Monday, June 8, 2020

Failure of a Basic Job Function; NYT Edition

The New York Times' opinion editor has resigned amid outrage over a piece by a Republican senator calling for military forces to be sent to cities where anti-racism protests had turned violent.

James Bennet stepped down after Senator Tom Cotton's article "Send in the Troops" caused revolt in the newsroom.
...
Mr Bennet, who has been the opinion editor since 2016, later admitted that he had not read the piece before its publication.
One would think that an op-ed page editor would read an opinion piece before approving it for publication. But sadly, no. For tht reason alone, he needed to go.

I have little doubt that when Cotton wrote his screed, he didn't consider that he was writing in the shadow of the anniversary of the Tienanmen Square Massacre, when the Communist Chinese regime did exactly what Cotton was advocating.

We all know, by now, that Trump approved of massacring those protesters. Only by an eyelash, did we dodge Trump's desire to do the same.

Cotton is one of Trump's enablers, a person who hates freedom of expression and freedom of assembly when those speaking out disagrees with him. He needs to retire to a wingnut welfare program.

Bunker Boy sure seems to like living behind high fences. One has to wonder if he is subconsciously acting out his future.

3 comments:

  1. Don't be fooled by their denials, it was the NYT who reached out to Cotton, not the reverse.
    I did get a laugh out of Driftglass characterization of David Brooks "leaning in to kiss his boss's ass and missing by a mile" though, after Sulzberger told the editorial staff that they should not have put that in his newspaper.

    -Doug in Sugar Pine

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's David Fucking Brooks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't know how involved Bennet was in this particular instance. But Cotton' editorial did go through a lot of back and forth with the NYT until they agreed to publish it.

    ReplyDelete

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