"The Dumb Factor": D-U-M Dumb

Howell Raines, disgraced former editor of the New York Times, has an op/ed in today's Washington Post (and elsewhere) called "The Dumb Factor." In it he muses on the nature of presidential intelligence, and its importance in this race. It contains this wonderfully revealing line:

Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure the candidates' SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead.

Now, others have had a go at Raines for the intellectual sloppiness of this assertion, and what it reveals about the media: he has no facts for this, he just knows it. Yet others have had a go at the specific claim he is making about Kerry. Equally fascinating, though, is the interplay between the circumstances under which Raines left the Times and how he is identified by the Post.

The Post says simply: The writer is former executive editor of the New York Times. This is true, of course, but it hardly captures the conditions under which he became the former executive editor: the Jayson Blair scandal, which seriously undermined the Times' credibility. One might be tempted to think that losing your dream job because of an inability to ensure people check their facts might caution against wild speculation.

On this evidence, one would be wrong. And one would be tempted to wonder whether this sort of thinking still affects the culture of the New York Times, and even the Washington Post, which is content to describe Raines as merely the Times' "former executive editor."
- posted by Anonymous @ 11:00 AM