"Journalist" Tim Noah says this: (Scroll Down)
I'm usually quick to post corrections in Chatterbox, but in this instance I see no error to correct. Rubin, as a top manager, plainly bears at least theoretical responsibility for any practices that continued on his watch. Or rather, he would, if the press were following the same standards it's applying to John Sidgmore, CEO of WorldCom, whose tenure postdates the accounting fiasco that he's nonetheless being held responsible for along with his predecessor, Bernard Ebbers. We know that Rubin was involved with Citigroup's Enron account at least to the extent that he made an unethical call to Treasury on its behalf. Doesn't this fact, at the very least, require stories about the prepay business tonmention his name? Even if Rubin is known to be totally innocent of any involvement (which I doubt), shouldn't the stories spell THAT out? The press is protecting Rubin because he's a sacred cow. That's what I thought when I saw the Times story, and it's what I still think as Rubin's name continues to be absent from the followups.
But, wait! Noah gets it wrong again...
Bad comparison
From PETER SPIEGEL: Tim Noah makes an error in trying to compare Robert Rubin to John Sidgmore. John Sidgmore is not, as Noah argues, being held responsible for WorldCom's accounting problems despite the fact his tenure postdates that of Bernie Ebbers. Sidgmore has, in fact, been a senior executive at WorldCom since his old outfit, UUNet, was bought by Ebbers in 1996 and was vice chairman of the company for at least five years. Because the accounting questions at WorldCom were so blatant and wide-reaching, it is a legitimate question to ask whether a long-time senior executive knew or should have known about what was going on.
And, while we're on Medianews letters:
Ghost story
From CHARLES PIERCE: I once met a man who was sure -- absolutely, sell-your-kids-to-bet-the-farm certain -- that several ghosts lived in the attic of his farmhouse in rural Wisconsin. He had constructed anentire alternate reality around the notion. Every owl that hooted, every branch that scraped across the shutters, every sputtering buglight down the road, took on a new and entertainingly ectoplasmic identity. I often think of that man because he obviously took a great comfort in this world he had constructed around him. Haunted though it may have been, it was a simple, peaceful place. I think he would have been happy at that conservative "journalists" training school. Let us leave aside the obvious and relentlessly shame-free hilarity from my gal Annie Coulter, who is the sole occupant of her own universe. Imagine the rest of them -- come the fall of night, every time a leaf blows in front of the porchlight, it's mad Howell Raines, coming to steal their brains. It's got to beat all hell out of learning how to do a title search.
