Great great piece in Slate today, analyzing the language of “should” and “must” on the NY Times editorial page. Fascinating stuff, regardless of your political leanings. This is an article about language itself. Howell Raines brought back the banned words “should” and “must”, and yet still resists letting the New York Times make a big statement about its position. It can’t really, because it is the #1 paper in the world, and if the war happens, and if it is a rousing success, then all of their gloom-and-doom predictions will end up looking like defeatist claptrap … so they undermine, they second-guess, they hedge, they withhold support and enthusiasm.
But what I like about this article is the discussion of the language itself. And what words like “should” and “must” really have done to the integrity of the New York Times op-ed page.
A decade ago, the New York Times editorial page editor Jack Rosenthal banned his writers from using the words should and must. Rosenthal claimed his “silly, stupid rule had a magical effect” on editorial writers, forcing them to rely on logic, not assertion, to persuade readers. Rosenthal told George magazine’s Timothy Noah that if he didn’t ban the words, he risked running editorials tainted by “this foot stomping, childish petulance. …. ‘You must, by God, because we said so, and we’re the fucking New York Times.’ ”
Slate analyses one of the most recent op-eds about war with Iraq, where the language is so clouded, and hemmy and haw-ey, that it is hard to tell what the hell is going on.
But what if the United Nations doesn’t do what the Times thinks it “should” or “must” do? The nation’s most prestigious newspaper takes a powder, retreating from the insistent voice—in which it advises the Bush administration to provide world “leadership” with its “power”—to a pathetically passive tone. “But in the end, sometime in March, the United States may have to decide whether it should do the job on its own,” the editorial allows.
OK, but when the United States approaches that Rubicon, does the Times recommend we cross it? Not precisely. If this editorial were a football game, the zebras would penalize the Times for delay of game.
