yanoblog

Front page of the Times today has an article headlined Race Matters Less in Politics of South. It’s an interesting article about a black man getting elected to the State House from a district that’s 96% white. That’s certainly an interesting story. All the more so, given the specific history of that county. (Incidentally, this would be an interesting story anywhere in the country – racism isn’t exactly confined to the Deep South).

Obviously, the hook for the story (and the reason it’s on the front page) is Obama’s campaign.

However, the best part of the article is the way some residents seem to have dissed the reporter without him realizing it. Or even if that wasn’t their intent, it’s funny he (Adam Nossiter) wrote the story that way. I’m not sure what size the beats are at the Times (they appear to grow in size as you move away from the city, from covering 10 square blocks to covering whole continents), but it seems like he has the whole Bible Belt.

Anyway, he writes… Oh wait, I was about to cut and paste from the online article, but its content is a bit different than the paper edition I have. That’s an interesting story in itself, which I don’t have times (Get it?) to pursue. Anyway, in the New England edition, he writes:

And a few weeks ago, voters in a county that is more than 96 percent white chose a genial black man, James Fields, to represent them in the State House of Representatives. It is a historic first, but the remarks of many white voters reveal an unconscious condescension.

(The online version is the same, up to “It was a historic first, but” and then reads: “the moment is full of awkwardness.” I assume an editor realized Nossiter was overstating the case.)

Nonetheless, where he sees “unconscious condescension,” I see some white folks messing with a reporter they sense is trying to make them look backward:

“Really, I never realize he’s black,” said a white woman in a restaurant, smiling.

“He’s black?” asked Lou Bradford, a white Cullman police officer, jokingly.

“You know, I don’t even see him as black,” said another of Mr. Fields’s new white constituents, Perry Ray, the mayor of one of the county’s villages, Dodge City.

(By the way, Nossiter did some amazing reporting during Katrina and its aftermath.)

Yesterday, I blogged about David Brooks’ latest error and wondered when the correction would come.

Well, it looks like they won’t be openly correcting it – it’s been silently changed in the Times archive.

Whatta schmuck.

There is precedent for having columnists openly correct their mistakes.

For example, a few years ago, Frank Rich wrote an article about the Pentagon’s desecration of the Koran. It clearly enraged the White House. But the only error they could find was a misstated date. This led to one of the finest snarky corrections ever. Read it slowly to really appreciate it:

Last week I misstated the Friday evening on which the Pentagon buried its report certifying desecrations of the Koran by American guards. It was June 3, not May 27.

In fact, even David Brooks has done it. He wrote a rant about Spain’s decision to pull out of Iraq. It included this paragraph:

Does anyone doubt that Americans and Europeans have different moral and political cultures? Yesterday the chief of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, told Italy’s La Stampa, ’’It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists.’’ Does he really think capitulation or negotiation works better? Can you imagine John Kerry or George Bush saying that?

While it might be a reasonable approach to consider the context in which terrorists act (as well as what gets defined as “terrorism”), I can’t even imagine Prodi saying that. Because he didn’t. Brooks issued this correction:

In Tuesday’s column I quoted the European Commission’s president, Romano Prodi, telling the Italian newspaper La Stampa that force was not the answer to terrorism. I was relying on an Agence France-Presse translation, which was incorrect. Prodi actually said force should not be the only answer to terrorism. He said terrorism would not abate until the Israeli-Palestinian dispute was resolved.

(Not that that causes Brooks to revisit any of his actual arguments.) But at least he issued a correction.

What gives this time? (Maybe it’s coming with his next column. But the Times usually appends its corrections on the website. It doesn’t just silently change the original article. We’ll see…)

UPDATE

Once again, my blog’s influence grows. With his next column, Brooks issued a formal correction. A correction has also since been added to the archived version of this column (which should’ve been done when they changed the column silently).

My brother-in-law just told me to read David Brooks’ current column to see if I could spot the glaring error. Fortunately for my dignity, I passed the test.

It appears in this paragraph (ignore the illogic of Brooks…this is just a factual error.):

All the habits of verbal thuggery that have long been used against critics of affirmative action, like Ward Churchill and Thomas Sowell, and critics of the radical feminism, like Christina Hoff Summers, are now being turned inward by the Democratic front-runners.

I didn’t know Ward Churchill had swung so far to the right. Because he hasn’t.

However, I knew Ward Connerly, who funds anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives (e.g., Proposition 209 in CA), was a scumbug.

But you know people of color – all their names sound the same.

I’m surprised the Times let this slip through. Next blog post from me (I assume): The Correction.

This is a fantastic example of using graphics to share information.

(I have to display it smaller to fit in my lameo blog. Try reading the article.)

