The whole point of the New York Times’ endless, banal, and pointless series on “How Race Is Lived In America” was to win a Pulitzer Prize and yesterday they won it. Woohoo! Mazel Tov to everyone concerned. One small suggestion to the Times. Do you think in the future, you could simply skip the middleman, the poor reader, and send these stories straight to the Prize Committees? Even Mickey Kaus can’t summarize these interminable thumb-suckers.
ON THE OTHER HAND: If Dorothy Rabinowitz can win a Pulitzer, there really is a God. Her extraordinary work defending those falsely accused of child abuse is, to my mind, exemplary of the best kind of journalism: counter-intuitive at first, relentless, humane, and very, very brave. Here’s a link to some of her best stuff.
THEIR WORST MOVE YET: Indeed, the president didn’t milk the homecoming of the Hainan heroes. But that didn’t stop others. As reported in the Seattle Times, attending pols included: Gov. Gary Locke, D-Wash, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash, Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash, Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash, Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash. Clintonism is dead. Long live Clintonism!
PRAVDA IN DUBLIN: “In China genuine feelings of outrage over US assertiveness and hegemony were quite clearly a factor. It is a salutary reminder that Chinese public opinion exists independently of its state-controlled political system.” – from an editorial in the Irish Times. Who do they think they are, Tom Friedman?
BLACK COPS AND GUNS: Worthwhile number-crunching from FrontPage magazine on police homicides. From the Cincinnati riots to the real worries about racial profiling, we’re all used to the idea that white cops are somewhat trigger-happy with black suspects. Worth noting then that, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1998, “the black-officer-kills-black-felon rate was 32 per 100,000 black officers – much higher than the white-officer-kills-black-felon rate of 14 per 100,000 white officers.” This may well be partly explained by the preponderance of black cops in black districts. But it certainly complicates the simplistic view that white cops are gunning for black suspects with wild abandon. In fact, the rate at which white cops have been killing black criminals has been dropping for two decades. Tell that to Al Sharpton.
TIPPING JAR UPDATE: We’re $10,000 better off than we were when we started the Tipping Point, for which many thanks. We got a check in the mail today for a cool $1000. Amazing. And, at halfway through April, we look set for 130,000 visitors this month. Thanks again. The re-design should be ready within three weeks.
NOTES FROM P.C.U.: It may be old news at this point but the Horowitz ad keeps illuminating the reality out there in our universities. The Brown Daily Herald, for example, bravely published the ad, with criticism, and the University President defended publication on classic free-speech grounds. The opponents of the ad responded by stealing about a third of a subsequent print-run of the paper. And then this open letter was sent from dozens of senior faculty to the president. These professors argue that the president’s defense of free speech and “refusal to condemn the advertisement as a forum of harassment has – perhaps inadvertently – led to the silencing of many people of color on campus.” The argument here is that black students are so weak and inadequate that they are unable to argue against Horowitz’s arguments on their own terms, and are forced into silence. The professors go on to describe the theft of the paper as “the collective symbolic action by a group of students.” They go on to argue that the anonymous and sometimes scurrilous emails sent to the Herald by various students in defense of the ad should be investigated. “As you know,” the professors argue, “the University can use IP addresses to trace the source of every communication, anonymous or otherwise, on the web. Thus, we cannot help but wonder why, more than two weeks after the publication of the inflammatory statement by Horowitz, the University has failed to take strong action against the injurious racist insults and attacks on the BDH web pages.” Thus a university is actually urged not simply to suppress speech by its own staff but to hunt down and trace those who have made insensitive comments – even anonymously online – and punish them. It’s a brave new world, isn’t it?
NOTES FROM P.C.U. II: Columbia University launched its film festival yesterday, a reader informs me. Award categories are for Latino, Women’s and African-American movies. No whites need apply. Whatever happened to the “queers?”
HOWIE UPDATE: Some new signs from the Washington Post. He has spoken to Jeff Epperly, the Sullivan-hating editorialist from Bay Windows, who argued that I just kowtow to right-wingers and have never done anything real for gay equality. That forced me to cough up to Howie all the incriminating gay activism and fundraising I have done over the last two decades. Being Howie, he fairly asked me for people who might back that up. I know this sounds like a profile-writer-suck-up, but I’m pretty impressed with Kurtz’s diligence. He’s actually reporting this thing. Then I get an email headlined “another annoying question.” Uh oh. “Would I be safe in saying you’re not doing much dating these days, as you seemed to suggest?” Since my break-up a couple of months ago, that would be true, I guess. I’ve come to the conclusion that relationships, for me at least, are not particularly important. I’m quite happy single, with a laptop, friends and a beagle. What more could a man want?
The Dish 