JEFF JARVIS WEIGHS IN: “What Rick Bragg did was no cause for suspension or the sliming of his career.”

ADAM MICHNIK WRITES ON BEING CALLED A TRAITOR (AGAIN):

A German journalist published an article in the paper Die Tageszeitung in which he claimed that Vaclav Havel, Adam Michnik, and George Konrad, Europe’s long-standing moral authorities, had suddenly become undiscriminating admirers of America.

I read that article with a twinge of nostalgia. Here we are, together again. Our three names were grouped to-gether for the first time by Timothy Garton Ash in his widely acclaimed essay nearly two decades ago. If I recall correctly, Havel and I were doing jail time then, and Konrad’s books were banned from print in Hungary. Even though we did not meet very often, we maintained a common ground in our reflections on the worlds of values and of politics. We were united by a dream of freedom, a dream of a world infused with tolerance, hope, respect for human dignity, and a refusal of conformist silence in the face of evil. . . .

In answer to this, I guarantee that I have not forgotten about the U.S. intervention in Vietnam or the American support of despotic, anticommunist regimes in Latin America—the perpetual argument of the intellectuals of the Western European left. However, I also have not forgotten that the American defeat in Vietnam resulted in the North’s armed conquest of the South and a wave of terrible repression. I also realize that while condemning the dictatorships of [Rafael] Trujillo or [Augusto] Pinochet, I should remember the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. Brutal power is equally repugnant whether executed under a red banner or a black one. The belief that there was no rightist or leftist torture, no progressive or reactionary torture, was a fundamental principle we lived by. It led us to reject the hypocrisy of the Western left, which proclaimed that even bad communism was better than good capitalism because it was the former and not the latter that led to a bright future.

What, then, is our betrayal? Today we reject the notion of equality between a regime that belongs to the democratic world—even if it is conservative and disagreeable—and a totalitarian dictatorship, whether its colors are black, red, or green. This is why we will never again say that Chamberlain is no better than Hitler, Roosevelt no better than Stalin, and Nixon no better than Mao Zedong, even if we do condemn Roosevelt for Yalta, Chamberlain for Munich, and Nixon for Watergate.

And that, apparently, is treason in some quarters. Then there’s this:

The hatred felt toward America becomes absurd when it ceases to be a critical stance that is normal within democratic discourse and takes up the defense of brutal, totalitarian dictatorships. The so-called peace movements of the Cold War burned effigies of American presidents and genuflected before Stalin’s portraits. We will not repeat such a masquerade today. . . . This is why we are at odds with today’s pacifists: We will not peacefully pave the way for those who committed the crimes of Sept. 11 and their allies.

Read the whole thing — and ponder the depths of the Chirac/Schroeder miscalculation.

A “STRIKING DEGREE OF CONFIDENCE” IN THE MILITARY is revealed in this interesting story from The New York Times:

In fact, researchers and polling experts say, the class reflects a long-building trend that has intensified with the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the successful military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Americans’ trust and confidence in the military has soared, even as it has declined in other institutions like corporations, churches and Congress.

From 1975 to 2002, the percentage of Americans who expressed a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the people who ran organized religion fell, to 45 percent from 68. Those expressing a great deal or a lot of confidence in Congress declined, to 29 percent from 40, according to a Gallup Poll. But also in 2002, Americans who expressed a great deal or a lot of confidence in the military rose, to 79 percent from 58 in 1975.

The positive image is particularly striking among the children and grandchildren of baby boomers, said David C. King, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard and co-author of the new book “The Generation of Trust: How the U.S. Military Has Regained the Public’s Confidence Since Vietnam” (American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research).

Perhaps the Times could learn from this example.

RADLEY BALKO WRITES on John Ashcroft’s fair-weather federalism:

The problem with Attorney General Ashcroft — and the reason I write about him today — is that his record as Attorney General thus far has shown him to be a man completely unsympathetic to the tenets of federalism when they happen conflict with his own, personal values. . . .

Ashcroft’s supporters counter that as Attorney General, his job is to uphold and enforce the federal code — whether or not he agrees with a particular law isn’t important. But that’s a bit naïve. Like any other cabinet head, the Attorney General works with a budget, with limited resources. He hasn’t nearly enough capital or prosecutors to go after every infraction of the federal criminal code (which, thanks in no small part to allegedly federalist-minded Republicans, is expanding exponentially). Consequently, Attorney General Ashcroft actually makes policy when he chooses which federal laws he’s going to actively enforce, and to what extent.

