The one that got away

So a guy shows up late for a job interview and starts it out by announcing, “you’re a damn fool if you don’t hire me.”

Jessica McBride thinks the Journal Sentinel should have hired him anyway.

Why? Because the guy in question, Jason Whitlock, is a black sports columnist who followed the right-wing line during the ugly Don Imus controversy in April, saying black culture and gangsta rap, not Imus, are the real problem, and accusing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton of exploiting the Rutgers basketball team and making the issue too big of a deal.

That, of course, is the diversity of opinion the right wing loves, whenever they can find a black person who agrees with them. (They are few and far between.)

"He would have been a really fresh voice in town," McBride says.

Right.

UPDATE: Illusory Tenant digs a little deeper and finds that McBride, avowed affirmative action foe, is the advisor for a student group whose goal is to increase diversity.

Diversity should start at home

Ah, yes, that liberal media again, says Jessica:

AN UNSCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION

Of the top 20 newspapers in the country, only 6 had rising circulation (albeit by small amounts).

Two of those, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal, have content that appeals to conservatives.

I want newspapers to survive. As much as I am excited by the growth of the blogosphere, there's no question that daily newspapers still do much of the reportorial heavy lifting. But maybe all daily newspapers should try to at least diversify their staff opinion ranks so that conservatives don't see them as hopelessly out of touch with common sense.

Just saying.

Perhaps this is part of her campaign to get the Journal Sentinel to begin running columns by Charlie Sykes, Jeff Wagner or -- whallah! -- Jessica McBride. That campaign surfaces periodically.

In the meantime, McBride is a columnist for the Waukesha Freeman. Other voices of political diversity which appear in that newspaper are: Mark Belling, James Wigderson, Owen Robinson, right wingers all; moderate Republican Lee Dreyfus, and, in the diversity slot, Tim Schilke. That's her idea of balance, apparently. Or do you think she's been telling the Freeman editors they need more liberal columnists?

How's circulation of the Freeman these days?

Just asking.