All The News That Fits

The story on the front page of yesterday's New York Times by A. G. Sultzberger heralding, in Messianic tones, the arrival of a female abortionist in Wichita, Kansas two years following the shooting Dr. George Tiller (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/us/10abortion.html?ref=todayspaper) offers a rare opportunity to examine that frontier where Left-wing ideology, pro-abortion fanaticism, journalistic mediocrity, nepotism, and management of news rub up against each other.

The subject of the article is one Dr. Mila Means, a physician whose family medical practice is struggling financially and who begins performing abortions to assist her cash flow. Well, at least she's honest about her motives.

With the National Organization for Women (all twenty of them) and now the New York Times championing her, this thinly capitalized abortionist is now offered as the courageous poster girl for "abortion rights", although one senses that even the Times is squeamish about her selection. Why?

Well, in addition to her status as an abortionist-for-pay and failed doctor, Dr. Means has other liabilities too, that even the rhapsodic Times reporter (more on him in a moment) can't prevent leaking out. According to the article, Dr. Means was once a "regular churchgoer" who taught abstinence classes "to Christian youths" (natch). She now claims this was all the result of "religious brainwashing" (And her current views are the result of ...?) The article doesn't mention whether Dr. Means has children of her own, but we are told that she is divorced from her husband, who was not only gay and bipolar, but also a family friend, and a former patient. The good doctor admits to marrying her ex so that he could hop on her  health insurance, and presumably pay the good doctor for her services provided to him. (As they say on Wall Street: It's not about the money; it is the money.) This curious arrangement resulted in an investigation and reprimand by a state medical board. Odder still, Doc Means appears always to be broke, and is a regular check-bouncer and frequently sued by by her own credit card companies and, one suspects, other creditors as well. One hundred (100) of her patients have left her. In addition to all this, Dr. Means is, - how to say it? - neither dainty nor prepossessing; in a battle of the poster children between her and the Gerber baby, she'd lose every time.

And the Times criticizes Michelle Bachman for her alleged "nuttiness"?

Anyway, the author of this article is a twenty-nine year old supposed Wunderkind named A. G. Sulzberger, scion of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the paper's legendary founder, grandson of owner/publisher "Punch" Sulzberger, and son of the paper's current publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger. Despite these liabilities, "A" (or shall we call him "Paunch") managed to vault over many other aspiring reporters (no doubt on his own merits) and now, at the tender age of twenty-nine (29), finds his by-line appearing regularly in his daddy's paper above the fold on page one. This is true journalistic merit. And these are the people who complain regularly about nepotism in the Bush family and corporate glass ceilings (Pop Quiz: name two successful women who have made it to the top in newspaper publishing who were not related to the paper's founder).

To top it all off, the "paper of record", in a rare move for a front-page article, decided not to include a "Comments" section for the on-line version of this article, thus protecting little "Paunch" from the slings and arrows of readers who might criticize for whatever reason either the ideology or the fact-challenged nature of the article.

The motto of the Times is "All the news that's fit to print."

It should be: "All the news that fits."