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EMINENTOES
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being Maureen Dowd
By Jeffrey Lord on 7.21.09 @ 6:08AMLet's dish. And a delicious dish it is. A stew of race, the
 New York Times
, media hypocrisy and double-standards. All inadvertently stirred by the lovely and talented
Times
columnist, the white femaleMaureen Dowd. You know all those fevered editorials they churn out over there at the
 New York Times
editorial board? Like, for instance, the hot fury published on June 30 wonderfully titled "Firefighters andRace."In this jewel the
Times
editorial board makes its displeasure plain in the very first sentence,huffing that the Supreme Court decision in favor of the New Haven firemen has "dealt a blow todiversity in the American workplace." This was followed by a July 14th column by 
Times
columnist Dowd titled "White Man's Last Stand," to which we will return shortly.But first, let's get the meat into the stew. You can just smell that sizzling hypocrisy, can't you?It seems the "American workplace" (to use the
Times
description) that is the New Haven firedepartment has a higher percentage of minorities than the American workplace that is…yesindeed… the
 New York Times
editorial board its very self. To be quite specific:• The New Haven fire department, according to press accounts, is 43% black and Latino. Or, if  you prefer the term of art, 43% of the fire department is "minority."• The
 New York Times
editorial board, according to the information provided by 
The New YorkTimes
, is -- wait for it -- 12% black and Latino. Or, again, 12 % "minority" if you prefer the term.• The
 New York Times
Op-Ed page team of columnists, an elite group of which Ms. Dowd is astar, is 19% black and, again according to the
Times
listing of its Op-Ed page columnists, 0%Latino.That's right. At the core of the beating intellectual heart of the left-wing establishment wheresuch things are studied with the detail of Talmudic scholars, the New Haven fire department isdoing more than three times better on race than the very liberal elites who have set themselves
 
up as its sniffy critics. Perhaps instead of seething about "Firefighters and Race" the
Times
wouldhave been better served by pondering "Editorial Writers and Race." Or perhaps: "Too Black to Write;
 New York Times
Column Writing and Race." According to the
 New York Times
, its editorial board has 17 members. Of those 17, fifteen -- say again, 15 of the 17 -- are whiter than white on rice. This includes the very white Andrew Rosenthal who runs it, carrying the title of "Editorial Page Editor."That's roughly an 88% white hiring record for Rosenthal. Frank Ricci and his fellow white New Haven firemen would have had a better shot writing editorials for the
Times
than fighting firesfor the dwindling number of 
Times
readers in New Haven. After all, the percentage of whites atthe New Haven fire department is just 57%.But don't worry -- tokenism is alive and well at the
Times
. "White Rosie," as we'll call Mr.Rosenthal here with deference to a Dowd-like racial sensibility, has managed to make room forone Mexican and the inevitable token black to fill the other two seats in the
Times
version of "diversity in the American workplace." Amazingly enough, that one black on the
Times
editorial board matches exactly the number of blacks in the ranks of New Haven's 21 fire captains. One.There might still be a Latino captain in New Haven to match up with the
Times
' Mexican -- butonly thanks to the Supreme Court and the hard-studying candidate himself, Lieutenant Ben Vargas. The
Times
rooted to keep Vargas out.The
Times
' double-standard on race in its own workplace came to light as the result of Dowd'scolumn attacking Supreme Court nominee Judge Sotomayor's critics on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The "wise Latina's" senatorial inquisitors, fumed Ms. Dowd in "White Man's LastStand," were nothing more than "white Republican men afraid of extinction" who traffic in"codes, handshakes and clubs." Said Dowd: "President Obama wants Sotomayor, naturally, to bring a fresh perspective to the court. It was a disgrace that W. appointed two white men to acourt stocked with white men. And Sotomayor made it clear that she provides some spicy seasoning to a bench when she said in a speech: ‘I simply do not know exactly what thedifference will be in my judging, but I accept there will be some based on gender and my Latinaheritage.'"OK then. Point taken. The Dowd standard -- and that of the
Times
-- is to judge people by race.Got it. Will do.So how does the
Times
stable of Op-Ed columnists stack up against the standards "White Mo"Dowd sets for the rest of us? You know, one's race being critical in order "to bring a freshperspective" and avoid the "disgrace" of being "stocked with white men."Of the eleven columnists the
Times
advertises as its team of Op-Ed page writers, nine are whites.Of those nine, seven are -- ouch! -- the disgracefully whitest of white men! Which is another way of saying 81% of the
Times
Op-Ed columnists are white (White Mo included) and 77% of thecolumnist team is, to use White Mo's phrase about the Supreme Court, "stocked with white men"-- guys like Frankly White Rich who are as white as sheets. If one is obsessed with viewingeveryone and everything in America through the prism of race, then the 88% white
 New YorkTimes
editorial board and the white paper's stable of 81% white columnists clearly don't readtheir own editorials. No wonder Black Bob Herbert is so cranky all the time. One of the two black tokens on the Op-Ed page, Black Bob is forced to work with more white guys than David Duke.