John Ashcroft’s decision to devote considerably large swaths of DOJ time and resources to challenging state drug and assisted-suicide laws he feels are too liberal can’t be dismissed with the likes of “he’s just doing his job.” He chose to set examples in California and Oregon because he felt DOJ resources were better utilized challenging those laws than, for example, investigating al-Qaeda sleeper cells.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Roger Simon has some thoughts.

MICROBES ON PARADE: N.Z. Bear is showcasing new blogs. Check ’em out!

LILEKS IS PANNING The Matrix Reloaded. I didn’t see it. Last weekend I saw the #2 movie for that weekend: Daddy Day Care. My daughter and her friend liked it. I thought it was tolerable. It makes a few progressive points about men engaging in childcare despite the disapproval of women, balancing these serious bits with the apparently irresistible hilarity of repeatedly showing a fat man kicked in the balls. Nothing says laffs-a-plenty like a fat guy groaning in agony on the ground. It’s some sort of Hollywood rule.

UPDATE: A lot of people seem to agree with Lileks, as the Matrix box-office took a tumble over the weekend. But Daddy Day Care is still going strong!

MICKEY KAUS has still more on the Rick Bragg story. And Jim Romenesko, back from vacation, has a lot of links, including this one to a Wall Street Journal report that echoes a point made by some emailers here over the weekend (see this post and this one):

The Times says nonstaff journalists are often used to conduct interviews, provide research assistance or help stake out the scene of news events, especially on tight deadlines, but don’t receive bylines when their contribution is routine. They may receive one “when their pieces reflect unusual enterprise or unusual writing style,” according to a written statement provided by the Times.

Indeed, some Times staffers expressed surprise at Mr. Bragg’s suspension because using material from stringers and assistants without giving credit is common practice at the paper, owned by New York Times Co.

(Emphasis added). The story also suggests that Raines knew about Bragg’s relationship with the stringer in question for quite some time and didn’t object. (“‘It wasn’t like Rick was hiding anything from Howell, or anyone else at the Times,’ Mr. Yoder says. Mr. Raines went to dinner at least once with Mr. Bragg and Mr. Yoder, Mr. Yoder says.”) So why, exactly, was Bragg suspended? Is there more to this story?

Kaus, meanwhile, says that Bragg isn’t the issue:

The issue is whether the Times is routinely deceiving its readers into thinking that its stories have the credibility safeguard of a bylined reporter who has actually done the reporting in the story.

The answer to that question is looking like “yes,” isn’t it? Kaus also wonders if Howell Raines (or “whoever is running the show at 43d street”) will “retaliate” against Bragg for not going quietly (Bragg is decrying the “poisonous atmosphere” at the Times and dropping not-so-subtle hints that his discipline is motivated by racial balancing in response to the Blair scandal). Who knows? Given the closed shop that Raines runs, that’s possible. It’s also possible that there’s more to this story than we’ve heard so far — though Bragg isn’t acting like a guy with other charges hanging over his head. Stay tuned for more of “Mr. Raines’ wild ride. . . .”

THE ARAB STREET TURNS OUT:

CASABLANCA, Morocco, May 25 — Tens of thousands of demonstrators chanting “no to terrorism” thronged the streets of Casablanca today, nine days after 43 people were killed in coordinated suicide attacks in the city.

“I am here for myself and for them, the next generation,” said Abdellatif Ghanam, an unemployed night watchman, gesturing to his 6-year-old son. “The people who did those attacks are not followers of Islam in its true sense.”

Interesting.

HONORING THE DEAD: A moving story.

STILL MORE REASONS why “no-knock” raids are not only un-American, but criminally dangerous:

“We must do a better job of no-knock search warrants,” lawyer Norman Siegel said during an October press conference. “Otherwise, someone might wind up dead as a result of how we implement this procedure.”

Today someone is dead. Her name was Alberta Spruill.

Spruill, a 57-year-old church volunteer, suffered a heart attack and died May 16 after flak-jacketed cops broke down her door and lobbed a stun grenade into her small Harlem apartment in a mistaken search for drugs.

Marie Rogers, 62, a retiree from Springfield Gardens, had a similar experience seven months ago, although a stun grenade wasn’t used in the raid on her apartment – and she lived to talk about it.

