And how stupid was it of Blair to plagiarize some one's work from the Washington Post? The NY Slimes and the Com-Post are BIG rivals. This is priceless, just priceless.
She doesn't normally write for the Post, she writes for the Austin paper (I think). The Post has been dancing with
schadenfreude about the Times' misdeeds.The Times is more sanctimonious (what did Howell call it, "this irreplaceable national institution?" Gag me!) But how has the Post been doing in the same period?
In the same period as the Times announcing the, er, loss of services of BBC [Blair, Bragg and Clymer], the Post -- which of course, originated the practice of running entire stories based on anonymous stories -- has been nailed on:
- the fabricated Jessica Lynch story (all anonymous sources, including the sources that defended the story afterward -- the only question remaining is did the reporters fabricate it or did they just fail to corroborate a fabrication?)
- the fabricated Condi Rice vs. Affirmative Action story
- the fabricated "Mexican-American soldiers don't want to fight for America" story.
These were all Page 1 exclusives that ran because they comported to the Post's prevailing politics (women are super-human, black conservatives are "race traitors," the Army cruelly forces unwilling blacks and browns to fight for The Man),
not because they were true (they weren't). The definition of a piece of writing selected for impact, without regard for truth, is "propaganda," not "news."
The Post (especially Howard Kurtz and their ombudsman [a Swedish word meaning "guy who loyally defends the paper when we screw the pooch"]) have been having a great time beating on the Times, but their linen isn't exactly daisy fresh.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F