Audacious Stupidity by Bill Keller

Bill Keller is the editor of the New York Times. This nitwit has the audacity to claim that the dire fiscal situation of the Times (whose stock price is on life support and the company has most of its value since Keller took over), is in the same ballpark as a campaign to save Darfur refugees.

Leave it to the New York Times editor to make that comparison.

NEW York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller equated the Gray Lady to a PBS pledge drive, claiming readers have offered to donate money to keep the Times alive.

Keller was speaking at Stanford University to dedicate a new building for the campus newspaper -- an event he likened to a "ribbon-cutting" for "a new Pontiac dealership."

The bombastic broadsheet editor went on to equate the keep-the-Times-alive movement to the cause of starving African refugees, saying, "Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause."

Keller said he had little use for Web sites like Google and Drudge Report: "If you're inclined to trust Google as your source for news -- Google yourself."

Keller's comments come as the Times sat down with the Newspaper Guild Wednesday in their first serious bargaining session to figure out how to extract $4.5 million in savings from the newspaper company's unionized workforce.

Well, given the way that newspapers are folding all over the country and that General Motors is on the verge of bankruptcy, Keller's comparison between the opening of the new newspaper and a Pontiac dealership is an apt on. Both aren't likely to survive given the business climate.

Comparing saving the newspaper to the Darfur situation is audacious stupidity, although one notes that for all the talk about saving Darfur refugees, few on the left are willing to put US military power on the line to insure that Darfur refugees are actually saved. It's all so much lip service, and if the Times is relying on the same kind of campaign to save the paper, he's much dumber than he lets on since the money is harder to come by these days.

The Times can't afford its newspaper publishing business, and its value is derived more from one-shot leasing deals for its Manhattan headquarters building than for the revenue derived from selling leftist newsprint.

UPDATE:
Hot Air notes that Keller fired off an email to clarify his statement, and attacks those who read it as a literal equivocation between Darfur and saving newspapers:

“I think it’s pretty obviously a reflection of my mild astonishment at the earnest fervor with which some people have suddenly embraced the cause of saving newspapers,” Keller wrote. “That’s matched only by my mild astonishment at the silly literal-mindedness with which some people read my occasional public comments.”

Funny, but I don't hear too many people calling for newspaper bailouts other than newspaper people themselves. Many bloggers are more than comfortable letting papers die, even if it means they lose the very reporting that provides plenty of blogging fodder.

What's silly is that someone who is supposedly so precise with words as an editor of the New York Times could be so imprecise so as to garner the response he now derides.