The Post backing down on providing a little free ad space to a September 11 memorial walk for the employees murdered in the Pentagon is fascinating. They should put out a statement: "The Washington Post Company greatly regrets its support for the "Freedom Walk." We did not mean in any way to suggest that we are in favor of either freedom or America."
Jokes aside, it's amusing to see Post science reporter Rick Weiss acting distressed for Editor & Publisher in his role as the paper's Newspaper Guild hack. The paper cannot support the walk since it would not allow the paper to maintain "its appearance of neutrality on polarizing issues of policy." Mm-hmm. In an earlier piece, Weiss complained, "It is dismaying, to say the least, that I can be fired for participating in a peace march while my employer feels free to co-sponsor an event that so blatantly beats the drum of war." Doesn't that tend to compromise Weiss's "appearance of neutrality"?
If not, see how Weiss won the "Damn Those Conservatives Award" in our 2002 Best of NQ for his America's-Taliban take on Bush's bioethics council:
“The [President’s Council on Bioethics] will be navigating a scientific and ethical landscape significantly more complex than the one that existed...last summer. In November, researchers announced that they had made the first human embryo clones, giving immediacy to warnings by religious conservatives and others that science is no longer serving the nation’s moral will. At the same time, the United States was fighting a war to free a faraway nation from the grip of religious conservatives who were denounced for imposing their moral code on others.” – Rick Weiss in a January 17, 2002 “Federal Page” article.