“When I heard about what happened to this woman, I broke down and cried,” Rogers said. “You would have thought that I knew her. Then I was angry.”

On Oct. 15, Rogers and her husband, Robert, were in their home watching television – “Cops,” as it turns out – when police in riot gear plowed through their front door without warning. When Robert, 64, a retired housing cop, heard the noise, he instinctively went for his licensed revolver, dropped to a knee and waited.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said. “I thought the people coming into my house were trying to kill me.”

Robert is certain he would have been shot if he hadn’t tossed his gun aside before the cops came in. As for the drugs and weapons they were looking for, police found nothing. They had the wrong address.

That ought to be a firing offense, the very first time it happens, for the officers involved and their superiors. If people die, the charge should be murder. If you decide to break down somebody’s door and enter with guns drawn when no one’s life is in danger, then you should be able to offer no defense if anything goes wrong. Because it’s indefensible.

UPDATE: This, on the other hand, isn’t criminal, just pathetic.

GARY FARBER writes that it’s time for Pundit Watch to come back. I think he’s right. How about it, Will?

MICKEY KAUS has still more inside dope on The New York Times’ leadership problems. It’s fascinating stuff.

THERE’S MORE INTERNAL WARFARE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES, according to Howard Kurtz. Kurtz also reports on a plagiarism incident that — shockingly enough — occurred at a different New York paper, the Post.

UPDATE: Charles Murtaugh — in a Bob Herbert-related post that’s currently at the top of his site — reports that the New York Times’ scandals are already having an impact, as Bob Herbert credits his heretofore unheralded assistant, Johanna Jainchill, with an interview. Charles doesn’t miss a thing. And though it may just be a coincidence, the column in which Herbert credits Jainchill is one of Herbert’s better efforts.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg notes:

This could be the start of all sorts of fun because I know for a fact Herbert is hardly alone. Maureen Dowd, for example, has a minion who does much of her gruntwork for her as do many other columnists (I used to be Ben Wattenberg’s researcher for example). Let the full-disclosures fly!

Indeed.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Maguire says that Adam Clymer needs to add another correction to his total.

STILL MORE: Jeff Jarvis writes:

Anyway, following up on the latest NY Times scandal, the dateline caper, in which a prize-winning reporter gets sent to detention for not staying long enough at the place from which he dateslines his story…

I know of at least one big newspaper in this country where datelines are meaningless: Rewritemen took the wires and whatever else was handy and wrote stories under datelines as well as their bylines without ever leaving the desk. I was a bit surprised when I first saw this, but it was SOP.

Meanwhile, Gary Farber calls the Clymer piece “dolorous and predictable.” But that’s not a sin at the Times!

A QUESTION: The Rick Bragg story, conveniently enough, came out on Memorial Day Friday, one of the deadest news slots of the year. (As Kaus notes, it was even a vacation day for Romenesko!)

But was this really that smart? All it means is that the blogosphere — especially the Raines-unfriendly part occupied by Kaus and Sullivan — has had all weekend to chew on the story. I wonder if on Tuesday, when people come back to the office, they’ll scroll through those posts and it’ll set the tone, making things worse for Raines rather than better?

“RUMSFELD APOLOGIZES FOR HYPING SADDAM THREAT:” Wow, who would have expected this? I don’t think it’ll please the not-in-our-name crowd, though:

“I’m sorry Senators Biden, Rockefeller, Byrd, Roberts and others,” said a contrite Mr. Rumsfeld. “We overestimated the threat posed by a lunatic dictator, who hated the U.S. and Israel, and who paid rewards to families of Palestinian terrorists. In an age when two of the world’s tallest buildings can be brought down with tools used by the stockboy at K-Mart, we should have demanded more concrete evidence of exotic weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was helpless as a kitten up a tree.”

Read the whole thing. . . .

HAITI IS DEMANDING REPARATIONS FROM FRANCE:

In his May 1 speech, Aristide renewed his call for France to “restitute” the indemnity of 150 million gold francs which Haiti paid the former colonial power after winning its independence in 1804. The Haitian government calculates that France owes it about $21.7 billion. The French Foreign Minister has scoffed at the request, accusing the Haitian government of “poor administration.”

Heh.

MORE FALLEN JOURNALISTIC ICONS: Now it’s the famed fact-checkers at The New Yorker, who allowed Ken Auletta’s statement that the term “Axis of Weasels” was first published in the New York Post into print when — as anyone with Google should have known — it really originated with ScrappleFace.