Wow. Showing the full length of the dive to scale with the size of the whale is unreal. It’s also amazing that their mouths can hold more than their bodyweight in water. And all they get is 20 pounds of krill per bite that size.

From this article.

I try to avoid reading Thomas Friedman and David Brooks’ op-ed pieces. They irritate more than enlighten.

But this morning I was tired, my guard was down, and my eyes drifted downward to this delightful piece

I can’t give it the kind of amazing treatment that Matt Taibbi did of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat in the greatest book review of all time.

So, I’ll just quote the first paragraph. But it’s the first line that blew my mind. I guess, by some perverse definition of “good”, Brooks wrote a good opener. It certainly got my attention. But when you think that this was the strongest concept he could come up with, you just have to wonder WTF is going on over at the Times. I guess this is his big 9/11 anniversary piece. Or something.

Zealots don’t laugh when elevators break. Shatha al-Musawi did laugh. She smiled at the camera crew that was following her to her Baghdad office, and she sighed, “We’ll have to take the stairs.”

I don’t know where to begin. What does someone’s reaction to an elevator breaking have to do with their level of zealotry? How did he determine this particular set partitioning (set A: zealots, set B: people who laugh when elevators break). Why use this as a dividing line in strife-ridden Iraq. Is this a new strategy for identifying the “insurgency” – go around breaking elevators in Iraq and see how people react? Oh wait, given how much the US government has destroyed the infrastructure, they don’t even have to break the elevators. I suppose that strategy will work as well as anything else the US has come up with.

Sigh.

There is one great correction and one good one in today’s New York Times.

First, the good. This is just a funny screwup because it makes the Times look so provinical (“Spain, Italy, what’s the difference? Neither of them have Manhattan.”):

An art review on Thursday about the “NeoIntegrity” show at the Derek Eller Gallery, in Chelsea, misstated the surname of the artist whose “American Flag” is in the show. He is Andrew Madrid, not Milan.

And now the great. This jewel is a fine example of the sardonic correction (and, given the NYT’s Islamophobia, it’s also borderline political):

An article in Science Times on July 17 about the widespread distribution of “Atlas of Creation,” a book with an Islamic creationist point of view, not only incorrectly identified a company involved in shipping some of the books but misstated its role and its responsiveness to questions. The company, SBS Worldwide Ltd. (not SDS Worldwide, as the article had it, and corrected in this space on July 21), says it cleared a shipment of the books through customs but had nothing to do with their further distribution in the United States. SBS Worldwide Ltd. did not return calls and e-mail messages asking about its role before the article was published because it never got any; The Times had sent the questions to the wrong company. This correction was delayed in the confusion.

Enjoy.

There are no “fridge worthy” entries in today’s corrections section of the New York Times but there are three examples of different humorous corrections:

1. Unintentional Irony
2. The Swipe
3. The Macabre

1. Unintentional Irony One way this happens is when the topic of the original article is related to the mistake that required correction:

A brief article in Science Times yesterday about the possibility that a person’s reading level might protect against neurological damage from lead exposure misspelled the given name of an author of the study. She is Dr. Margit L. Bleecker, not Margrit.

(I believe this is unintentional irony. In future blog posts, I will provide examples of the intentional variety.)

2. The Swipe I have not yet looked into the folks who write the corrections, but I have an image of them as a sardonic, vaguely world-weary bunch. Here’s an example:

An article in The Arts on Saturday about “In the Shadow of Justice,” a documentary on “Dateline NBC” about the murder of a bouncer at a Manhattan nightclub, included incorrect information from the maker of the film, Dan Slepian, about its editing. While Mr. Slepian shot and assembled most of the film, it was edited by Rob Allen, not by Mr. Slepian.

I think Mr. Slepian was probably trying to puff himself up, and I applaud the Corrections Department for their swipe (“incorrect information from the maker of the film”). Nonetheless, the journalist also messed up by not getting a corroborating source.

3. The Macabre Sometimes, the correction of an error leads to a shocking bit of prose, made all the worse by its appearance in the normally staid Corrections area of the paper:

An article by The Associated Press on Thursday about flight recorder transcripts released after a fatal plane crash in São Paulo Brazil on July 17 reversed the identities of the pilot and the co-pilot, and their final comments. The pilot was Kleyber Lima, and he gave the first indication something was wrong when he said, “Only one reverser — spoiler nothing.” It was the co-pilot, Henrique Stephanini Di Sacco, who responded: “Look at that. Slow down. Slow down.” Then Mr. Lima responded: “I can’t. I can’t. Oh my God! Oh my God!” Then Mr. Di Sacco said: “Go! Go! Turn! Turn! Turn!”

