Kyle Smith devotes a hilarious New York Post column to the New York Times’s dereliction in the case of Van Jones. The Times somehow missed the controversies that preceded and led to Jones’s departure from the Obama administration in part because, well, they were a little short-staffed in the Washington office. Smith writes:
Granted, the Times must devote a lot of personpower to its vast corrections column. But if it is so flush that it can afford to hire, like the boy with the shovel who follows the elephant in the parade, a personal fact checker for TV critic Alessandra Stanley, surely it can scrounge up an intern to report that there’s a communist truther working as the president’s green jobs czar, or that a congressman was demanding his resignation.
Jill Abramson, the managing editor, admitted only to being “a beat behind” the story but added that the paper had caught up — after the saga was over. The EMS equivalent of this statement would be, “Sorry I didn’t take your 911 call for four days. At least I was in time for the funeral.”
Although Abramson’s excuse was not an excuse, she proceeded to offer another one: “Mr. Jones was not a high-ranking official.”
Oh. And here I was, thinking that he was “one of Mr. Obama’s top advisers,” as I was told by, well, The Times, on its Caucus blog on Sept. 5. Confusing, confusing.
You’ll want to read the whole thing.
Via Lucianne.
JOHN adds: It would almost be less embarrassing for Abramson to admit that “we were trying to keep people from finding out.”
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