Posted on 05/21/2003 6:41:37 PM PDT by tvn
Jayson jests: I got over on the Times
Plagiarist delights in attention over misdeeds
All across America, journalists are wringing their hands over the Jayson Blair case. The only one whos not, it seems, is Jayson Blair himself.
Far from repenting his misdeeds, the 27-year-old ex-New York Times reporter is glorying in them, celebrating himself for fleecing the esteemed newspaper and exhorting others to admire his audacity.
In a lengthy interview published today in the New York Observer, Blair expresses no regret at having been fired from the Times, calling the paper a "snakepit," full of idiots and racists.
Anyway, he claims, he was planning on getting out of the newspaper business soon owing to unspecified health problems. (His next career, apparently, will be memoirist; Blair has a literary agent and is said to be considering book deal offers that will fetch him somewhere in the mid-six figures.)
Like a pyromaniac who admires the blaze he has kindled even as firefighters battle to put it out, Blair is obsessed with the press coverage of his fall from grace. What wounds him is the perception that he resorted to plagiarism and fabrications out of necessity rather than out of sheer perversity.
Blair, who is black, is particularly galled by the suggestion that the Times kept him on to fill some sort of racial quota rather than because he simply outsmarted his editors. "If theyre all so brilliant and Im such an affirmative-action hire, how come they didnt catch me?" he asked in the Observer interview.
Blair believes his shenanigans are at least as impressive as those of Stephen Glass, who was busted five years ago for inventing facts for his New Republic articles. "I dont understand why I am the bumbling affirmative-action hire when Stephen Glass is this brilliant whiz kid, when from my perspective and I know I shouldnt be saying this I fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism," said Blair.
While he allows that his race was a factor in getting him hired and promoted, he says that his skin color also caused problems for him. "Both racial preferences and racism played a role," he said. "And I would argue that they didnt balance each other out. Racism had much more of an impact."
Blair also wants the world to know that he never would have been caught if he hadnt wanted to be, suggesting that his transgressions were a form of acting out. "Was I too young? For a newspaper reporters job at a great newspaper, maybe not. Was I too young for a snake pit like that? Maybe."
Untroubled by conscience, Blair enjoys a laugh at the expense of his former bosses while reminiscing over his favorite prank: a completely made-up description of rescued POW Jessica Lynchs family home. "The description was just so far off from reality," he said. "The way they described it in The Times story someone read a portion of it for me. I just couldnt stop laughing."
The search continues for new NY Times slogan- The top 95 Proposed so far: 1) ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT--NOT
2) LOTS OF NEWS THAT'S NOT FIT TO PRINT
3) ALL THE NEWS WE PRINT ISN'T FIT
4) All Our Views That's News to Print
5) All the News That We See Fit to Print
6) All the News As We See It
7) All the News, Fact or Better, Fiction
8) All the News, Well At Least Almost
9) All the News That We Can Dream Up
10) All The News We Can Crib From Others
11) Some News, Some Fiction, You Figure It Out
12) All The News We Can Dream Up or Steal
13) All the News That's Fit to Print and Is Cleared by Our Lawyers 14) Lots of News We've Stolen From Other Papers
15) All the News Fit for a Plagiarist
16) All News Only a Plagiarist Can Love
17) All The News, Just Don't Check the Sources
18) All the News, Trust Us--Honest
19) Changing Fiction To Fact
20) All News, No Credibility
21) All the Lies Fit to Print.
22) Face it, We Just Like to Print!
23) Aside from the pervasive Marxist bias, multitudinous errors and mis-information, and Anti-capitalist/anti-American posturing, we aint that bad!"
24) "All The News That Fits Our Views."
25) All The News Thats Fit to Print, Except For the Stuff We Make Up
26) All the News And Then the Part We Make Up
27) Some Facts, the Rest Fiction
28) Reporting Fiction Stranger than Fact
29) Reporting Facts And Stranger Fiction
30) When It's Raines, It Bores
31) All the News Cribbed to Fit
32) Just the Facts and Some Fiction Thrown In
33) Readers of the World Forgive Us
34) We Can Fool All of the People Some of the Time- Thats Enough for Us
35) The Blair Filch Project
36) Nothing But the Truth (Except for the Part We Make Up)
37) Leading Nominee for Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
38) A Lie Told Often Enough Becomes Fact in the Times
39) Truth is Truth, Except in the New York Times
40) Transforming Lies into Truth
41) Weaving A Tangled Web to Deceive
42) When the Going Gets Tough, The Times Makes It Up
43) Give Us A Dollar, And Well Give You The World-- As We See It
44) The New York Times- We Try Harder, Then We Make It Up.
45) The New York Times, The Ultimate Lying Machine
46) When the News Absolutely, Positively Has to be Reported, We Make It Up.
47) We Answer to the Highest Authority- Ourselves
48) New York Times- Do They or Dont They?
49) Hey, We All Make Mistakes
50) We Admit--When Youre Wrong, Youre Wrong
51) We Really Messed Up
52) Were Really, Really SorryHonest
53) We Rarely Make Mistakes, But When We Do, They Tend To Be Lulus
54) Whats The Big Deal- We Usually Get It Right
55) Remember, The Washington Post Makes Mistakes Too
56) If You Dont Believe Us- You Can Check The Facts on Google
57) Well Get It Right Yet
58) The Internets Replacing the Printed Press Anyway
59) Whats The Big Deal, Its Not Like We Committed A Crime
60) What's the Big Deal- News Stories Are Like SubwaysTheres A New One Arriving Every Few Minutes
61) Weve Replaced the 5 Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why) With the 5Ps (Pontificate, Proselytize, Persuade, Prevaricate, Persecute) and the 5 Ds ( Defraud, Distort, Deceive, Denounce, Dissemble)
62) When In Doubt, We Make It Up
63) Newspaper of Broken Record
64) All the NewsAnd Then the Raines Came
65) EthicsWho Needs Em
66) We Have Nothing To Fear But -- Truth Itself
67) When the News Breaks, We Fix It
68) New York, New York, Its A Wonderful TownJust Dont Rely on the Times
69) The New York Times would like to retract the following statement:
"All The News That's Fit To Print"
We have determined that this has been a daily lie for some time now, and we are diligently investigating how we can pin it all on Jason Blair. We appreciate your forbearance in this matter.
70) All the News That's Fit to Print, More or Less
71) "We decide, we report"
72) Maybe Its True, Maybe it isnt
73) Gray Lady downand on her way out
74) We Always Knew What Was Fit To PrintNow Were Really Not Sure
75) Neither Raines, Nor Sleet, Nor Dead Of Night Will Keep Us From Delivering Our Version of News
76) Raines Flops Keep Befalling On Our Headlines
77) Howell Raines Disdain Befalls Mainly Those in the Main
78) New York, New York- If We Can Make It Up There, We Can Make It Up Any Where
79) You Want To Be Sure, Check With the Christian Science Monitor
80) We Have To Find Some Way To Keep Our Circulation Up
81) All the news that fits....half is lies, the other half we made up.
82) All the new that's fit to print....(>>> anagram >>>).... That's it, then all profits went
83) All the news that's printed to fit our agenda
84) New York Times - The Novel . 85) All the News Thats Fit to Print- We triple guarantee it. There are no communists at the Times
86) We distort, you decide!
87) Stuff We Heard From A Guy Who Says His Friend Heard About It"
88) Remember, Jayson Blair Got His Job Through the New York Times
89) The New York Times: Where Punch Is Out To Lunch
90) Punch- First Against the War, First Against the Peace, First in not axing lax newsmen
91) New York Times: Where Truth Takes A Holiday
92) New York Times: Where Affimative Action Begins and Proper Editing Ends
93) "If They're So Smart, Why Didn't The Catch Me?" Jayson Blair, May 2003
94) We Check It Twice, But Often Fail To Find Who's Naughty or Nice
95) More Screwups Like Blair And We Promise We'll Carry Cartoons
I fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism," said Blair.
So which is it?
I'm sure glad this guy learned his lesson. /sarcasm off
Did anyone really excpect anything different, behavior wise?
I'm sure he'll soon be a host on yet another mush head show on some network.
Hey, if "lips" Monica can do it - so can this liberal turd for brains.
LVM
Blair expresses no regret at having been fired from the Times, calling the paper a "snakepit," full of idiots and racists.
LOL, he does have a point there.
Oh, yes! Chris Matthews called. Mike Barnacle won't be able to stand in for him tomorrow night. Are you available?
"a 'snakepit,' full of idiots and racists"Jayson could apply that to the entire American "mainstream newsmedia"?
"If theyre all so brilliant and Im such an affirmative-action hire, how come they didnt catch me?"He's got a point.
"Blair enjoys a laugh at the expense of his former bosses...'I just couldnt stop laughing.'"Clio--the Muse of History--just can't stop laughing either. She put him up to it.
Clio found this presumption: "The Newspaper of Record" to be particularly offensive!
Pulp Fiction
We are lying (this time we are telling the truth)
Schadenfreude |
They do if they were only in there as a cover in the first place.
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