Lying in Ponds

Wow, Ann Coulter seems determined to give away the 2004 Lying in Ponds partisanship title. Her column yesterday was another attack on Norman Mineta, and her second crossover column in a row. Yes, Mr. Mineta is a Democrat, but as a member of the Bush Cabinet, negative references to him count as negative Republican references. I promise that I’ll explore the issue in some depth next week. And as Dave Barry would say, “Mineta Vendetta” would be an excellent name for a rock band.

Michael Kinsley has been named as the new editorial and opinion editor for the Los Angeles Times. Again, Romenesko has a collection of links to relevant articles.

Anthony Shadid of The Washington Post has been named (link via Romenesko) as the first recipient of the Michael Kelly Award.

When readers voted for Bill O’Reilly to be added to the Lying in Ponds roster for this year, they may have expected him to contend for the partisanship title with heavyweights like Ann Coulter and Paul Krugman. So far though, the O’Reilly factor has been non-existent — he’s currently ranked 29th out of 33 in the rankings, right next to the unquestionably non-partisan David Broder.

Mr. O’Reilly certainly leans Republican, but he has displayed two traits that the more partisan pundits rarely show — he’s written several mostly non-political columns on cultural topics, and he’s dished out some substantive criticism of his own party. With the remainder of 2004 likely to be dominated by the presidential election, there are ample opportunities for Bill O’Reilly or other pundits to ramp up the partisanship, but I suspect that Mr. O’Reilly has an independent streak which will continue to keep him out of the Lying in Ponds Top Ten.

Romenesko has collected a set of links to more tributes to Mary McGrory.

UPDATE: Here’s another Romensko set.

In a series of posts on Paul Krugman last month, I noted that he had referred to himself as “the lonely voice of truth in an ocean of corruption” in a German interview. I was assuming that his comment was serious, and I contrasted Mr. Krugman’s view with others who suggested that he was instead descending into paranoia. Reader Janus Daniels writes that I missed the joking context of the remark:

Just noticed disturbing slip on your site; you quote an end of interview
joke out of both text and temporal context, and use it to suggest paranoia.
Fortunately, you directly link, but with all the links, how many people
click through?

KRUGMAN: I am preparing right now for my next lecture. To be honest, I am
quite happy I don’t have to earn my living out of writing and to still have
an academic career. This way I can take totally different risks than a
regular journalist. I don’t have to rely on good access to the White House
so I can allow myself not to please everybody.
MIRROR: You obviously didn’t.
KRUGMAN: What it is peculiar is that, when I arranged my column with the New
York Times in Fall 1999, I actually thought I would provide good-tempered
comments on the specifics of the New Economy. Instead of that, I find myself
once again the lonely voice of truth in an ocean of corruption. I sometimes
think that I will end up one day in one of those cages in Guantanamo Bay
[laughter]. But then I can always seek asylum in Germany. I hope you’ll take
me in case of emergency.
MIRROR: Professor Krugman, we thank you for this interview.
Originally published, 12.30.02

It seems to me that Mr. Krugman was joking about ending up in a cage in Guantanamo rather than about being the lonely voice of truth; note that the laughter is shown as after the Guantanamo comment. Mr. Daniels elaborated in a subsequent e-mail:

Humor has formal structures. In the Krugman quote, you can see setup, punchline, release (SPR). Setup “… I find myself once again the lonely voice of truth in an ocean of corruption.” Punchline “I sometimes think that I will end up one day in one of those cages in Guantanamo Bay [laughter].” Release “But then I can always seek asylum in Germany.” Close “I hope you’ll take me in case of emergency.” Of course, he finishes with a close, because the interview is ending. Notice that, without the setup, the punchline has no punch. I could go on, but I already need to apologize for writing so heavily about such light remarks, and so humorlessly about humor.

More importantly, if Krugman had gone delusional, it would show more pervasively, and gain more notice, even from his cohorts. Coulter, by contrast, got herself fired by the National Review. Krugman stoops to distortion; Coulter aspires to it.

Yesterday brought the sad news of the passing of Mary McGrory, a beloved columnist for the Washington Star and Washington Post.

