EVENING UPDATE, FEBRUARY 23,  2008

Dumb and dumber

Only a day after getting stung by readers, and a number of journalism critics, over its smear of John McCain, The Times is at it again.  You would think that reasonably intelligent people would lie low and not do another McCain story that could be questioned.  But, you would think wrong.  Now we have a new Times story that emphasizes McCain's age, something that didn't seem to bother the paper when it endorsed McCain in the Republican primary about four weeks ago.  It's a kind of made-up story.  You can tell a made-up story by the code words that are used.  Look at the headline here:

McCain’s Age May Figure in Choice of a Running Mate

May?  Excuse me, but is "may" a story?  It may.  But it may not.

We had this problem when I was in the CIA many years ago.  A number of "reports" would have that same construction.  The Soviet Union "may" do this.  This new statement "may" mean this.  We used to joke about it.  "May" means nothing.  It is called speculation, and speculation should never be mistaken for a news report.

I wonder when we'll see the headline that calls attention to Obama's youth and inexperience.  Don't hold your breath.  We're more likely to see one that points out that some of history's great leaders were young.  Of course, they lived in a time when life expectancy was 45, but don't let that throw you. 

Consider this, from the Times story:

Some suggested Mr. McCain might want to tap a younger running mate to balance the ticket, particularly if he were to face a young opponent like Mr. Obama, 46. Others said his age would simply heighten his need to choose somebody whom voters would feel comfortable with as president should anything happen to him. (Not to be morbid, but eight vice presidents have succeeded presidents who died in office.)

That is disgusting.  It is embarrassing journalism.  It is clearly designed to hurt McCain.  The reporter might have pointed out that four of the eight presidents who "died" in office - Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy - were victims of assassination, which is not an age-related disease.  So only four presidents - Harrison, Taylor, Harding, and Roosevelt - actually "died" in office. 

This is vulgar stuff.  The Times continues its slide.

Internal dissent

The Times's public editor - known on some papers as the ombudsman - chimes in with a thoughtful analysis of the paper's suggestion that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist.  He concludes with this:

I asked Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, if The Times could have done the story and left out the allegation about an affair. “That would not have reflected the essential truth of why the aides were alarmed,” she said.

But what the aides believed might not have been the real truth. And if you cannot provide readers with some independent evidence, I think it is wrong to report the suppositions or concerns of anonymous aides about whether the boss is getting into the wrong bed.

Good.

Oh, by the way, Jill Abramson was half of the writing team that produced the book, "Strange Justice," a hit job on Clarence Thomas.  She has experience at driving knives into backs.

McCain attacks Obama

Meanwhile, in the presidential world, John McCain is doing what he should be doing - concentrating his fire on Barack Obama.  Correctly, he emphasizes Obama's childishness in foreign affairs:

Barack Obama's offer to meet face to face with Fidel Castro's successor is ''dangerously naive,'' Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Friday, testing out a potential fall campaign strategy to cast the Democratic presidential candidate as too inexperienced for the world stage.

Obama, who made the comment at a Thursday night debate with rival Hillary Clinton, rapidly returned fire, saying McCain "would give us four more years of the same Bush-McCain policies that have failed U.S. interests and the Cuban people for the last 50 years.''

Though neither man has wrapped up his party's nomination, the volleys over Cuba policy provide a glimpse into what is shaping up to be their lines of attack: McCain will present himself as an experienced, steady hand and criticize Obama's lack of foreign policy experience; Obama, if the Democratic nominee, will present himself as a fresh start and McCain as a return to the Bush years.

This is going to be a very rough campaign.  I'm not at all certain McCain can prevail over the slickest politician of our time.  It's hard to take Obama's line that our policy has failed the Cuban people for 50 years.  How has it failed the Cuban people?  He never explains anything, and there's never any detail.

We have a whole new generation of voters miseducated in the schools that have evolved since the sixties.  My fear is that they'll buy into Obama's rubbish.  McCain has got to fight, and he has to be relentless. 

Legal outrage

We call ourselves a nation of laws.  Cynics say we're a nation of lawyers.  This story will outrage you.  A good-Samaritan engineer, Ramon Gilsanz, who tried to help out after the 9-11 attacks, finds himself the target of ridiculous lawsuits that will probably consume his life.  As they used to say, "There oughta be a law..."  There isn't.  The story:

Led by Mr. Gilsanz, a group of structural engineers talked their way past the barricades. They became indispensable in a world that suddenly had no recognizable geometry. Nine months later, the debris was cleared. Despite the fast pace and cruel terrain, no workers died because of structural failures or accidents during the recovery.

Now, however, thousands of people have filed lawsuits claiming that they became ill by breathing the air at the World Trade Center site while working on the recovery. Still others have sued not because they worked there, but because they had jobs in places where the debris was stored. They say the exposure made them sick.

Finally, one man has sued on behalf of the United States, claiming that Mr. Gilsanz is part of a vast conspiracy to cover up the truth about 9/11, including the “so-called building failures.” The lawsuit maintains that exotic weaponry actually destroyed the buildings, and that the airplanes were mass psychological trickery.

“When you are sued by 8,000 people, your mind works in a different way,” said Mr. Gilsanz, 53. “You totally disconnect. If you live on the West Coast, you can’t always be thinking about earthquakes.” Mr. Gilsanz is one of about 130 structural engineers from 30 firms who have been named as defendants in an enormous cloud of litigation that drifts, year by year, through the federal court.

Where is the help for this man?  Where are the Democrats who are so concerned about the oppressed?  Well, they get a lot of cash from the trial lawyers every year, so I won't expect much from them.  But let's hear from the GOP, and from Mayor Bloomberg.  Okay?

Honorable defender of the language

The English language is in crisis, but occasionally there steps forward a hero to protect and defend, often at great risk of ridicule or blank expressions from teenagers.  Here stands one such saint.  All hail, all hail.  In this case, the gentleman defends the semicolon, and a medal should be awarded:

It was nearly hidden on a New York City Transit public service placard exhorting subway riders not to leave their newspaper behind when they get off the train.

“Please put it in a trash can,” riders are reminded. After which Neil Neches, an erudite writer in the transit agency’s marketing and service information department, inserted a semicolon. The rest of the sentence reads, “that’s good news for everyone.”

Semicolon sightings in the city are unusual, period, much less in exhortations drafted by committees of civil servants. In literature and journalism, not to mention in advertising, the semicolon has been largely jettisoned as a pretentious anachronism.

Anachronism?  None dare call that treason, though it is.  More:

But, whatever one’s personal feelings about semicolons, some people don’t use them because they never learned how.

In fact, when Mr. Neches was informed by a supervisor that a reporter was inquiring about who was responsible for the semicolon, he was concerned.

“I thought at first somebody was complaining,” he said.

Roses for the man; he's done a good thing; there should be more like him; he makes the world a better place.

And I'll be back tomorrow; that assumes I can stop hitting this semicolon key.

Posted on February 23, 2008.