I wonder if this story could be turned into a comedy film script starring Eddie Murphy ...

No, because Eddie Murphy,while he was hired to be the black guy on SNL, actually suceeded because he was funny. Not because he was and is black.

OK, how about Tracy Morgan, then?

Yes, Pitts' fears are a result of affirmative action blowback. But I think he and other black columnists and reporters could stop worrying about being confused with Jayson Blair. Once someone is hired, he can be judged by the quality of his work. (I'm a big fan of Pitts' columns.) And everyone in the newsroom -- except, sometimes, the top editors -- knows who's a bullshit artist and who's for real. Almost all of Blair's co-workers and editors from college on knew he was a flake, a suck-up and a liar. You have to be very high-ranking to miss The Moose.

Affirmative action blowback? Are white men inherent saints unable to abuse position or privelege by genetic grace? Should I automatically assume that every white man survived the heaviest competition to gain his position despite the cultural fact of racism, cronyism, and sexism? I think it is proof of your intellectual bias that you view Blair's extreme abuse of tokenism and the laughable abandonment of editorial oversight by the New York Times, as evidence that affirmative action does not work. Then what was proven by the Stephen Glass case? That white privelege still exists and does not work? Or is it proof that white does not automatically mean qualified, as blacks have been saying since the days of Jim Crow. Since far more white men have been employed by the Media, I think it safe to assume that far more unqualified white men have abused the position than black men. What should I conclude from that, Shark? Segregation was endorsed at nearly every level of our state and federal government and supported by a majority of white citizens and white-owned businesses. Its abuses were so egregious as to require drastic and immediate remedies. If those remedies have had unforeseen consequences less some forty-years later, such as allowing an African-American to abuse his position and run a scam, so be it. By your logic am I to conclude that sexual abuse by priests is de facto evidence that the Catholic Church does not work? Are the Worldcom and Enron abuses evidence that capitalism doesn't work? Should I take slavery and Jim Crow as evidence that America doesn't work? Maybe you are suggesting that the limited number of abuses of affirmative action "privileges" are actually greater acts of theft and immorality than the stealing of billions of investor dollars or the theft of thousands of childhoods. Or are you saying that affirmative action is worse, in kind and effect, than the crime that it was put in place to remedy?

Just a hunch, Shark, but I think your narrow mind is showing.

Wait, is affirmative action tokenism, as you say in one sentence, or is it a necessary "drastic remedy"? How about the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act and the 14th Amendment? Are those examples of tokenism too? Will you ever be satisfied with anything but equal outcomes in achievement between the races, delivered on a platter, as opposed to equal opportunity?

The problem is not that NYT hired Jayson Blair under a diversity program -- the problem is that AFTER he was hired, he was allowed to work without ACCOUNTABILITY and he was given TOO MANY SECOND CHANCES (many more than Glass and other plagarists were given) -- maybe or maybe not because NYT executives were afraid like many white executives to be hard on black employees. The other problem is that based on reading his appaling interview in the New York Observer yesterday, he doesn't feel any remorse for how his actions have hurt the prospects of other black people. Also, rather than condemming Blair, and the contempt he has for the hands that have fed him that which I must say in my experience is all-too-common in the black community, too many black journalists instead are writing editorials urging that this event be swept under the rug, or worse, and laughably, BLAMING it on white racism.