Chris Judd's blog

It seemed like a heartwarming story: Voters in an Alabama county that is 96 percent white elected a black man to the State House of Representatives, with one voter saying, "I don't even see him as black."

What most see as a positive sign of an emerging colorblind America, reporter Adam Nossiter of the New York Times saw as something much more ominous. "It is a historic first, but the remarks of many white voters reveal an unconscious condescension," he wrote in the print edition of today's front page article titled, "On a Battlefield of Civil Rights, Race Matters Less in Politics."

Even for a newspaper that champions the left's cynical brand of identity politics, this was apparently too much, as the line was edited in the online version to read, "It is a historic first, but the moment is full of awkwardness.

After dedicating nearly 10,000 words over two months to promoting feminist author Susan Faludi's bizarre screed "The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America," the New York Times finally ran into some opposition: its own book reviewer.

Clay Waters described the paper's September 27 interview with the author here. It was one of five articles the paper dedicated to the book, which argues that the reaction to the 9/11 attacks amounted to little more than an attack on feminism.

Today, the paper's book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, cuts right to the chase: "This, sadly, is the sort of tendentious, self-important, sloppily reasoned book that gives feminism a bad name."

Keep in mind, the review totaled little more than 1,000 words. That leaves the Times dedicating about 9,000 words to sloppy reasoning on a very important subject. But, given the paper has great influence over how history is written, this dissent -- the shortest of the five pieces on the book, including an October 22 reprint of the whole first chapter -- should be noted, especially because Kakutani's effective shredding of Faludi's theory stands in such contrast to the four, earlier puff pieces.

A Democratic member of Congress assaults a police officer, whips up racial animosity, and then is forced to retract the allegations. The newspaper article on that would surely be a painful read for the politician.

Unless the pol is Cynthia McKinney and the paper is The New York Times. The article – which the representative’s staff is surely framing right now – sets up the left-wing congresswoman as “a brilliant and gutsy crusader for the disenfranchised.”

This is how Sheryl Gay Stolberg opens the article, headlined “After Accusing Police of Racism, Congresswoman Apologizes”:

Could the Nazis take over America? It’s one thing for the ridiculously incendiary notion to be raised in a major magazine by an aging Hollywood lefty.

It’s quite another for it to be raised by writers for the most powerful newspaper in the world. Twice. In the same edition. I don’t know if The New York Times film reviewers Stephen Holden and Caryn James share notes or simply a distain for the Bush administration, but the each managed to link the administration to Hitler’s Nazis in articles appearing on the front page of the “Arts” section.

To most of America, unions are the stuff of history books, relevant almost exclusively to families that have a parent working for government, now the main source of union support. But to The New York Times, every development heralds a great resurgence; every activist is the next Ceasar Chavez.

So it is with today’s article, “Union Takes New Tack in Organizing Effort at Pork-Processing Plant,” by writer Steven Greenhouse. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union is trying, for a third time, to unionize the Smithfield Packing Company plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina.

As noted previously on Newsbusters, the violent Muslim protests against the publication of cartoons lampooning Islam has clearly put The New York Times in an uncomfortable position. The rioters, while to the Times an embattled minority in the West, are attacking free speech. Not good. But their most vocal critics are conservatives. Indeed, the Times describes the paper that first ran the cartoons as “conservative.” Can’t side with them.

In today's “Critic’s Notebook” piece, headlined "A Startling New Lesson in the Power of Imagery" and featuring a photo of children holding a sign "Danish People Not Welcome Here," writer Michael Kimmelman unwittingly describes the paper’s dilemma halfway through his meandering 1,396-word item: