I wouldn’t want anyone to get the idea that I actually read the New York Times every day, but I do read my email every day, and sometimes there are links one just has to follow! Yesterday, for example, it was the paper’s editorial instructing Berlusconi how to govern Italy — while also reporting that the paper itself was being run into the ground by its apparently inept owner.

Today, it’s a typical Times rewrite of its own often fatal involvement in other people’s histories.

Mr. Mugabe was rightly seen as a hero when he led his country to majority rule in 1980. Zimbabwe’s prospects were bright, with ample mineral resources, thriving agriculture, high literacy and international good will. He has squandered virtually all of these assets…

As I wrote here on the occasion of the paper’s last editorial hand-wringer, the Times, along with most of the Western press, was responsible for putting Mugabe in power in the first place, despite his already bloody destruction of Matabeland. The pack-mentality that governed coverage of the Lancaster House agreement that ended the biracial regime that succeeded Ian Smith’s white-led government would allow for no other outcome than giving power to Mugabe. When Mugabe’s forces returned to Matabeleland again in the early ’80s, the Times was inexplicably shocked.

Today’s editorial is more or less identical to one from March 1983. Others have appeared over the years, but Mugabe’s still there. The Times apparently has as much influence in Africa as it does on Wall Street.