I wrote about Alice Walker’s New York Times Book Review interview and Book Review editor Pamela Paul’s response to criticism raised by it here. Richard Cohen devotes his Washington Post column to the subject and does a better job getting at the heart of Pamela Paul’s neurasthenic comments than I did. He gives a careful reading to what Paul had to say and finds it wanting. He concludes:
The tone of Paul’s response is appalling. She surely does not mean to, but she manages to treat anti-Semitism as just another point of view — not a hatred with a unique and appalling pedigree that has led to unending slaughter, including the murder of the 6 million, pogroms in Kielce in Poland (1946), York in England (1190), and the lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia (1915). What’s lacking from the Times is appropriate shock at Alice Walker’s bigotry and its own refusal to admit a mistake. An apology would be fit to print.
Whole thing here and accessible to all thanks to RealClearPolitics.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.