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Tucker Carlson and Evan Smith

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from: Tucker Carlson

Campaign Fatigue Syndrome

Posted Wednesday, Dec. 1, 1999, at 5:19 PM ET

Evan:

Squeegee Guys and Leprous Beggars for Hillary! What a campaign slogan. And the bumper-sticker possibilities. ... It's going to be a great race.

That's my desperate hope, anyway. One of the problems with a presidential year is that it starts so early. Twelve months to go and I'm already finding myself blowing past the political stories in the morning paper and heading for the pointless wire roundups at the back. I've always liked the weird stuff anyway--I probably should have become a night-beat police reporter--but increasingly I've come to see "Rockville Teen Set Ablaze" as my reward for slogging through "Bradley Unveils Medicare Plan."

Today's news is a great example. Page 1 of the Washington Post is crowded with eat-your-peas-type stories: Bush's tax-cut plan, the Dow Corning settlement, an earnest feature on Korean immigrants who work in chicken-processing plants on the Eastern Shore. There are also pieces on the WTO riots and the mass graves in Juarez--unusually interesting stories for the A section--but for the really compelling copy you've got to venture inside "Style," where Howie Kurtz has an account of a group firing at the New York Times. The other day the Times tossed more than 20 employees from one of its clerical offices in Norfolk for sending "inappropriate and offensive" e-mails. None of the e-mails in question is reproduced in the story, so it's not clear precisely what was inappropriate or offensive about them. But there are a couple of incredibly creepy quotes from Times executives. "If you receive e-mail that violates our policy," wrote the CEO of the Times in a company-wide memo, "please notify your manager or the head of Human Resources in your business unit. We will take prompt action to address the situation." Translation: Rat out your peers and we'll fire them.

Or some of them. As a friend of mine pointed out this morning, if a well-known Times reporter was caught forwarding an obscene picture to a friend in the newsroom, would he lose his job? No way. But when some $9-an-hour mope in the payroll office in Norfolk does it, he's walking down the road talking to his lunch box inside of an hour.

Under most circumstances, I wouldn't have a problem with this. Generally, I think private employers ought to be able to hire and fire whomever they want at time for any reason. And I accept that there is a meaningful difference between Rick Berke and the guy who files workman's comp forms. On the other hand, the Times came up with its policy against offensive e-mail as a way to shield its employees from discrimination and harassment--in other words, as a way to protect the Little Guy from the abuses of the powerful. And yet here we have the Little Guy getting shafted for an offense that a) in all likelihood hurt no one, and b) that the powerful could almost certainly commit without getting fired.

What we have here, Evan, is your classic Irony Story. And that's what I really want from my daily newspaper.

Best,
Tucker

the breakfast table
entries
1234567891011121314151617
from: Tucker Carlson

Campaign Fatigue Syndrome

Posted Wednesday, Dec. 1, 1999, at 5:19 PM ET
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Evan Smith is deputy editor of Texas Monthly. Tucker Carlson writes for the Weekly Standard and Talk.
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