SPEAKING OF BAD NEWS FOR GERMANY, here’s a German writer who says that Germany lost the Iraq war via Schroeder’s machinations:

Wars always have winners and losers. Saddam Hussein–dead or on the run–is, of course, the Iraq war’s biggest loser. But Germany has also lost much, including the many US troops who will now reportedly be re-deployed to bases in other countries. Despite the announcement of plans to create a European army along with France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, Germany is less relevant in both European and world politics than it was before the Iraq war. Repairing the damage will not be easy.

Every part of Germany’s international position has been wounded by the Iraq war. The country can no longer play the role of transatlantic mediator between France and America. It can forget about US support in its campaign to gain a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Instead of forging a “third way” for Europe’s left with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder needs Blair to plead his case with President George W. Bush, who feels personally betrayed by the Chancellor’s conduct in the run-up to the war.

In postcommunist Eastern Europe, Germany is no longer perceived as an absolutely dependable advocate of the region’s needs. Multilateral institutions that served as pillars of German foreign policy for almost half-a-century have been weakened: the European Union’s hopes for common foreign, security, and defense policies have been gravely jeopardized.

German-American relations suffered a devastating blow when Schröder stoked the country’s overwhelmingly pacifist attitudes. By doing so he drowned out the concerns about low growth and high unemployment that were threatening his re-election prospects. But that political strategy left President Bush believing that Schröder had stabbed him in the back. As with people, so too with states: trust once lost is extremely difficult to regain.

Read the whole thing, as they say. (Via Jeff Jarvis).

WELL, THIS ISN’T ENCOURAGING:

In Germany, deflation is drawing closer. The largest economy in Europe, Germany’s, is already technically in a recession, its second in three years, as economic output turned negative over the last two quarters. The government said Friday that prices rose just 0.7 percent in May from a year earlier – not far from an outright decline in prices.
.
Many analysts now say that at least a modest deflation is likely this year, with several months of falling prices. While the prospect of cheaper BMWs may sound appealing to some, it is actually a symptom of a serious problem: a lack of demand as Germans cling ever more tightly to their wallets. Will Germany turn into another Japan, where falling prices and subpar or nonexistent growth have caused a “lost decade” for the second-largest economy in the world?

Though there’s a temptation to engage in schadenfreude at the prospect of economic misfortunes for one of the Axis of Weasels, in truth this is bad news. Japan is already in trouble. Now Germany’s heading that way. The United States can’t hold off a global recession, or worse, on its own. I’m not an econoblogger, but this worries me. I also suspect that Germany’s problem has a lot to do with excessive rigidity in regulation and employment rules, and that the reaction to this problem will tend to be in directions that make that worse, rather than better.

BACK HOME. Some of the posts below have been updated. More later.

JUST GOT TOGETHER WITH HOWARD OWENS, who’s in town for a bit on business. Now I’m heading to the lake. Blogging will resume sometime tomorrow.

RICK BRAGG HAS BEEN SUSPENDED from the New York Times. Based on the email I’ve been getting (see below) a lot of other journalists ought to be nervous, if this is the standard now.

Call me a cynic [You’re a cynic! — Ed.] but this smells like Howell Raines trying to change the subject. I had a reader email me back when the Blair matter broke, predicting that a white guy would be disciplined at the Times within a couple of weeks. I didn’t run the email because it seemed too cynical. But — whoever sent that one, well, you were right. [LATER: He wrote back in — so now I can say “Advantage: Lee Goldston!”].

UPDATE: A reader says I’m wrong:

You’re wrong about the Times. This isn’t about reporters suddenly being held to a higher standard; it’s about Howell’s favorites FINALLY being busted for their mistakes. The new revelations make life much worse, not better, for Howell. And you can bet that angry Times newsroom staffers are behind the revelations. This is a purge and Howell might be the last one out the door.

Reader Michael Gebert smells something, too:

Yes, and think how perfect Bragg is for this ceremonial whipping‹ he’s practically Raines¹ doppelganger, culturally, which will make it seem like Raines is sparing no one‹ yet as every article points out, he earned his fame under Joseph Lelyveld, not Raines, so he doesn¹t reinforce the Raines-favoritism story. Plus he has a strong enough literary reputation that he can easily survive a few months in the wilderness. If it walks like a setup and talks like a setup…

Interesting difference in perspective. Steve Verdon is even more cynical. I think the charges of racism are a bit over the top, though. And Craig Henry says this doesn’t come close to the Blair scandal.

UPDATE: Kaus has much more on this. It does seem that there’s a systemic problem with bylines at the Times. So what’s the big deal about Bragg? Is there more to come? Stay tuned. Meanwhile I love this bit from Kaus:

It turns out we weren’t reading the reporting of the famous, cream-of-the-profession Times employees, but the reporting of unidentified “stringers” we’ve never heard of. … Conventional journalists sometimes sneer at blogs because there’s no way for a reader to know whether what a random, unknown person says on his Web site is true. But it sounds as if the Times is not so different from a blog after all–what you are reading is really the work of random, unknown “legs” and stringers. …

Of course, in other ways the Times and the typical blog are very different forms of journalism. One obsessively reflects the personal biases, enthusiasms and grudges of a single individual. The other is just an online diary! …

All I can say is, “indeed.” Meanwhile, via MediaMinded, here’s a piece on nepotism in high end media, and here’s a sensible quote from William McGowan, author of Coloring the News:

I don’t think the Blair case should impose a stigma on all minority journalists. It shouldn’t invalidate all diversity efforts either, especially efforts aimed at casting a wide net, opening doors to talented people, all the while maintaining standards as you are doing so. But I do think you’d be journalistically at fault if you didn’t acknowledge where diversity and race was a factor in the Blair case and the Times institutional response to it.

Well, I think that’s right. I was initially skeptical (and even more so here) of claims that the Blair scandal was about affirmative action. And in a way I still am — this isn’t a “classic” affirmative action case of somebody unqualified who was hired because he was black. Everybody seems to agree that if Blair weren’t some sort of lying weasel he’d be capable of good reporting. Instead, Blair’s case seems to have been one in which most authority figures were unwilling to respond to obvious problems with a black reporter for fear of being called racist, which in the diversity-seminar culture of the Times might be a career-ender. The bad thing about the Times’ diversity culture, now well-documented by Kaus, Sullivan, et al., is that when you have things like the Bragg case it’s hard to know whether they’re justified or whether they represent some sort of politico-racial balancing. And that’s the trouble with diversity culture in general: it makes everything, and everyone, suspect. Instead of minimizing racism, it makes every single decision racially charged. And by encouraging bogus charges of racism, it ultimately makes those charges meaningless: the first refuge of scoundrels rather than items of moral substance.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The emailers seem to have it right the Wall Street Journal reports that the practice of using uncredited stringers is so common that other people at the Times wonder why Bragg is in trouble.

AUSTIN BAY’S NEW NOVEL, THE WRONG SIDE OF BRIGHTNESS, comes out next week. InstaPundit readers know I’m a fan of his nonfiction writing. I read the novel in manuscript and liked it very much. So did a colleague of mine who’s a former Marine helicopter pilot with a good deal of familiarity with the world Bay describes. It’s a good read — I just wish it had been longer.

HOW A BLOGOSPHERE STORY GROWS: An interesting piece, though I wish there were more detail. This part certainly squares with my observations:

Rarely can an individual blogger get a story going. It is far more usual that several bloggers blog about an occurrence, an event or a comment elsewhere and then after that bloggers in groups get going. Even a so called influential blogger blogging about a story can rarely get others going. It is only when there are several bloggers writing opinions does a story really get going.

Yep. Which is probably a good thing. (Via Doc Searls).

FORGET CONTAINING SADDAM: Jonathan Rauch writes that the antiwar far-left’s new agenda is to contain America:

“As the United States government becomes more belligerent in using its power in the world, many people are longing for a ‘second superpower’ that can keep the U.S. in check,” writes James F. Moore, of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, in an article that he posted online. The newly energized Left is just such a force, he argues. . . .

Note that Moore speaks of confronting not imperialism or corporate capitalism or human-rights abusers, but the United States. This is significant. . . .

But the Left will pay a crippling price. If its new rallying cry is going to be “Contain America first!” the Left had better pack its bags for a long, long stay in the political wilderness, at least in America; and if it is going to make excuses for Saddam as it once made excuses for Stalin, it can kiss its moral relevance goodbye. One only wonders whether the Left still has time to back away from the cliff.

I’m not sure this agenda is as new as Rauch suggests. But the antiwar left’s moral relevance is already gone, squandered in increasingly desperate efforts to shore up Saddam for no other reason than that he was the enemy.