Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

I'm not following this flap at the New York Times much, except to note that I find stories like this really pretty funny when they come up. I'm reminded of something Roger Ebert wrote when he reviewed the film Catch Me If You Can:

It is probably true that most people will take you at face value until they have reason to do otherwise. I had a friend who had risen to a high level in her organization and was terrified her secret would be discovered: She never attended college. My guess, and it proved accurate, was that nobody would ever think to ask her. It is probably an even better guess that no patient in a hospital would ask to see a doctor's medical school diploma.

This Blair guy, it turns out, was pretty much of a bullshit-artist. A lot of commentators want to read something big and momentous into this whole business -- something about hypocrisy and affirmative action -- but it's pretty clear, from what I've seen, that what's at work here is little more than that wonderful part of human nature that makes us all susceptible to bullshit. Hell, one could probably make a case that bullshit is even necessary for human interactions to proceed the way we generally want them to, so that when things like this NYT bit happen, we would almost be better off chalking it up as an example of "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" Ah well....

(BTW, it occurs to me that conservatives don't like the NYT because it's a liberal paper. And liberals don't like the NYT because it's not a liberal paper. Who does like it, then?)