IT WASN’T JUST STROM: Howard Kurtz points out the rather sympathetic coverage that Thurmond’s Dixiecrats got from the New York Times and the Washington Post back in the day. In Kurtz’s words: “Let’s just say that this was well before the media began to lead the charge on civil rights.”

But I think that those papers have put their kind words for segregation behind them now, and we ought to praise them for that, just as we should forgive the Times its endorsement of the Sullivan Act as a remedy for “low-browed foreigners'” propensity for violence. Though, sadly, the Times hasn’t entirely reversed its stance on this last.