After more than 72 hours of drama, the New York Times has finally offered an apology for Alessandra Stanley’s TV criticism/think-piece, which was published online last Friday. Stanley made several huge technical errors, which was bad enough, but the whole piece was patronizing, grossly offensive and flat-out racist. I covered the piece on Sunday, and wrote a follow-up yesterday. You can read the NYT’s full apology/explanation here. Here’s the basic gist:

The article on the television producer Shonda Rhimes hadn’t yet appeared in Sunday’s paper, but the virtual world was ablaze in protest over it on Friday after it was published online. Written by the longtime TV critic Alessandra Stanley, its first paragraph – with a reference to Ms. Rhimes as an “Angry Black Woman” – struck many readers as completely off-base. Many called it offensive. Some went further, saying it was racist. Another reference to the actress Viola Davis as “less classically beautiful” than lighter-skinned African American actresses immediately inspired a mocking hashtag.

There are some big questions here – about diversity, about editing procedures and about how The Times deals with stories about women and race. They are worth exploring in depth.

This is a preliminary post, and I’ll be adding to it later today, or posting again. But I’ll say this much: The readers and commentators are correct to protest this story. Intended to be in praise of Ms. Rhimes, it delivered that message in a condescending way that was – at best – astonishingly tone-deaf and out of touch.

[From The NYT]

The NY Times also included updates to that apology with quotes from their Culture Editor Danielle Mattoon and Alessandra Stanley.

Danielle Mattoon response: “There was never any intent to offend anyone and I deeply regret that it did. Alessandra used a rhetorical device to begin her essay, and because the piece was so largely positive, we as editors weren’t sensitive enough to the language being used.” Ms. Mattoon called the article “a serious piece of criticism,” adding, “I do think there were interesting and important ideas raised that are being swamped” by the protests. She told me that multiple editors — at least three — read the article in advance but that none of them raised any objections or questioned the elements of the article that have been criticized. “This is a signal to me that we have to constantly remind ourselves as editors of our blind spots, what we don’t know, and of how readers may react.”

Alessandra Stanley’s response: “In the review, I referenced a painful and insidious stereotype solely in order to praise Ms. Rhimes and her shows for traveling so far from it. If making that connection between the two offended people, I feel bad about that. But I think that a full reading allows for a different takeaway than the loudest critics took. The same applies to your question about “less than classically beautiful.” Viola Davis said it about herself in the NYT magazine, more bluntly. I commended Ms. Rhimes for casting an actress who doesn’t conform to television’s narrow standards of beauty; I have said the same thing about Helen Mirren in “Prime Suspect.” I didn’t think Times readers would take the opening sentence literally because I so often write arch, provocative ledes that are then undercut or mitigated by the paragraphs that follow.

[From The NY Times]

I feel like Alessandra Stanley thinks that barely anyone would have been offended if Twitter hadn’t blown up, and I feel like Stanley’s non-apology (she doesn’t clearly apologize for anything, re-read it) comes across as smug and condescending, just like her original article. Like, she blames the peasants for twisting her words into something racist and offensive. And here’s a note: if you’re going to reference Viola Davis’s description of herself, use quotes and a hyperlink. And even then, it’s still questionable. Viola Davis is allowed to say whatever she wants about herself and her struggles as a black woman in Hollywood – it’s a really awful idea for Alessandra Stanley to use Viola’s words out of context to throw shade on V.

Photos courtesy of WENN and Fame/Flynet.