The Times has stopped defending the Tom Cotton op-ed
The New York Times – in the wake of an almighty outcry – has thought again about that bright idea of giving a US Senator space to say let’s have the military go to war on the citizenry.
Fewer but better op-eds; sounds like a plan. Now if only they would send David Brooks on his way.
I am very glad to see that. A commenter on the other thread about this matter remarked that since the NYT published ‘woke’ op-eds on occasion, there was no problem about publishing this one. I see that Sulzberger came up with some sanctimonious waffle about why it was right to publish this. No doubt, had he been the editor of an important German newspaper in the twenties, he would have been quite happy to print op-eds by one Adolf H in the interests of showing how people felt not only on both sides but on all sides. It was despicably irresponsible of the NYT to print this, since it naturally makes the NYT look as though it is in some way endorsing this opinion and regards it as representing ideas that are worthy of consideration, as it (the NYT) would not if Cotton’s views were reported in the context of a news story. Why don’t they publish, say, an op-ed by Rudy Guiiani on the supposed Ukraine scandal, or present the views of the leader of some white supremacist organisation, complete with anti-Semitic and racist tropes, as worthy of consideration? if you are going to publish the views of Tom, you should, as a matter of consistency, publish those of every dick and Harry as well.
See also Bari Weiss’s attack on her colleagues (who can’t respond because reporters are not permitted to criticize opinion writers but the rule doesn’t apply in the other direction). It’s pretty disgusting.
We had a similar thing here, where our state legislator decided to write an op-ed for our paper calling for “herd immunity” to deal with coronavirus, stopping all shut downs, and stopping the silly mask stuff. He got torn apart on the letters page. Published another one the next week; same result. There haven’t been any since the second (though after a week of people pointing out why he was not only wrong but dead wrong, there were a few people who decided to defend him, a couple on the grounds that he might be wrong but was entitled to his opinion. Yes, but having your opinion printed in the newspaper is NOT your right, and if you are a lawmaker, sometimes you might want to keep your mouth shut). Don’t know whether the decision not to have any more op-eds on the topic was his or the paper’s.
By the way, my local paper was the only paper in the region that did not carry news of the charging of the officers on the front page; they didn’t have anything about the riots, the protests, or the arrests on the front page. Lincoln, Omaha, and Grand Island all put it front and center, while our paper decided showing the one child playing at the just re-opened playground was more important.
@3, as Ken White said of the Tom Cotton opinion piece, the NYT decision to publish the piece was a normative one and as with any normative decision it was open to criticism.
He also suggested that NYT would publish a follow-up opinion disagreeing with Cotton and a third saying that both the other opinions made good points. He casts good shade.
Bless their hearts.
@iknklast
Do people have a right to opinions that get other people killed?
Colin Day, I would suggest that they don’t, but if they keep them to themselves, I suppose we can’t do anything about it, which is sort of the point. In this case, he expounded it loudly, and he is in a position to make things happen (he was hand chosen by our governor to replace our previous legislator who dared to disagree with the governor on various things; the governor is extremely wealthy and threw buckets of money into electing this guy).
I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think anyone should be controlling what goes on inside our heads. I do think we have a responsibility to determine the truth as close as possible, and not to act on dangerous impulses or ideas, and not to treat other people as if they were disposable (which the herd immunity idea ultimately does).
#5 Colin Day
You ask “Do people have a right to opinions that get other people killed?”
This is relevant to ask because trans cult members have been known to say that real women stating the fact (not an opinion but the TRAs would call it an opinion) that men are not women gets trans people killed.
So, who gets to determine which opinions “get people killed” and what standard of evidence are we going to use?
Most TIMs killed are done in by boyfriends and johns — by other males who had some sort of relationship with the victim. No case exists of some guy reading Greer or Dworkin and then going on a trans killing spree. If men could be controlled by the words of real women, why would we real women not use this epic power to save ourselves from male violence? We can’t condemn the trans cult for their de-platforming and claims that words are violence and then engage in the same behavior ourselves (well, I can’t).
iknklast in #3 points out that some fool got to speak his foolishness in op-eds and the result was other people got to respond with facts and took the fool’s arguments apart. In the past, before antibiotics and vaccines, there was no choice about “letting” certain diseases run through a community — that happened sometimes before anybody knew it was going on and before measures could be put into place to even try and stop disease from spreading. This is something the human species had to deal with in the past so even if I think it is a gruesome idea that puts too many human lives at risk, the idea of not shutting down businesses/travel/commerce/schools and simply taking the hit in lost lives is an idea that should be allowed to be expressed.