“The most luminous writer and clearest thinker in the business,” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd declared of McGrory at a tribute to her career several years ago. This opinion was widely held. Longtime Boston Globe editor Thomas Winship called her “the undisputed best handler of the English language in the news business.” One of her rivals for that title, former Times columnist Russell Baker, noted her influence on later generations: McGrory was, he said, “a pioneering force in today’s tell-it-like-it-is, show-them-no-mercy journalism.”

Her career stretched from the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, when the unknown McGrory jolted the capital with her charming but rapier daily reports, to the Iraq war of 2003, on which she wavered with characteristic candor before coming down squarely in opposition in some of her last columns before a stroke silenced her voice. Her last column was published in The Washington Post on March 16, 2003, and she retired at the end of that year.

Her resume included the Pulitzer Prize and membership on the Nixon administration’s notorious “enemies list.”

“Mary was simply one of the best opinion columnists of her time,” said Leonard Downie Jr. , The Washington Post’s executive editor. “She wrote lyrically, and she never had difficulty expressing an opinion. But perhaps most impressive was Mary’s reporting. She seemed to know everyone in politics, and in many other fields, besides. And her columns always revealed something to readers that they never would have otherwise known.”

The Washington Post followed up this morning with an editorial, a collection of quotes, and a selected column from Ms. McGrory. The New York Times also remembers her with an editorial.

Ann Coulter has written her first genuine crossover column in at least two years — on Earth Day. It’s not about Earth Day; the column is an attack on Senator Arlen Specter, an actual Republican, not a Democrat serving in a Republican administration. Of course, Ms. Coulter criticizes Senator Specter mostly for behaving as a Democrat (a “Donkey trapped in elephant’s body”) and in the context of boosting his more conservative “great Republican” opponent. Still, a genuine crossover by one of the titans of partisanship is a momentous event. This one column increased Ms. Coulter’s negative Republican references from 3 to 20 and dropped her score a few points, into second place behind Paul Krugman.

Here are a few more responses from Lying in Ponds pundits to the question of their role as a columnist:

Having run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican and having served in the
Reagan administration, I can hardly be viewed as non-partisan. However,
I never hesitate to criticize Republicans when I think they are wrong
(President Bush when he was wishy washy on the issue of racial
preferences, Trent Lott when he spoke approvingly of Strom Thurmond’s
run for presidency as a Dixiecrat) or to give Democrats credit when I
think they are right (most recently Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt for
their votes on funding Iraq rebuilding). I head an advocacy
organization– which promotes colorblind equal opportunity and opposes
racial preferences in hiring, contracting, and college admissions– but
write about other issues as well. Unlike some liberals, Paul Krugman
comes to mind, I don’t pretend to be a disinterested, objective analyst
but an advocate for a conservative point of view. Would that some
“mainstream” journalists do the same.

Linda Chavez

I have not belonged to any political party since 1972, when I was a registered Democrat.

Thomas Sowell

Ken - I dislike labels when applied to myself. Have supported and
criticized Bush, Reagan, Carter, etc. I’ll just let the readers decide.

Cal Thomas
Syndicated Columnist/Fox News Contributor

This weekend the total number of 2004 Republican references surpassed the number of Democratic references for the first time. It’s normal for the ruling party to dominate the national discussion, but the intense interest in the Democratic primaries early in the year strongly tilted the balance the other way. The scoring system this year attempts to correct for distortion caused by an imbalance of references to the two parties, which could change the partisanship scores of some pundits by a few points. The current normalization factors are shown in the annotation at the top of the Top Ten list. Today’s Republican normalization of 0.98 means that references to Republicans have been slightly more prevalent this year, and are therefore given slightly less weight than Democratic references. The effect on scoring will be negligible until the references become more unbalanced.

On Friday I e-mailed the note asking about their role to as many active Lying in Ponds pundits as I could find an address for. I skipped Paul Krugman, because he has already made it clear that he does not see himself as a partisan columnist. I’ve received three thoughtful responses so far. The last note is from Clarence Page (CP). Here they are in their entirety:

Columnists are people who are entitled to their own opinions but not to
their own facts. So long as they get the facts right, it doesn’t matter
whether they are “partisan” or “independent,” though personally I think the
independent ones are more interesting.

