Want to be in NYTimes? Call for a Public Hanging
I find myself often getting a little miffed at Clark Hoyt’s Public Editor column for the New York Times. I am again. On Sunday he runs a column that says that of 700 people who wrote to him about the the choice of William Kristol as a columnist only one thought it a good choice. One out of 700. So of those other 699 letters, here is the only one he quotes:
“That rotten, traiterous [sic] piece of filth should be hung by the ankles from a lamp post and beaten by the mob rather than gaining a pulpit at ANY self-respecting news organization,” said one message. “You should be ashamed. Apparently you are only out for money and therefore an equally traiterous [sic] whore deserving the same treatment.”
Then Holt as if to brush off the citizen critics writes:
Kristol would not have been my choice to join David Brooks as a second conservative voice in the mix of Times columnists, but the reaction is beyond reason. Hiring Kristol the worst idea ever? I can think of many worse. Hanging someone from a lamppost to be beaten by a mob because of his ideas? And that is from a liberal, defined by Webster as “one who is open-minded.” What have we come to?
Then he gets down right patronizing when he adds:
This is a decision I would not have made. But it is not the end of the world. Everyone should take a deep breath and calm down.
Sitting in your position of power, Clark, you might not know it or feel it, but in this era of waterboarding etc. it is pretty damn tough to take a deep breath and calm down.
Here is what I would have done, insteading of retrieving probably one of the nuttiest letters to prove a point, I would have run all the letters they received. All 700 right here on the web, what does it cost? Almost nothing.
Instead Hoyt decides to treat 700 of The New York Times readers, dedicated enough to take a stand, as if they are little children, or worse nut cases, and worse still, apparently in his mind, liberal nut cases.
