The day Maureen Dowd wrote f--- news and a revered political commentator didn't get the joke

Amid all the debate about what is true and what is f--- news, I am reminded of a remarkable journalistic moment that showed how hard it is to know when someone is kidding or serious. And how you can be sincere but spread false information.

Dowd (Fred R. Conrad photo, New York Times)

It was early in 2009, the first months of the Obama presidency, and Maureen Dowd, the sly and witty New York Times columnist, put tongue in cheek to describe how she had gained exclusive access to classified testimony of a supposedly secret meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In the scene created by Dowd, Democrats on the committee, led by Dianne Feinstein, are grilling former Vice President Dick Cheney about the torture methods he and President George W. Bush approved to interrogate terrorism suspects.

Dowd dropped hints all through the column that it was a put-on. The first clue should have been that a columnist was playing the uncharacteristic role of an investigative reporter writing about leaked information.

181€ million to keep Catalan-language media alive

Front page of La Vanguardia, in Catalan

BARCELONA, Spain -- Americans are used to traveling thousands of miles within their wide open spaces and hearing only English, with variations of accent and expression.

But in France, Germany, Spain, and other parts of Western Europe, there are still regions of distinct languages and dialects preserved by geographic barriers, sedentary culture, and autonomous politics.

So it should not have been a surprise to find that an international media event in Barcelona, to which I was invited to speak, was conducted not in Spanish but in Catalan, that Romance language of northeastern Spain and southern France. Even Spanish presentations were translated simultaneously into Catalan. (Disclosure: The sponsors paid me an honorarium and my travel expenses.)

600 media in Catalan

But it was surprising to learn that there are nearly 600 media outlets in the Catalan language and that the government of the region has spent 181€ million (link in Spanish) since 2008 to prop them up with grants and advertising, according to a lengthy investigation by the daily newspaper El Mundo.

Internet excesses recall Shakespeare’s time

Along with the decline of youth morals, a favorite topic of people of a certain age is the decay of the language.

The idea that there was a Golden Age of morals and language, now corrupted in our decadent time, has been a literary topic for a couple of thousand years. It is part of the human condition that elders wax nostalgic about the past and criticize their juniors.

In any case, the Internet is the latest seed of decadence. Some see abominations everywhere in spelling, grammar, usage, slang and taste. They are right, but they are misinterpreting what it means.