The creative use of the Nexis database to embarrass journalists and other public figures with their past utterances is a technique pioneered by Dan Seligman in the brilliant column he used to write for Fortune magazine. Happily for Seligman fans, if unhappily for the New York Times, he now trains his sights exclusively on the paper of record in a monthly column for the New York Post. His 1998 greatest-hits column last week is worth quoting at length:
"In years past, folks trying to make it as directors in Hollywood learned that it helped to clue in the audience if the bad guy wore a black hat and immediately kicked the nearest dog upon descending from the stagecoach. Folks trying to make it at the New York Times nowadays clue in the readers by working 'mean-spirited' into their copy. The Nexis database tells us that this phrase appeared in 102 Times articles and/or editorial comments last year.
"Somewhat surprisingly, the label was not in every last case affixed to conservatives. There was an oddball reference on the sports page to Monica Seles' 'mean-spirited backhand' (in a match with Steffi Graf), and also a literary allusion to Ernest Hemingway's 'mean-spirited Moveable Feast' (said to be unfair in its depiction of Scott Fitzgerald). But a fellow eyeballing the 102 citations could not possibly doubt that the term is used mainly to help readers see that Republicans, impeachers and other conservatives are nasty, unpleasant people and potential dogkickers. One looked in vain for a mean-spirited liberal."
Seligman also spotted a fantastic headline atop an Oct. 1 editorial appearing, he noted, "after a decade in which U.S. defense spending had shrunk from 27 percent of total federal spending to 15 percent: 'The Insatiable Pentagon.'"