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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gamesmistress who wrote (25776)	1/23/2004 2:21:39 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793685

a gaggle of poodles and lackeys? It all boils down to "France did not back us."

To: gamesmistress who wrote (25776)	1/24/2004 10:06:23 AM
From: gamesmistress	Respond to of 793685

The NYT's response to complaints about MoDo's latest: In response to complaints about Maureen Dowd's poodles 'n' lackeys column, the NYT's Arthur Bovino is sending this form email: Thank you for your message. Unless there's evidence of ethical misbehavior of factual error, individual columnists can say what they want to say and individual readers can like the ones they like and dislike the ones they don't like. Please email us with your concerns on any specific articles with which you take issue. Sincerely, Arthur Bovino Office of the Public Editor The New York Times Which would be fair enough, except we know that individual columnists at the NYT can't "say what they want to say". This is Spectator editor Boris Johnson's account of events following his submission of a column (requested by the NYT) last year: 'Boris,' said [NY Times op-ed editor] Tobin, 'we love it! Everybody loves it. But we have, uh, a few issues of political correctness that I have to go through with you' ... he said that he had made a change to a sentence about donations of U.S. overseas aid to key members of the UN Security Council. I had said something to the effect that you don't make international law by giving new squash courts to the President of Guinea. This now read 'the President of Chile.' Come again? I said. Qué? 'Uh, Boris,' said Tobin, 'it's just easier in principle if we don't say anything deprecatory about a black African country, and since Guinea and Chile are both members of the UN Security Council, and since it doesn't affect your point, we would like to say Chile' ... That was nothing, however, to the trouble I had with a sentence about the aftermath of the war. I was trying to explain that so many people, in the commentariat and in the saloon bars, had invested so much emotional and intellectual capital in the anti-war cause that in a perverse way they would be hoping for disaster. To illustrate the point, I noted that the last Gulf war had been so amazingly free of casualties that Gulf war syndrome (a stochastically unexceptional ragbag of symptoms) had been invented to fill the void, and to satisfy the yearning of the anti-war brigade for catastrophe. 'We just cannot say this,' said Tobin. So ... columnists at the NYT can say what they want to say about Australia and England and other US allies, but can’t say what they want to say they about black African countries and Gulf War syndrome. Perhaps Mr. Bovino would care to explain. timblair.spleenville.com