Thank you for your e-mail concerning Bill Kristol. We appreciate
your interest and your taking the time to let us know how you feel.
Mr. Kristol’s column will be appearing on the Op-Ed page, where we
offer a range of diverse opinions — often differing from our own editorial
opinions. Given that we are a news organization that believes in
vibrant political discourse, we have brought Mr. Kristol on board after a
long and thoughtful search through the ranks of strong conservative voices.

Will you — or will we — agree with him? Probably not very
often . . . but that is the point of offering multiple views and providing
intellectual diversity. We hope the column will engender open debate and
discussion in the democratic tradition of newspapers. And we hope that you will continue to read and to express your views to us. We very much value your readership.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Catherine Mathis
> SVP, Corporate Communications
> The New York Times Company

Hi–larious, especially the condescending tone implying that they need to school people who object to Mr. Kristol on the democratic process. Here is my note back:

While I appreciate your note, I must say that I feel your editorial staff is ignoring a few salient points:

1.) Writing an opinion piece for one-time airing on their OpEd page is not the same thing as hiring someone with a track record of faulty logic and offensive speech to air their views on a regular basis.

2.) This is about the free market. I don’t much care what your supposed rationale is for hiring him, that is not my concern. My issue is that I don’t want to pay to support the publication of offensive views. I don’t subscribe to the National Review or to skinhead publications for the same reason. It is fundamentally repugnant to me to endorse, through my financial support, offensive and deceitful propaganda, regardless of the venue for publication. This is about MY pocketbook, not YOUR editorial preferences.

Sincerely,

In a sense, your language distracts from its purpose. It places the focus on you not Kristol’s appalling record.

Hmm…. it focused me on Kristol, although the mental image was a bit disturbing.

I am a regualr reader at the Lake and now at Emptywheel’s, but, I fear I am not “tough enough” to read your work.

Are you familiar with Kristol’s work? Have you read it? While tbogg is being somewhat hyperbolic, I’m afraid that it’s disturbingly close to reality.

you seem a bright person and a decent enough writer, so why do you need to go so crude with your editorial comments? I am not easily offended by most things, yet, here, it seems that you are needlessly attempting to escalate outrage at Kristol. In a sense, your language distracts from its purpose. It places the focus on you not Kristol’s appalling record. I am a regualr reader at the Lake and now at Emptywheel’s, but, I fear I am not “tough enough” to read your work.

Looks like you need another fist cup. Happy New Year.

That’ll teach me to comment before my fist cup of coffee on New Year’s Day!

Let’s face it, the Grey Lady is the advanced stages of journalistic stability. She’s still able to look fairly composed most of the time, and some of what she babbles makes good sense. But in a larger sense there’s really nobody home.

There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

I’m looking forward to, two days after a democrat is elected, the NYT editorial about how we need to put the partisanship of the Bush Years behind us, and to spend no time in partisan witch hunts over what Bush may have done, and to, in a bipartisan spirit, vow to work together towards the future for the sake of all Americans rather than engaging in another four years of partisan blame games and politically-motivated partisan investigations. In a bipartisan way! Bipartisanship!!

It’s such a classy routine. Makes me nostalgic for the boyfriend who once said, “I know we’ve had our troubles, and we were both thoughtless and hurt each other, and no one wants to go back to that, so let’s just make a new start and stop blaming each other for not doing the laundry or sleeping with your best friend or whatever.”