He destroyed his employer's and his own credibility, but the important thing is that Howell Raines' guilt has been assuaged. An honest person would never fall back on such a pathetically obvious emotional ploy.
With that statement Raines showed that the NYT is more a instrument of his own myoptic preceptions of the world that the news.
So true. The "I, as a white man from Alabama..." statement tells us all we need to know about Howell Raines and his motivations.
Raines is still fighting the civil rights wars of the sixties, still playing the Freedom Rider, still trying to assuage his own sense of guilt. In his soul, he believes every white person is Bull Connor -- including himself.
Take a look at his professional biography some time. He's from Birmingham, graduated from Birmingham-Southern (a very good liberal arts school) and was a journalist for the Birmingham Post during the sixties -- strongly sympathetic to the civil rights cause. The books he has authored celebrate that era...and the white man's guilt.
As valid as the cause was, that war has been fought...and won. But Howell Raines still wallows in guilt -- and asks the rest of us to get down in the mud with him.
It's probably the only time in his life that he believed he was doing something worthwhile...