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Charles Krauthammer says some tweets are better than others. When the administration tweets on Ukraine it is nothing but “preening.”
Mass schoolgirl kidnapping in Nigeria — to tweet or not to tweet? Is hashtagging one’s indignation about some outrage abroad an exercise in moral narcissism or a worthy new way of standing up to bad guys?
The answer seems rather simple. It depends on whether you have the power to do something about the outrage in question. If you do, as in the case of the Obama administration watching Russia’s slow-motion dismemberment of Ukraine, it’s simply embarrassing when the State Department spokeswoman tweets the hashtag #UnitedForUkraine.
That is nothing but preening, a visual recapitulation of her boss’s rhetorical fatuousness when he sternly warns that if the rape of this U.S. friend continues, we are prepared to consider standing together with the “international community” to decry such indecorous behavior — or some such.
When a superpower, with multiple means at its disposal, reverts to rhetorical emptiness and hashtag activism, it has betrayed both its impotence and indifference. But if you’re an individual citizen without power, if you lack access to media, drones or special forces, then hashtagging your solidarity with the aggrieved is a fine gesture and perhaps even more. …
Peter Wehner says our foreign policy is now farce. Kerry said something that could have been in The Onion.
According to the Washington Post
‘Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Thursday that he has seen “raw data” indicating that the Syrian government has used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon in a “number of instances” in recent months.
“There will be consequences” if evidence of new chemical use is confirmed, Kerry said, but “we’re not going to pin ourselves down to a precise date, time, manner of action.”
Speaking after a meeting here of the Syrian opposition’s principal international backers, he also said they had agreed to expand humanitarian, diplomatic and military aid to the rebels.
“I’m not going to discuss what specific weapons or what country may . . . be providing or not providing” the arms, he said. “I will say that out of today’s meeting, every facet of what can be done is going to be ramped up. Every facet.” ‘
We have now reached the farcical stage in the Obama presidency. …
Now we get to look at the NY Times/Abramson kerfuffle. Jonathan Tobin is first.
Love it or hate it, the New York Times remains one of the principal institutions of American journalism. So when its executive editor is abruptly and publicly fired with none of the usual platitudes or polite white lies about the victim deciding to explore other opportunities or spend more time with their families and with the process not dragged out to ensure a smooth and seemingly orderly transition, it is big news in the world of journalism. But the decision of Times publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr. to “oust”—to use the word used by the newspaper in the headline of its own story about the firing—Jill Abramson seems more like a public hanging than a routine replacement of a top editor. Abramson is a deeply repellent figure in many ways, but her treatment is shocking not because it might be undeserved but because it is highly unusual for someone at this level to walk the plank in such a manner. …
The New Yorker says Abramson had lawyered up after discovering her pay was less than males who preceded her.
At the annual CityUniversityJournalismSchool dinner, on Monday, Dean Baquet, the managing editor of the New York Times, was seated with Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the paper’s publisher. At the time, I did not give a moment’s thought to why Jill Abramson, the paper’s executive editor, was not at their table. Then, at 2:36 P.M. on Wednesday, an announcement from the Times hit my e-mail, saying that Baquet would replace Abramson, less than three years after she was appointed the first woman in the top job. Baquet will be the first African-American to lead the Times.
Fellow-journalists and others scrambled to find out what had happened. Sulzberger had fired Abramson, and he did not try to hide that. In a speech to the newsroom on Wednesday afternoon, he said, “I chose to appoint a new leader of our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects …” Abramson chose not to attend the announcement, and not to pretend that she had volunteered to step down.
As with any such upheaval, there’s a history behind it. Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. …
Kevin Williamson posts.
… A few thoughts: The first is that I would not be at all surprised if Ms. Abramson’s compensation were less than she expected compared to what her predecessors had earned. Though my own experience as a newspaper editor has been considerably less rarefied than hers, I do recall that some years ago I was offered a job as editor of a daily newspaper at a salary that was less than half of what a previous, long-serving editor had earned. Declining margins have put a great deal of pressure on executive compensation at media companies. The phenomenon no doubt is more extreme outside the lofty heights of the New York Times, but the dynamic probably is the same throughout the industry. I suspect that if I were to return to an editor’s position comparable to any I have held in the past, I would be paid less not only in real terms but in absolute terms than I was. The numbers are just sort of ugly.
As for her allegedly condescending management habits, I have never had any dealings with Ms. Abramson, but such dealings as I have had with the New York Times suggest to me very strongly that condescending is the house style. …
Lots of knives are out. Here’s WaPo’s Erik Wemple.
In accepting his new job as executive editor of the New York Times after the ouster of Jill Abramson, Dean Baquet told his colleagues:
“It is humbling to be asked to lead the only newsroom in the country that is actually better than it was a generation ago, a newsroom that approaches the world with wonder and ambition every day.”
How clever to mix the word “humbling” into an affirmation of such bare arrogance.
To disassemble Baquet’s statement requires a look at what a “generation” means. One definition reads, “the number of years that usually pass between the birth of a person and the birth of that person’s children.” For some folks, that could be as few as 20 years and perhaps much more. Let’s just place it at 30 years, meaning that Baquet is saying that the New York Times is the only newsroom that is better than it was in 1984.
That means Baquet dissed not only the late A.M. Rosenthal, who served as executive editor of the New York Times from 1977 to 1986, but all manner of rival news organizations, including the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and so on.
Jill Abramson has the most suffocating affectation of a voice. Here’s a video.