By , ,
Published May 21, 2015
And now the most telling two minutes in television, the latest from the political grapevine:
FOX Fans: Missed the Grapevine? Watch it in the Screening Room!
Adding to Allegations
Adding to allegations that New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines (search) advanced disgraced reporter Jayson Blair (search) because Blair is black, there is now a report suggesting that Raines made Gerald Boyd (search) managing editor because he is black. New York Magazine says Raines thought choosing a black managing editor would advance his own career by pleasing Times diversity-conscious Chairman and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. The magazine quotes what it called a "well-placed" Times insider as saying, "It's totally why" Boyd got the job even though he is "not the best person for" it. Meanwhile, Pulitzer Prize winning Times reporter Rick Bragg, suspended for allegedly not giving due credit to a stringer last year and criticized for using a dateline from a city he hardly visited, says such practices were "common at the paper." Bragg told the Washington Post his job was "to ride the airplane and sleep in the hotel" so he could say he had reported from a particular city. Bragg says he will now quit the paper in the next few weeks, saying it has become a "poisonous atmosphere."
Waging War
A social work professor at the University of Northern Iowa says she now knows why President Bush went to war in Iraq because he's a "dry drunk" suffering from "traits of irrational thinking" leftover from drinking too much years ago. Katherine van Wormer writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that Mr. Bush's "polarized thinking and the obsessive repetition" reminded her of "many of the recovering alcoholics and addicts" she's treated. One symptom of this "dry drunk syndrome," she says, is an "exaggerated self-importance and grandiose behavior."
Cupertino Quarrel
An Asian-American businessman has backed out of a major donation to a new public building in Cupertino, Calif. Others are threatening to do the same, and they are blaming the city's vice mayor for an allegedly racist comment. And what was this racist remark? The San Jose Mercury News says that after the businessman, Fred Chan of ESS Technology, made the donation, Vice Mayor Sandra James raised questions about whether the building should be named after Chan, whom she did not know. She said, "What do we know about these people and here we have a whole building named after them?" The phrase "these people" was promptly denounced as an ethnic insult, and Chan withdrew his offer.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/why-did-president-bush-go-to-war