What's up? A Dixie Chick have a hangnail?
Nope. The Sacramento Bee decided to muzzle their opinion columnist Dan Weintraub's weblog in response to complaints from the California State Legislature's Latino Caucus. It seems that Dan, who has been distributing brickbats rather evenhandedly to deserving California pols, made the mistake of saying something critical about that clapped out political whore, Cruz Bustamante. Well that will certainly never do!
So now Dan has a SacBee editor looking over his weblog's shoulder to maintain political correctness, which I guess means no criticism of "Latino" pols, even if they are as sleazy as the Cruzer. Hugh Hewitt seems to have broken the story in the blogosphere (see 9/21 post at 8AM):
Weintraub has written a lot of pointed commentary, much of it aimed at Arnold. I have disagreed with many of Weintraub's conclusions about the race and especially his criticisms of Arnold's campaign decisions, but never doubted they were honestly arrived at. I started putting Weintraub on the radio a month ago, and now seek him out daily for an update. We brawl over specifics, but he is on top of the race in its many dimensions.Where's that little pissant, Al Franken?
The Bee's powers have now decided to start supervising Weintraub. Why? Because the Latino Caucus complained about one of his entries.
It is a tough entry, one that blasts Cruz Bustamante and the Caucus. Weintraub is an opinion journalist, and in this particular posting his opinions on Cruz and his colleagues are not high. In fact, it deserves that classic phrase of journalistic approval: "hard-hitting."
So the Caucus blasted back. Usually an editor then stands up for the columnist and the paper's independence, citing a long tradition of press vigilance over entrenched political power and the glory of the First Amendment.
Not this time.
...
Writing the truth about the left at the Sacramento Bee will get you spanked by the Ombudsman and muzzled by Rodriguez. Another triumph for journalism.
Anyhow, the story is now all over the blogosphere as Hugh reports this morning (9/22, 5:50 AM):
FreshPotatoes has begun a FreeWeintraub League, which is more icing since Mickey, Instapundit, Roger L. Simon, P&I, Infinite Monkeys and others have all rallied. Of course the fact that the Scramento Bee is surrounded by a legion of bloggers banging their spears has no practical effect, just an underlining of the fact that the editors and publisher are dopes and will forever be known as dopes. "Oh, the Bee said that? Isn't that the bunch of geniuses that decided to "edit" the only feature that brought it national attention?""Now remember class, when someone plays the race card, just bend over!"
The Bee also started, heh, a group blog among its editorial board members, which will be among the most ignored sites on the web. Their slogan: "Get the scoop on what the Latino Caucus thinks!" I have written before that no one starts out in life hoping to end up an anonymous writer of unread editorials. Why would we read the flagship blog of the easily intimidated?
...
A second-rate paper that could have made a run for first rate instead chooses to go third rate because the Latino Caucus barked.
A fine day in journalism. They will be teaching about this for some years to come, in the class for stupid editors in training.
