Making a joke about Jews in a column defending neoconservatives was “incredibly stupid,” a New York Times columnist acknowledged. In a Jan. 11 column that took aim at liberals who say neoconservatives are running the Bush administration’s foreign policy, David Brooks joked that for some critics of neoconservatives “con is short for `conservative’ and neo is short for ‘Jewish.’ ” That prompted a flood of complaints from readers who said Brooks was smearing legitimate criticism as anti-Semitism.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.