Round II: Matt Taibbi vs. NYT

The NYT did some significant soul-searching after being exposed for promoting the WMD lie that plunged us into war in Iraq. That's old news now. Since the NYT won't come clean about it conduct over the past few years, Matt Taibbi has decided to continue to expose the NYT for what it has become. Here's an excerpt from: "The New York Times Editorial Board's Creepy Avengers Fantasy: A brief note on a strange byline."

Editors should spend 99.9% of their time making sure they’re not green-lighting factual car-wrecks, and about six seconds a day thinking about how to run earth. The Times Board is flipping that ratio.

Trust in journalism isn’t something you can boost with a marketing campaign. It’s a tedious process of proving every day you have an institutional commitment to getting facts right while being willing to admit error. Readers paid attention when the Times held a piece questioning WMD intelligence until after the invasion of Iraq, when former CIA chief Michael Hayden bragged in a book about working with Times editors to kill stories critical of the intelligence community, and, more recently, when they refused any kind of audit with regard to failures in the Trump-Russia story.

. . . .

But no one needs newspapers to save the world. We just need them to get stuff right. Why isn’t that enough?

Continue ReadingRound II: Matt Taibbi vs. NYT

The Return of Transexual

Billboard Chris recommends that we give up on the word "gender." I agree. At its worst, it is an invitation to engage in old and reprehensible stereotypes (because girls who like to play with trucks are 100% girls). At its best, it is a meaningless word. At one point it was a polite way to avoid saying "sex."

By returning to "transexual," we recognize that there are only two sexes and that a person of one sex is presenting as the other. It is not a pejorative. It is recognizing some basic fact. Everyone out there, including people with sexual dysphoria who present themselves as the opposite sex, deserve kindness, respect and full legal rights as a person. Therefore, using "transexual" is truly not an insult. The benefit of using "transexual" is that we are recognizing basic biology and avoiding massive confusion associated with gender ideology. What confusion, you might ask?  How about this chart published by (believe it or not) Scientific American.

Two years ago I was scolded and told it was impolite, but I now disagree. I'm imagining the conversation when I start using transexual again. It will probably come down to a discussion (probably an argument) about who has the final say over how we use words. I'll see how it goes.

Continue ReadingThe Return of Transexual