First FreeRepublic, then Drudge; now WorldNetDaily has run a story on the Grand Central bathroom agreement. What’s next, Michelle Malkin? Jonah Goldberg? The blog “Good As You” has a post covering most of the errors in the article. I’ve only got a couple of things to add.
First of all, I’ve read WorldNetDaily before, and I’m aware it’s not exactly the pinnacle of journalistic ethics and style, but still, if you’ve read the Daily News and New York Post articles I’ve linked to in previous posts, it’s obvious that the quotes are all taken from one or the other of the articles. Yet the WorldNetDaily article gives these newspapers absolutely no credit for the work they did of interviewing Helena Stone and the three “woman-on-the-street” subjects, not even a link. That’s called plagiarism, and it would earn a failing grade if any of my students turned it in.
Second, to expand on the point made by the Good As You blogger, I’ve been in both men’s and women’s bathrooms in Grand Central Station. My memory’s a little hazy, but I’m pretty sure that, unlike some public bathrooms (Rockefeller Center, for example), the partitions between toilet stalls are floor-to-ceiling. The fact that these particular bathrooms have been a focus of paranoia is especially bizarre given that they actually have more privacy than your average bathroom. They also tend to be well-trafficked at all hours of the day and night.
I do have to give the WorldNetDaily “exclusive commentator” credit for giving background on the harassment that Stone experienced at the hands of the MTA Police, so that the idea of sensitivity training doesn’t seem like some knee-jerk liberal response.