By Paul Nachman
07/12/2015
Steve Sailer has treated us to the "thoughts" of former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines. Raines is obviously enthusiastic about the idea that "demography [or demographics] is destiny," quoting the Brookings Institution’s William Frey twice on the subject. His enthusiasm derives from gleeful anticipation of vast demographic changes in the American South.Of course, "demography is destiny" is an underlying and sometimes explicit theme here at VDARE.com. But commenter "schbrg" at Raines’s article suggests that Raines might be unclear on the concept. Writing briefly from Dallas, schbrg confides:
I am an immigrant and am happy to have left the sexist and homophobic and racist societies that characterize most non-first world countries. Please re-read that first sentence if you are in shock.
Social liberals applauding many of these demographic changes have a crude and nasty surprise awaiting them.
My main memory of Raines stems from his long apologia in The Atlantic (My Times, May, 2004), a year after he was dismissed by the Times in the wake of the Jayson Blair fraud that his gullibility had enabled. Eleven years later, I particularly recall an item in the following passage wherein Raines recounted a power dinner with Times publisher Arthur ["Pinch"] Sulzberger, Jr.:
Needless to say, as Arthur and I talked over arctic char and baked cod in that starkly modern restaurant, neither of us could have imagined that in a little more than two years a young, relatively unknown reporter named Jayson Blair would figure prominently in the derailment of the managerial reformation for which we were laying the tracks.
What a born reporter Raines was to include the telling detail that Pinch had ordered arctic char! (I'd forgotten about Raines’s own baked cod.)
Just joking … what an insufferable, pompous twit Raines must be in person.
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