So, it’s been “a while” since I’ve posted. I can’t think of a better easier way to get back to blogging than to reproduce a fantastic New York Times set of corrections from today. Our refrigerator is filled with the best-of-the-best of NYT corrections (a great correction is either funny on its face, revealing about the Times’ politics, or both). Today’s corrections just kept building. This was a first for our fridge – four consecutive corrections on one day. But they have to be appreciated as a set. Enjoy:

An article in some copies on Wednesday about Congressional efforts to pass legislation to expand the government’s electronic wiretapping powers misspelled — yet again — the surname of the attorney general of the United States, in three of four references. He is Alberto R. Gonzales, not Gonzalez. (The Times has misspelled Mr. Gonzales’s name in at least 14 articles dating to 2001 when he became White House counsel. This year alone Mr. Gonzales’s name has been misspelled in February and March, and in two articles in April.)

An article on the Street Scene page in Business Day on Friday, about the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s entry into bankruptcy law practice, misspelled the name of another law firm that recently lost a bankruptcy specialist. It is Willkie Farr & Gallagher, not Wilkie. (The Times has misspelled the firm’s name in at least 50 articles since 1958. The “Willkie” comes from Wendell L. Willkie, who joined the firm shortly after losing the 1940 presidential election to Franklin D. Roosevelt and remained there until his death in October 1944.)

A credit for pictures last Monday with an article about a reunion of the comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall misspelled the given name of the photographer. He is Yannick Grandmont, not Jannick.

An obituary on July 21 of Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, who marketed memorabilia and toys based on A. A. Milne’s children’s books about Winnie the Pooh, misspelled the name of the department store that agreed to let her set up Pooh Corners for children. It is Neiman Marcus, not Nieman Marcus. (The Times has misspelled the company’s name in at least 195 articles since 1930.)

Annie, Amira and I went to DC this weekend to march against the war. We got stopped and interviewed by the New York Times. As usual, Annie was more eloquent than me. I don’t really fault Ian Urbina for his description of Annie’s employment status, as we were too vague and he was a really nice guy. He’s also written some great stuff on electronic voting machines. Nonetheless, “housewife” is a bit of an outdated term. “Uncompensated domestic laborer” is not unreasonable, but even “homemaker” would have been better.

Here’s the key quote from the article:

“This war has been going on longer than she has been alive, and Cheney says it will be a 50-year war,” said Annie Yanowitz, a housewife from Amherst, Mass., pointing to her 2-year-old daughter, Amira, who was asleep in a backpack with a sign affixed that read “Money for Schools Not for War.”

My daughter’s first mention in a New York Times article. I’m plotzing. Also, she just woke up from her nap in this picture, so she’s still a bit dazed. She had a great time running around, playing with her cousing, and looking at all the people. She also marched around carrying her sign, and was, obviously, a huge hit.

Now, we just need to get the troops out of Iraq NOW, pay repartations to Iraq, and provide excellent health care (including mental health care) to all the vets. Those are the three basic demands of Iraq Veterans Against the War and I agree wholeheartedly. They are doing excellent work, btw. Please give them your support.

I realize there’s something a bit lame in just linking to another story in a major news daily, but this one was so good I couldn’t resist.

This story was on the front page of the New York Times today. It appeared below the fold and I reprint it here in its entirety. You can go read the original here.

Also, the writing explodes (action verb!) off the page. I can imagine that this is the kind of story reporters love to craft (even though it’s just pure “human interest”). You have an excuse to show off all your mighty writing chops. But, I am not a reporter, I don’t understand their complicated reporter games, so perhaps I am wrong wrong wrong. OTOH, most of time, Ms. Buckley is writing about homicides, so I imagine this was a nice change of pace.

I wonder if in the coming days various politicians will attempt to capitalize on this man’s heroism. Gee, I wonder.

But it wouldn’t be the New York Times without some fabulous corrections too. Here’s my favorite of the day:

An article in Business Day on Saturday about possible ways to curb sharp increases in executive pay misstated the percentage increase in the value of a pension for Lee R. Raymond, the former chief executive for Exxon Mobil, because of bonuses from 2003 to 2005. It was a 50 percent increase, to $98.4 million from just under $66 million — not 33 percent.

There were also a couple of my favorite sub-category of corrections, obituary corrections. For people whose obits which were “in the can” ages before they died. About events that occurred years ago. And yet there are still corrections to make (the second correction doesn’t fit in that category, but it was paired with the first):

An obituary on Thursday about former President Gerald R. Ford misstated his relationship to the three brothers with whom he was raised. They were his half-brothers, not his stepbrothers.

•

An article on Saturday about mourning for Mr. Ford in Palm Dessert, Calif., misstated the year he moved there after leaving the White House. It was 1977, not 1976.