Looks like Bob Englehart stepped in it again with this recent blog post and cartoon.
He apologized for his insensitive (some would say “Englehartarian”) remark, and Colin McEnroe did a good job of putting the issue in perspective.
I can’t add much to the debate, but might observe there is one thing the Internet and print have in common; When a news organization posts something it regrets, it can’t unring the bell.
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Interesting that Bob notes in his comment to Colin’s piece that he was also suspended without pay for a week — by the people who approved his work, knew what he was and is and has been, who run the paper and the web. How unfortunate that all the bosses too must be suspended without pay also. How could it be otherwise, though? Punish the little guy and let the big ones in total control off free? Impossible, right? Why, if that sort of inequality was a guiding principle, how could we ever ever respect their other decisions? Just asking.
I must defend Englehart just as I would defend Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan for daring to speak out presciently on the same point in 1965. Yes, social pathologies occur in all ethnic groups and it was crass of Bob to point his finger broadly at “minorities.” But another pathology is sidestepping an inconvenient truth just because someone states it indelicately. Of the many crippling blights that afflict our urban centers, the huge percentage of children victimized by out-of-wedlock birth tops the list.