 
Black Bob would actually see more black faces if his white bosses let him take the company limoand its black driver over to New Haven to catch the next five-alarm. As for a wise Latina orLatino on the page? Nada.That
Times
Editorial Board 15-2 ratio, however, is precisely the kind of thing that supposedly drives White Mo crazy. Or at least when it involves the Supreme Court or New Haven firemenand not her own turf. She somehow must hope the rest of us have forgotten that neither WhiteMo nor the whiteys writing those
Times
editorials with White Rosie wanted the only black mannow sitting on the US Supreme Court to be there at all. Justice Clarence Thomas's very nomination, the
Times
foamed at the time in language worthy of 
The Birth of a Nation
, wasdesigned to "incite." Got that? You don't wanna put any black man on the Court who upsets the white massa's of the
Times
by going the uppity route.So too did White Mo's white editorialist sheet mates burn an editorial cross or two to denigrateMiguel Estrada, the Bush choice for the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. Fearingthe Harvard-educated legal star and Latino Mr. Estrada would get to the point that SoniaSotomayor is at today -- the
Times
demanded that it was both "compelling" and "necessary" todefeat a Hispanic man. Their unsurprising sentiments were the same as those of their white maleDemocratic allies on the Senate Judiciary Committee. In an internal Senate Democratic memo,Mr. Estrada was described as "dangerous" because he was "Latino." Interestingly, thisforeshadowed the thinking designed to keep Lieutenant Ben Vargas out of a New Haven firecaptaincy in spite of his having passed the required test. Come to think of it, since the
Times
wassuccessful in its compelling need to keep Mr. Estrada off the bench, maybe they could have adisparate impact on their Op Ed page by making him their resident Latino columnist?Judging the entire world through the eyes of race must be something of a juggling routine if you work for the white boys of the
Times
. In 1900 the paper's white editorial board under theleadership of owner Adolph Ochs (or "Adolph the White" as we'll Dowdize the family ancestor of today's white owners) was ranting about "the menace of the rule of blacks." In 1991, thedescendants of Adolph the White believed putting a black man on the Supreme Court to rule wasinciting, if not menacing as Adolph warned. Inciting to what was left to the imagination. Still, atleast give Adolph's heirs credit for staying loyal to principle. White Mo must arrive at work with aflask of Irish whiskey just to get her liberal white guilt complex through the white day.Then again, maybe not. Irish whiskey might remind of the embarrassing biographical nugget thatshe herself is said to be the white love child of a white male Irish cop and a white woman, both of modest means. (As a minor Washington celebrity, White Mo makes the prints on occasion forreasons much other than her column, various parts of her white life whitefully displayed.) This isa problem at the race and class conscious
Times
, threatening to cast White Mo in a harsh lightthat is unfashionably Palinesque. Which may explain why the youthful Dowd of the 1960s is saidto have denied the fact, believing identifying White Dad as a White Pol was somehow moreupscale than admitting to the fact he was a White Cop. Doubtless it is uncomfortably related tothe reason White Mo and her pals are so upset by Sister Sarah. White Mo looks at Sarah and sees-- young White Mo! Eeeeeek! White Trash alert at the
Times
! Ohhhhhhh noooooooooooooo!The fact that White Mo still works at the
Times
does come as a bit of a surprise in the wake of her"White Man's Last Stand" column. Calling attention to the white sheets who actually run thepaper is surely not appreciated. It is a rare thing to see a white girl who has spent a professionaland personal life courting white males bite the proverbial white male hand that enables said
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