Can We Speak Of American Decline
Everybody in this business does something stupid sooner for later. This is pretty spectacular, though. NYT Editor’s Note:
Early this morning, we posted a letter that carried the name of Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, sharply criticizing Caroline Kennedy.
This letter was a fake. It should not have been published.
Doing so violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers.
We have already expressed our regrets to Mr. Delanoë’s office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers.
This letter, like most Letters to the Editor these days, arrived by email. It is Times procedure to verify the authenticity of every letter. In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the email and did not hear back. At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoë’s office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us.
We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed.
We are reviewing our procedures for verifying letters to avoid such an incident in the future.
Kind of makes that Palin thing look a little less stupid. It’s a great letter, by the way. Whoever wrote it should be mayor of Paris:
To the Editor:
As mayor of Paris, I find Caroline Kennedy’s bid for the seat of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton both surprising and not very democratic, to say the least. What title has Ms. Kennedy to pretend to Hillary Clinton’s seat? We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling.
With all the respect and admiration I have for Ms. Kennedy’s late father, I find her bid in very poor taste, and, after reading “Kennedy, Touring Upstate, Gets Less and Less Low-Key” (news article, Dec. 18), in my opinion she has no qualification whatsoever to bid for Senator Clinton’s seat.
We French have been consistently admiring of the American Constitution, but it seems that recently both Republicans and Democrats are drifting away from a truly democratic model. The Kennedy era is long gone, and I guess that New York has plenty of more qualified candidates to fill the shoes of Hillary Clinton. Can we speak of American decline?
Bertrand Delanoë
Paris, Dec.18, 2008
Can we speak of car-be-cues? Sorry, I forgot, it’s not really written by the mayor of Paris. Either that, or Betrand sobered up and thought better of it.
Malkin awaits the left’s ridicule of NYT. While we’re waiting, here’s New York Dem Gary Ackerman, via Boston Herald, who’s afraid Kennedy may be “Palin-ized.” No, he doesn’t mean attacked mercilessly, relentlessly, without regard for her actual abilities and accomplishments. Even the somewhat irked New York press isn’t going to do that.
Meanspirited Kenndy views, the cosest thing you’ll find to Palin-ization, here.
Topics: pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:05 pm on Monday, December 22, 2008
2 Responses to “Can We Speak Of American Decline”
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December 22nd, 2008 at 9:43 pm
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December 23rd, 2008 at 1:56 pm
“Vanishing Kennedy clan”. If only.