from nytimes.com
Congratulations, Barney — we know we've been tough on you in the past, but good job smacking down your bosses at the NYT for their lazy, misleading, statistically-gerrymandered article claiming that "51% of women are living without a spouse" — and including 15-17 girls in that equation. This article was attacked and debunked a whole bunch of times so I won't go into that here, but I will say that the Times loves its spot-the-gender-trends articles, knows they're a fast-track to MEL#1, and consistently plays fast and loose with the facts while they're getting there. Not cool.
And not a secret — the blogosphere is all over this stuff, from Jack Shafer harshing on last year's misleading "women at elite colleges are eschewing careers" red herring to Salon's marvelous and thoughtful Broadsheet, parsing through the detritus of these toss-off gender pieces, to blogs like Feministing and Echidne and Pandagon actually taking time to explain the inconsistencies and suss out the nuance. But that doesn't stop these stories from getting instantly picked up all over the place, repackaged on front-pages throughout the country, repeated on news and talk shows, hashed over in the blogosphere. That would be fine if they were right. What was that about not needing a public editor, Bill Keller? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
p.s. Here is our only criticism of Calame's column, and it's really addressed more to Jonathan Landman: You might want to take a bit more care in determining URLs, as the abbreviation "Pub Ed" reads as "pubed" in this particular instance. On the plus side, it totally sounds like a natural for Sunday Styles.
