"White People Linking To Other White People"

The endearingly nebbishy Steven Levy indulges in a little Newsweekian hand-wringing over the blogosphere's apparent diversity problem. I'd never heard of the outraged blogger he quotes, but I must regretfully conclude that she does not come within ten miles of passing the Boring [Man] In A Bar Test. It is, if anything, worse than Instapundit.

The really distressing bit, though, is the allusion to Susan Estrich's recent pie-fight with LA Times opinion editor Michael Kinsley over the number of female op-ed writers in that august journal. Apparently she

has had her female law students at USC logging daily ratios of female- to male-penned op-eds in the Los Angeles Times for the last three years...

...I beg your pardon? This resonates disturbingly with some feelings I've been having lately about the practice of academia, and why I might have to run away from it screaming. You see, if a sinister profit-making employer were to ask me to do something this egregiously pointless for three years, I could at least expect to make a few bucks. I certainly hope I'm doing something with a bit more content to it, but I have little enough distance from the question that it's hard to be sure.

Meanwhile, also sprach Levy:

...extra care is required to make sure public discussion reflects the actual population... The top-down mainstream media have to some degree found the will and the means to administer such care.

Run away! Run away!