. In addition to the entire affirmative action/diversity debate surrounding the short but controversial career of Jayson Blair, we now have to ponder whether the Times hired him not only because he was black, but also because they could lowball him on his salary.
Liberal whites who support affirmative action and diversity had best heed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s admonition that doing justice to black folks to compensate for past wrongs will not come on the cheap. Let that be the lesson of the day for our friends at the Times.***
Right. His "sin" is being a fraud.
Now, The New York Time's sin IS an issue of race.
Jayson is the poster boy for affirmative action; the NYT is the poster boy for liberal white guilt being hoisted on its own petards.
Howell Raines should be pistol whipped and run out of town.
Well put.
I must say, I'm thoroughly enjoying this.
My one hope is that Howard Dean gets the Dem nomination! That ought to be the final nail.
My thoughts exactly! :-)~
Pitts has forgotten that the race card was first played by OJ and his attorneys, and no one else. They played it to the hilt in order to sway a jury and lead them to believe that jury nullification was not only O.K., but their duty to poor, oppressed blacks the world over. What a sham, and what a stupid statement on Pitts' part! Ugh!!!!!
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