Bob Somerby is a character. He writes the
Daily Howler, a long lived blog (started last century), critical and skeptical of media. He was Al Gore's roommate at Harvard, along with Tommy Lee Jones, and taught for some years in a Baltimore school. His posts are colored by his past, as any regular reader can tell. (The mass media's mistreatment of Gore's candidacy, the failings of young reporters, particularly their math illiteracy, the fact that American education does better than many media reports have it, and the fact that American education fails black students, the willingness of liberals to buy into myths, etc.) He's long-winded and, an admission, I often skim the first paragraphs and skip the last paragraphs. But all that said, he's an invaluable corrective who drills down into the depths of an issue. We could use a couple more like him, as long as they had different bees in their bonnet than he.
A sample--a
post on NYC schools points out:
"Good lord! In New York City, a school which is 9 percent white isn't just a "segregated" school; it's intensely segregated, an even worse abomination.
Meanwhile, a school which is 15 percent white represents the "desegregation" ideal! On such slender distinctions our liberal language now rests."
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