The Toledo Blade, last seen in this space when the scales fell from a columnist’s eyes and she discovered that media bias exists, is the subject of another examination of bias, this one from the great James Taranto.
Another American city has declared war on the U.S. Marines, reports the Toledo Blade:
A company of Marine Corps Reservists received a cold send-off from downtown Toledo yesterday by order of Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.
The 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., planned to spend their weekend engaged in urban patrol exercises on the streets of downtown as well as inside the mostly vacant Madison Building, 607 Madison Ave.
Toledo police knew days in advance about their plans for a three-day exercise. Yet somehow the memo never made it to Mayor Finkbeiner, who ordered the Marines out yesterday afternoon just minutes before their buses were to arrive.
“The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people,” said Brian Schwartz, the mayor’s spokesman.
We got to wondering: To what political party does this Carty Finkbeiner belong? The Blade does not tell us, so we tried checking some other sources. WNWO-TV, the local NBC affiliate, didn’t tell us. Neither did the Fox station, WUPW-TV, or the CBS outlet, WTOL-TV.
… Contrast this with a Times book review from just this past weekend. The paper doesn’t even wait until the first paragraph to tell us the party ID of its subject: The headline reads “R, North Carolina.” The subject is former senator Jesse Helms and his backward views on race. How much do you want to bet that the Times never has and never will use a similar headline for a biography of Theodore Bilbo or Ben Tillman or Robert Byrd?