The New York Times is taking heat for promoting a young woman who has made a string of incredibly racist, anti-police and anti-male comments on her tweeter feed (unsolicited advice: keep it to your journal entries, where it stays private).
There is also the matter of double standards: In past months, The Times fired another would-be editorialist for a single homophobic tweet. As of this writing, there has been no such action in the former case. What gives? The Times is a publication possessed.
Recently, the novelist Philip Roth died. The Times published its page one obituary, where the author took a cheap shot at the dead man: “Mr. Roth was the last of the great white males…who towered over American letters in the second half of the 20th century.” Say what? Roth grew up in working class Newark. His success, through hits and misses (see the essay, “Roth’s World: Manhood, Modernity And Newark,” Long Island Weekly, June 17), was hard earned.
The Times is obsessed with the sensitivity issue, piling on a man not around to defend himself, firing a young woman with a single offensive tweet, while giving a pass to an employee with a long string of hateful comments. This controversy was a train wreck waiting to happen.
