Friday,
February 18 2005
ESTRICH FIRES BACK: The
latest dust up in the blogosphere is the Susan Estrich - Michael
Kinsley spat over the representation (or lack thereof) of women
on the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times. (For background,
see this
piece in the Washington Examiner. Additional goodies available
at Cathy
Seipp and Mickey
Kaus).
Today
Estrich fires back,
issuing a not-so-veiled threat to Kinsley:
It
has always been my theory that women in America have enormous
power, if only we would use it. But it's hard: You have to be
willing to stand up, find allies, take the arrows and have people
(men) call you names. Usually, it takes an insult -- a tough
one -- to provoke us. But when provoked, watch out. Just ask
Harvard President Larry Summers. His days are numbered. The
opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times would do well to consult
with his fellow Harvard man on the topics of women and the cost
of arrogance. His are, too.
That
sounds to me like a declaration of war. I wonder how (or if) Kinsley
will respond.
So
what about the substance of Estrich's charges of sex discrimination
on the opinion page of the Los Angeles Times? I haven't
been counting the number of op-eds in the LAT authored by women
as closely as Estrich has, but as someone who looks at scores
of op-ed pages across the country every day I don't see that Kinsley's
page is noticeably different from any other. Maybe that supports
Estrich's point about the industry in general and maybe it doesn't.
Frankly,
it's not important to me. We run the equivalent of a national
op-ed page and I can tell you when we go looking to assemble a
list of the day's best commentary we don't give a single thought
to the author's gender. We don't care what color they are or what
their religious or sexual preferences are. The only thing we care
about is finding interesting, well written articles on politics
and various other issues of the day.
I
suspect Michael Kinsley feels the same way. His first responsibility
is to produce a thoughtful, interesting, high-quality opinion
page for the Los Angeles Times. How he goes about that
job is up to him. It's clear that Kinsley believes, as many editorial
page editors do, that a certain level of ideological balance makes
for a stronger, more interesting page (the Wall Street Journal
being a notable exception).
The
problem with Estrich's argument is the problem with quotas in
general. When you start demanding that X percentage of articles
must be published by minority group Y, you automatically subordinate
quality as a top priority in favor of representation. This isn't
to say these things are mutually exclusive, but quotas often create
arbitrary barriers that bring quality and representation into
conflict.
I'm
sure Michael Kinsley would love to see and to publish more quality
columns - including those by women who live in the Los Angeles
area. But should he give special consideration to them, or should
he publish a column or hire a columnist that may not be as good
as another just because they're of a certain sex? No way. -
T. Bevan 11:15 am Link
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