Connect the dots

Theologian Reinhold Neibuhr may or may not have written the Serenity Prayer (“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change”), according to this article in tomorrow’s Times. Okay, fine. But the story centers on a conflict between Neibuhr’s daughter Elisabeth Sifton, who says her father wrote the Serenity Prayer, and a law librarian at Yale who’s analyzed the historical record and concluded that Neibuhr didn’t write it. And nowhere does the Times bother to mention that Sifton is the mother of Sam Sifton, who edits the Times’ culture pages. True, the story seems to be running in National, not Culture. But… you know. A little parenthetical disclosure never hurts.

Also: looks like that Yale law librarian’s been barking up this tree for a few years at least.