World's Dullest Editorial Launches Panic
TK News | Matt Taibbi
“In an inane sequel to the Harper's Letter fiasco, a New York Times editorial ignites a fury proving its anodyne thesis.” Taibbi documents the response to the NYT editorial, “America Has a Free Speech Problem.”
The “freakout”— deserved?
“One might think running botched WMD reports that got us into the Iraq war or getting a Pulitzer for lauding Stalin’s liquidation of five million kulaks might have constituted worse days — who knew? Pundits, academics, and politicians across the cultural mainstream seemed to agree with Watson, plunging into a days-long freakout over a meh editorial that shows little sign of abating.”
Why was it even written?
“The Times piece is pretty transparently a marketing ploy, designed to regain a foothold with the slew of demographics lost to the paper in recent years. It’s a campaign that deserves to fail if it somehow doesn’t.”
Conclusion: We’ve really lost it.
“This Times editorial is watered down almost to the level of a public service announcement written for the Cartoon Network, or maybe a fortune cookie… It made the Harper’s letter read like a bin Laden fatwa, but it’s somehow arousing a bigger panic… It was crazy enough when jobs were lost over the Harper’s letter. But calling for firings over this? An editorial that drives two miles an hour down the middle of the middle of the middle of the road? If this is anybody’s idea of a taboo, we really have lost it.”
