IN DENIAL I

From the Guardian today:

This was not achieved by military power, by invasion, by shredding inter national law, by enforced regime change or by large-scale bloodshed. Nor, in fact, despite Mr Bush’s eagerness for plaudits, was it primarily achieved by his administration at all. It was achieved by discussion – by endless talk, mostly in London, latterly in Libya, and finally in a London gentlemen’s club. Boring perhaps, but effective; and here, with shock and awe, is a lesson for the Pentagon to absorb. Here is a measure of the true worth of the diplomacy espoused by Mr Cook and others. It bore fruit in Iran last week, another country which Britain refuses to join the US in ostracising. It could yet produce results in Syria, another low-grade WMD state, and in North Korea, if only senior US officials would stop threatening them.

That poor Assad and that needy victim, Kim Jong-Il. They’d be ready for membership of the EU if only Washington would stop threatening them. But my favorite detail is the Guardian’s deployment of the phrase “war of terror.” I wish it were a Freudian slip.

IN DENIAL II: Hmmm. The New York Times runs a big story on the journalistic friends of Conrad Black, media mogul in ethical rapids. They detail how some leading conservatives have been paid handsomely on Black’s “advisory boards” while not disclosing their payments. Who does that remind you of? Two years ago, it was revealed that Enron – yes, Enron – had been lavishing huge sums on friendly journalists, including the New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman. The NYT – despite devoting enormous resources to the Enron story – deliberately ignored the journalism angle. Krugman still hasn’t disclosed the tens of thousands of thinly-veiled bribes he got from Enron, while he postures absurdly as a foe of the powerful. The New York Times never ran a stand-alone story about the affair, despite the fact that the majority of the journalists coopted by Enron were on the right. They cannot now say that this was a non-story. They have treated the Black friendships and “payments” as a real story. The disparate treatment is yet another example of how the NYT under Howell Raines wasn’t just biased and slightly nuts. It was corrupt.