Opinion: You Really <em>Like</em> Us!

Here’s a question: Is [George] Skelton such a fool that he actually believed the Democrats would pass a redistricting reform once they’d defeated Schwarzenegger’s? Or was he swayed by a not-so-subtle not-so-subconscious anti-Schwarzenegger bias--perhaps a desire to deny the governor a victory, or to see him humbled, or to please layoff-prone LAT bosses who might entertain those anti-Arnold impulses?

A Los Angeles Times article echoed the claim -- frequently advanced by conservatives -- that special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of then-CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity ‘concluded that the disclosure did not violate a federal law protecting the identity of covert operatives.’ In fact, Fitzgerald has stated that he was unable to determine whether any laws were violated in the leaking of Plame’s identity because his investigation was impeded by former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, whom he charged with perjury and obstructing the grand jury investigation.

I am especially interested in the parts [of an interview with Times Editor Dean Baquet] where he claims that what happened to [Michael] Hiltzik was in part a result of the paper’s failure to “push back” effectively (!). That is an odd statement that I hadn’t noticed in Luke [Ford]’s description. Also, he believes that part of the reason for the paper’s declining circulation is “cheap criticism” of the paper. (And he sounds plenty angry when he says it, too!) This could be the real reason he won’t let me interview him after all: maybe he thinks my blog is an example of the “cheap criticism” that is costing him readers — and that cost him a business columnist. (He didn’t say any of this; I’m speculating here.)

The world hasn’t been subjected to the incompetent typings of Times hack journo Bill Plaschke in over a month, and yet what do we read today but another inane hatchet job on the trade that brought one of the Dodgers’ two best pitchers into town. As usual, it’s riddled with easily verifiable errors and readily dismissed claims.

I know I said I wasn’t going to write…but my pal Bill Plaschke has lost his mind. His column on Brad Penny and Paul LoDuca was loony. Would you trade a 34 year old catcher who fades in the second half of every season for a 28 year old ace who throws nearly 100 MPH? I didn’t think so…..

[Erin Aubry] Kaplan writes that these regulations send the message that ‘[i]f blacks want to have a chance in the increasingly unforgiving corporate world, they will have to shave off their rough edges -- starting with their hair.’ I suspect she’s wrong to say that the corporate world is increasingly unforgiving, especially on questions of appearance. She does raise a valid point about the effects of appearance norms. But does the fact that the regulations she cites (aside from the egregious example of the Louisiana sheriff) come from black institutions complicate the picture?

[L]et me depart from the liberal consensus and argue that the New York Times, while acting in good faith, made the wrong call by printing the SWIFT story. Editors there and at the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal who also had pieces of the scoop should have waited to publish it, at least until they could be more certain that the snooping program was no longer useful.

The unfortunate bit about this episode is that there is actually an interesting and crucial conversation to be had over this issue - one that [New York Times Editor Bill] Keller himself, along with his Los Angeles Times counterpart, Dean Baquet, tried to initiate last week, and one that was then picked up by a number of prominent journalism school deans, writing by committee on the Washington Post’s op-ed page. But how is Keller, or anyone, supposed to have a reasoned debate when your opponent on the other side is producing little more than spittle and bile?

HH: He’s really sort of the superego of the Los Angeles Times, in my view, sort of the uber-columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Jonathan… JC: What an odd position for me to have attained, despite never having set foot in their newsroom. HH: I know. That’s why it’s such an interesting newspaper. They’ve totally absorbed you without you even having been there.

An examination of the leadership lineage of the four major dailies that are widely and correctly understood to be very left of center in this country –the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times—reveals that much of the dysfunction of these newsrooms may fairly be traced to inbreeding among their elites. The cloistered word of big papers breeds its own peculiar type of leader, always selected from within the world of the big papers, always carrying forward to the top the same assumptions of importance and privilege, the same world view and indeed the same unusual combination of arrogance and limited experience that defines big journalism.

When the death scene of Bombay --and London, Madrid, Beslan, Jerusalem, Egypt,Jordan, Bali etc-- is recreated here, then will people look back at the recklessness of Bill Keller, Dean Baquet and other Bush-hating hyper-partisans and demand an accounting. It may take a decade, or a generation, or even longer, but if these papers survive (and there is great doubt on that score at least as regards the Los Angeles Times) a day will come when their editors issue an apology for the fecklessness. It will be too late for some future victims, but like Walter Duranty, Keller and Baquet will eventually be discredited and their papers shamed.

[T]heir previous good deeds do nothing to undo the damage they deliberately inflicted on the national interest and American lives by exposing details of a live-saving program. A first-time murderer is still a murderer. His formerly pristine record will not make his victim any less dead.