NYT: Poor Baby

Enjoy this scathing and hilarious satire by David Burge at CNS yesterday:

.... The younger Sulzberger quickly put his strategic imprimatur on the Times, hiring Howell Raines as head of the Editorial Division and Gerald Boyd as his second in command. Raines, a hard-charging Alabaman, was given his orders: increase productivity, by any means necessary.

"Howell really went postal on that," says one line worker who asked not to be identified. "He'd always be over your desk... it was always 'more! more! more! Flood The Zone, dammit!' but, man, there's only so many column inches you can squeeze out of a minor story about a country club in Georgia."

Some workers say that the emphasis on productivity began to take a toll on morale. Worse yet the company began to experience inventory problems.

"We have so much editorial piling up on the dock, we have to put it somewhere," says a longtime foreman in the paste-up room. "So we started shoving it on the front page, just to get the boss off our backs. Plus, that OpEd stuff really starts to smell if it lays around too long."

Perhaps not coincidentally, the paper began losing its vaunted knack for opinion marketing. While it retains strong loyalty in its hometown, it essentially abandoned the more sophisticated opinion export market west of the Hudson River.

"It's not an easy time to be a company salesman," noted writer Chris Hedges. Delivering a commencement address at an Illinois college in May, Hedges was pelted with ripe tomatoes and cabbages after previewing the Times' new 'Bloodthirsty American Baby Killers' OpEd line....

(Thanks, Charles.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 06/14/03 08:54:01 PM
Categorized as Media.

"Past the Point of Justifying"

A good op-ed by Sen. John McCain in WaPo, dated June 15:

.... Critics today seem to imply that after seven years of elaborately deceiving the United Nations, Hussein precipitated the withdrawal of U.N. inspectors from his country in 1998, then decided to change course and disarmed himself over the next four years, but refused to provide any realistic proof that this disarmament occurred.

I am not convinced. Nor was chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who recently catalogued Iraq's failure to come clean on an array of weapons programs the United Nations believed were continuing. Nor were Congress and President Clinton, who advocated regime change in Iraq in 1998 -- before the U.N. inspectors left.

While war was never inevitable, it was, in retrospect, the most telegraphed military confrontation in history. Hussein had plenty of time to destroy or disperse weapons stocks and to further conceal weapons programs, which often rely more on human knowledge than physical infrastructure. If Hussein had the weapons destroyed or concealed, reconstituting them would have required primarily the skills of Iraqi scientists. Precious few Iraqis would have been involved in the actual destruction or concealment. That's why capturing and interrogating Iraqis involved in concealment -- as well as scientific personnel -- is essential.

Despite highly intrusive inspections after the Gulf War, U.N. inspectors were shocked in 1995 when an Iraqi defector revealed the existence of Iraq's enormous biological weapons program. Until we capture Hussein or prove him dead and eradicate the remnants of his apparatus of terror, which continues to coordinate daily attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Iraqi scientists will not feel free to talk, and warped dreams of outlasting America will persist.

We went to war in part because Hussein failed to account for his weapons, had proven his willingness to use them and behaved in a way that encouraged governments around the world to believe he possessed them. Our intelligence about a hostile foreign government is never perfect. When it tends overwhelmingly toward one conclusion -- in Iraq's case, that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- should we give the benefit of the doubt to a dictator with a record of deceit and aggression?...

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 06/14/03 01:41:57 PM
Categorized as International.

Dear Molly?

Don't miss Dear Abby at Molly's Musings.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 06/14/03 01:39:07 PM
Categorized as Other.

Flag Day

Today is Flag Day in the USA.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 06/14/03 11:30:24 AM
Categorized as Other.