The orgy of hand-wringing among the “Old Media” over Jayson Blair and what he did to the New York Times is amusing, but misses the point. The “problem” at the Times never was Jayson Blair.
Nor is the “problem” at the Times “a bad person doing bad things,” as Times management wrote in a memo to employees. The “problem” is not that the Times procedures and systems failed, either, as its publisher has suggested. The “problem” is not even with racial quotas, which promote the hiring of marginally qualified minorities over highly qualified whites, although that, too, is symptomatic of the real problem.
The real problem at the Times is that Mr. Blair got caught. Oh, not caught in the sense that his editors and bosses found out he was fabricating interviews and plagiarizing other writers – his editors and bosses knew that for at least a year before they forced him to resign, and probably from the day he’d been hired.
The Times management knew it when they promoted him to the prestigious national desk. According to the Washington Post, “Jonathan Landman, the [Times] metropolitan editor, said Blair was hired as part of an intermediate reporter program in 1999, after a summer internship the year before, and that the paper had been aware of his substandard record” (“More Reporting By Times Writer Called Suspect,” by Howard Kurtz).
The real question is: Did the Times promote him in spite of his reckless disregard for the truth, or because of it?
Yes, there is a problem at the Times and other Old Media. There is a problem in the nation’s journalism schools. But the problem is not systems, controls, management style, racial quotas, incompetence or even undisclosed “personal issues.” All these are symptoms of a fatal disease that has infected most of America’s institutions, and indeed much of the West, since the early 20th century. This disease causes its followers to embrace a willful blindness toward the world as it really is, and to live life in a fantasy world that never was and never will be.
The cost is tremendous. The fantasy consumes their hopes, dreams, reputations and lives. It does the same for those who must live and work with them. The disease is rampant among America’s self-proclaimed “liberal elite,” and quite a lot of the rest of the Western world. While the cause varies, the effect is always to embrace fantasy over reality. The result is truth that is trivialized, twisted, distorted and even reviled.
The reason? Truth threatens the fantasy. Like an addict seeking his or her next fix – the one that will eventually consume body, mind and soul – this disease causes otherwise decent people to lie, cheat, steal and destroy the reputations of honest men and women who oppose them, all because the fantasy demands unquestioning allegiance. Suddenly the means – the daily steps we take in our lives – no longer matter. Whatever works – however evil, however degrading, however despicable – is justified by the ends. Fantasy must be imposed upon reality, lest the dream come to an end.
Jayson Blair fed the fantasy, thus he was endured, even embraced by the Times. That he was black was so much the better, another minority feather in management’s cap, another plug for racial diversity over intellectual diversity … which one might be excused for thinking was a newspaper’s real business.
Whittaker Chambers was right: Leftism is not a political belief, it is a religious faith to its followers. It is a man-made religion designed to overthrow God. Like the rebellion that occurred in Heaven before it, the leftist religion is based on lies and deceit – its first victims are the perpetrators themselves.
Leftism – Chambers called it by its real name of communism – ultimately destroys everything it touches. Like a cancer it takes over the healthy body of its host, turning people and institutions to its own twisted purposes, leaving the victim intact and functioning to all outward appearances, while inside it feeds off the host institution’s vitality and lifeblood until the host withers and dies.
Our nation’s schools, universities, churches, even the political process itself have been co-opted by leftist fanatics and their accompanying hatred of truth and reality. And they are all dying. Now the Times, which has shamelessly promoted the leftist agenda for years, has itself fallen victim to the fantasy.
