[mhking]

Blair was wrong, period. Didn't matter that he was black. The secondary crime in this (yes, there's more than one!) was that he was treated with kid gloves because he was black. Everyone keeps trying to make the two into one. They are mutually exclusive of each other.

What Blair did was just plain wrong. No one disputes that. It wouldn't matter if he was black, white, red, green or blue. It still would have been wrong.

The secondary issue was not Blair's fault. That fault lies directly with the editors and publisher of the Times. As opposed to treating Blair with the same aplomb and impartiality that they do with anyone else, they chose to treat him with politically correct kid gloves. The result is the birds they released coming home to roost.

No, I can't fault Blair for being black - which is what so many folks are going out of their way to do. But I can fault Howell Raines and his cronies for patronizing Blair, and by extension, insulting all the hard-working, well-educated and obviously far more intelligent black journalists and columnists out there.

Blair's name will be the one that goes down in history. Blair will bear the brunt of the ire of people talking about this. But the other culprits will get away with it, as they do every day. The Raines of the world; the politically correct liberal editors will continue to patronize blacks, and look down their noses, oblivious to the larger damage they do every day to black America in general, and black journalists in particular.

If anything, this should be a wake-up call. This should force blacks in America to demand better treatment from the press; it should force blacks to see leftists for the race-baiting scum that they are. The National Association of Black Journalists should be screaming from the rooftops.

But all we hear is more silence. It's so much easier to blame the right as the "Big Bad Boogieman" that seeks to "oppress" black America.

And in a quiet room, as he sips from a cup of coffee while reading about the Boogieman, Jesse Jackson smiles knowingly.

---

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[M Kehoe]

Good rant.

Ya know what's odd? Like K-Goodwin, Barnacle, Jeraldo, Arnette, etc., they all come back somehow. Face time, books, heck they still write for newspapers and magazines. You watch, Blair will make money off of this as soon as he is released from the ward.

5.56mm

[Luis Gonzalez]

Hear, hear!!!

[Liz]

Brilliant insights. Extraordinarily cogent remarks. The best deconstruction of the Blair debacle in print.

(Yeah, I'm an mhking fan, bigtime.)

[MHGinTN]

After the very large failure to hold professional journalistic standards and insure fourth estate responsibility, the Times has--far down the list of insidious societal engineering behaviors--proven the left's brand of racism ... 'treat a black journalist differently because he's not quite equal with the white journalists'. THAT is the disgusting truth of the liberal left's racism. By adopting the attitude that Blair was somehow deserving of special treatment as a less able journalist, thus they lowered their standards, the Times has insulted the hardworking, more than able, and imminently qualified other black journalists in this nation! Such 'caring' racists those leftists, don'tcha know!

[alethia]

Mhking,

You hit the nail on the head in your commentary.

[RAT Patrol]

Applause!!!

No, I can't fault Blair for being black - which is what so many folks are going out of their way to do. But I can fault Howell Raines and his cronies for patronizing Blair, and by extension, insulting all the hard-working, well-educated and obviously far more intelligent black journalists and columnists out there.

EXACTLY!

[billhilly]

Well said.

[demosthenes the elder]

very well put.

[Springman]

Bump your comments back to the top!!!

[Susannah]

YOU should write for newspapers. Based on what you wrote on this, maybe you do?

I've found the one thing liberals hate more than a white conservative is a black conservative. I've promoted blacks, based on their excellence, and invariably it was the blacks in the lower ranks that disdained them.