Erlanger, the NYT’s Paris correspondent (which is a pretty good job as far as reporting beats go), is a smart guy, so his non-frothing at the mouth tone about Le Pen in this article is interesting. Three years ago, just as Trayvonmania was taking off in the U.S., he made an embarrassing mistake by assuming that an anti-Semitic terrorist crime in France was committed by some rightwinger excited by Le Pen’s presidential campaign. Instead, it turned out to be the usual suspects, same as last week’s kosher grocery store terrorism.

Last week I wrote of Steven Erlanger’s New York Times article on political implications of the Paris massacres, “ In Cold Political Terms, Far Right and French President Both Gain:” Perhaps he’s learned from his mistake?

Is anybody else learning?

Perhaps the rest of the New York Times is also learning or at least just growing tired of French Jews being murdered by Islamist terrorists, because they’ve given Marine Le Pen a spot in the op-ed section:

One stumbling block to better policy these days is the refusal to admit you were wrong. To advocate different policies tomorrow is seen as admitting that your ideological enemies were right yesterday. And that’s hard to do. So here’s a simple suggestion to help public figures overcome their pride: don’t admit you were wrong in the past. (The past has passed. You and your descendants are going to have to live in the future.) Instead, attribute your change of mind about immigration policy to the very real phenomenon of diminishing marginal returns. … So to shield your pride, just say: “I was in favor of massive immigration in the past when we needed more immigrants, but now we have enough immigrants, so I’m no longer in favor of it. “ Is that so hard to do?

By the way, let me point out that my Taki’s Magazine column last week was devoted to explaining a practical way for establishment egos to get over their pride and fix immigration policy so that France doesn’t become a banlieue of Africa: