Even if its editorial policies did a 180, the New York Times would have a hard time erasing its image as a left-wing mouthpiece with bureau chiefs who look like this:
That’s John Burns, Baghdad Bureau Chief for the Times, who gave a really interesting report on Saddam’s trial today for the Newshour on PBS. The transcript won’t be available ’til tomorrow, but here’s the RealAudio.
The key point of interest to me was the effect this trial seems to be having upon Iraqis: Burns noted (I’m paraphrasing) that even Sunni Arabs, the primary benefactors of Saddam’s rule, found the testimony about the brutality of Saddam’s regime shocking and disturbing — even those who had previously looked upon the dictator as a hero and told Burns that they wanted Saddam freed.
This is exactly the effect that you’d expect when Iraqis are exposed to accounts of heinous crimes that the rest of the world has known about for years, but it’s good to see nonetheless.
It’s also good (grit my teeth) to see Ramsey Clark doing his usual nutty antics. Why? Because having a former U.S. Attorney General helping Saddam’s defense — and doing a pretty good job of delaying things, by the way — just has to help legitimize this trial in the eyes of the Iraqis and defeat some of those “American show trial” arguments.
Discrimination on the basis of appearance (fat/skinny, tall/short, hirsute/bald, etc.) is a human prejudice that will probably never be eradicated, but I hate it anyway. So normally, I refrain from commenting on what folks look like. But the wife and I had to laugh when John Burns popped onscreen. He looks like a lot of my professors (and the bums, oh excuse me, I meant to say homeless) at my alma mater UC Berkeley. He sure gave a good report, though.