Embrace the Race

by Cliopatria

"I want Arabs to get sexed up like nothing else," wrote Jill Bandes a"19 [yr old] blond-haired, blue-eyed, Caucasian Jew" in the Daily Tar Heel."I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport." Hmm. Forget the racial profiling for security. There is more going on in this column."When asked if she had a boyfriend, Ann Coulter once said that any time she had a need for physical intimacy, she would simply walk through an airport’s security checkpoint." REALLY. I didn't catch that quote."Stop, as Coulter advises, treating racial profiling like the Victorians treated sex — by not discussing the topic unless you’re recoiling in horror at the practice." I have to say that I never noticed the"strip" part of the strip-search before. But here it is.

Racial profiling needs more defendants like this.

I don't know why she was fired as a columnist because I would love to read her take on weapons of mass destructions [link via Romenesko].

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Adam Kotsko - 9/18/2005

My mistake.

Jonathan Dresner - 9/18/2005

(is there anywhere in the US that's not within a 100 mile radius of an airport?).

She said "100 yards".... so much for close reading hermeneutics.

Adam Kotsko - 9/17/2005

I think that she should have been fired precisely for offending the particular sensibilities she offended. She was, in short, recommending mass sexual assault of an entire race of people (is there anywhere in the US that's not within a 100 mile radius of an airport?).

Ralph E. Luker - 9/16/2005

Sergio, You're making something out of nothing. It's called taking a quotation out of context. In extreme cases, it can reverse a person's meaning. Would you like to acknowledge that you've got a horse in this race -- that you're not exactly an impartial observor?

Sergio Ramirez - 9/16/2005

The Daily Tarheel's opinion page editor deserves an Orwell Newspeak award for this gem:
"In other words, their quotes were wrong, even if the words were correct."
Anyone care to explain THAT one?

Sergio Ramirez - 9/16/2005

Not the subject (as he suggests) but rather the spin on it. For example (and I see I need one) if I were to interview a group of white southerners on the subject of "how bad we feel about racism" and found, to the contrary, that many felt very comfortable with it, would I be in violation of "journalistic ethics" to write an opinion piece about that?

Ralph E. Luker - 9/16/2005

According to the editor, she misrepresented the subject of the piece she intended to publish to at least three of the people she quoted. You don't see that as a violation of journalistic ethics?

Sergio Ramirez - 9/16/2005

The manner in which the explanation was written makes clear that he, or someone, searched desperately to find a reason to fire this young woman. His explication of "journalistic standards" is nonsense. This was an opinion piece, not a research paper. I wonder what would happen ion Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman had to meet this editor's standards! No, she was fired because of a storm of complaints from offended parties. Period.

Ralph E. Luker - 9/16/2005

Sergio, What reason do you have for not believing what the editor said. Do you have corroborating evidence that he is telling "pathetic self-justifying lies" or are those the only terms by which you can understand what he said?

Sergio Ramirez - 9/15/2005

As a matter of fact, the most interesting thing about this whole story is the pathetic self-justifying lies that the editor told his readers. The columnist was clearly fired for offending sensibilities--and the editor is a riduculous coward for not admitting it.