The 'Hard Bigotry' of Incompetence at the NY Times

Today (25 September) the NY Times ran an editorial, “The Hard Bigotry of No Expectations.” It excoriates the Bush Administration for two principal “failures,” the bad response to Hurricane Katrina and the defective Iraq Constitution. Instead, the Times demonstrated that its entire staff is incompetent.

Regarding Katrina, the Times opines, “Four years after 9/11, Katrina showed the world that performance standards for the Department of Homeland Security were so low that it was not required to create real plans to respond to real disasters.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/opinion/25sun1.html

The Times has dozens of its reporters and editors working on various aspects of hurricane coverage. Apparently, none of these crack “journalists” have yet discovered what the blogosphere has known for two weeks. There WAS an existing Evacuation Plan for Southern Louisiana. It was dated 1 January, 2000. It required (paragraph 5, page 13) the use of “public buses” for those citizens who “do not have, or cannot afford” private transportation.

How can any supposedly reputable newspaper claim that there was no “real plan” for evacuation, in the teeth of this fact to the contrary? There is only one answer. It has been made clear to the entire staff of the Times that facts to the contrary of its established political views will not be tolerated. This is “hard bigotry.”

Concerning the proposed Iraqi Constitution, which recent events show will be approved, the Times opines, “Among other things, the constitution drafted under American supervision does not provide for the rights of women and minorities and enshrines one religion as the fundamental source of law.”

As one of the nation’s leading champions of group rights, rather than individual rights, the Times must be aware that the Iraqi Constitution reserves one quarter of the seats in its new parliament for “women.” Having women in such a strong position is uniquely revolutionary for any dominantly Islamic country in history.

And, if one looks at the United States, women have NEVER reached that level in either the House or the Senate. Women are close to that level in the states, “22.6%, of the 7,382 state legislators in the United States.”

Source: http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/Facts/Officeholders/cawpfs.html

Since it took this country lawyer approximately 15 seconds to Google the percentages of women in public office, surely at least one of the hundreds of “journalists” who work for the Times could have done the same.

Again, the Times is aggressively ignoring facts which undercut its intended political point. Again, this is “hard bigotry.” Isn’t anyone at the Times the least bit ashamed of their shoddy work product?

John_Armor@aya.yale.edu