Sebastian Mallaby
The Washington Post

Dear Mr. Waight,

Anybody who find the inspiration for the name of his web site in one
of the most hilarious skits Monty Python ever did is okay in my book. But
shouldn’t it be “Lying ABOUT in ponds?” (My own all-time favorite MP bit,
not that you asked, is “The Architect,” in which a guy hired to design a
block of flats shows up with plans for a slaughterhouse.)

To answer your question, I consider myself an independent observer of
generally conservative/libertarian leanings. On matters of American
politics, that tilts me toward Republicans more often than Democrats, but I
have never hesitated to criticize Republican politicians or administrations
when I thought they deserved it. I have likewise not hesitated to sing the
praises of a Democrat, when it seemed appropriate to do so.

I don’t think very many American commentators would describe their
job in partisan terms, but every survey of the US media that inquires
specifically into partisan loyalties shows a lopsided tilt toward liberal
Democrats. My own experience during 16 years as an opinion journalist is
that the great majority of writers and editors in the newsroom generally
vote Democratic. That lack of ideological and political diversity doesn’t
matter so much on the opinion pages (where I write), but it is a big
problem on the news pages

Thanks for giving me a chance to spout off. Now I’m going to go see
if any moistened bints are lobbing scimitars today.

All the best,

Jeff Jacoby
Op-Ed columnist
The Boston Globe

Thanks for your note, Ken,
I view myself not as a “political columnist,” but “social commentator” who inevitably finds things worth discussing in the political realm.
I’ll take your first (of 3) choices. I am an independent who leans to the left but my world view cannot easily be described by one word like liberal or conservative. I have voted for Republicans, for example, who were willing to meet me halfway on important issues. Those who view Liberals and Conservatives as two gangs, always in a fight like Crips and Bloods, complain that I am not dependably on their side. That’s their problem, poor devils.
Cheers,
CP

There is a cluster of columnists (most from The Washington Post) near the bottom of the Lying in Ponds Top Ten, whose positions in the partisanship rankings seem to shuffle with each new column — Harold Meyerson, Richard Cohen, Tony Blankley, Charles Krauthammer and E.J. Dionne. After a couple of less partisan columns, Mr. Dionne and Mr. Krauthammer have slipped out of the Top Ten for now.

Here is the note which I intend to e-mail to Lying in Ponds pundits, to follow up on last week’s proposal. If anyone has a comment or suggestion before I send it out, please let me know.

Dear Mr./Ms. ——-,

Do you consider your role as a political columnist to be that of:

(1) an independent observer, whose views may lean toward a political party for ideological reasons but who nevertheless does not hesitate to criticize or praise either party on the basis of consistent application of principles; or

(2) a partisan observer, who believes that your own party’s principles and leadership are significantly better than those of the other, and so may tend to withhold criticism of your own side in order to present the best possible (but still truthful) case for your party; or

(3) something else.

The first might be considered to be a “Consumer Reports”-type of role, while the second is more like the role of an attorney in an adversarial system.

The reason I ask the question is that I operate a website called Lying in Ponds, which is devoted to a discussion of partisanship in general, and specifically attempts to quantify the degree of partisanship of top national political pundits such as yourself. Some readers feel that a pundit may be highly partisan yet factually accurate, and can play a useful adversarial role as in (2). My own belief is that pundits profess to and should play a vital independent role as described in (1).

If you are willing to share your views on the subject, I may want to quote you on the website. If I do, I would be sure to use any quote fairly and in context; in fact I would probably just post your entire response if it’s not too long. Thank you very much for your time.

Ken Waight
Lying in Ponds
http://www.lyinginponds.com

Brendan Nyhan of Spinsanity sharply criticizes Maureen Dowd for a “massive cheap shot” against NASA:

Dowd has frequently put style before accuracy in her writing, including falsely claiming President Bush said Al Qaeda is “not a problem anymore” and citing a meaningless online poll to prove that Americans don’t believe the war in Iraq will reduce terrorism. Apparently, cheap shots are also a tool in the repertoire of the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.