Paul Krugman Says He Was "Censored" By New York Times!
February 22, 2008 -- 5:36 PM EST // //
Hey, whaddaya know! It looks as if there is a level of snarkiness that is considered out of bounds for The New York Times Op ed page!
Over on his blog, Paul Krugman reveals today that the paper told him he couldn't use the following lede on his column on last year's State of the Union Address:
“Before the State of the Union address, there had been hints and hopes that President Bush would offer a serious plan to reduce our dependence on imported oil. Instead, however, he took refuge in alcohol.”"I'm almost never censored at The Times," Krugman writes.
I note this not to defend mockery of human tragedies such as alcoholism, but merely to note that this shows that the paper's editors will, if they feel like something a columnist says is out of bounds, step in and intervene. This strikes me as highly newsworthy, mainly because no such intervention seems to have occurred when Maureen Dowd wrote demented lines such as this of Obama the other day...
Just like Hollywood starlets, he works out religiously and he can make a three-course meal out of a Nicorette....or this about Al Gore in 1999...
Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating.To be clear, it's understandable that the editors would step in and say that making fun of W.'s problem constitutes going too far. The question, though, is why these depraved Dowdisms -- while perhaps not in the same category as the line about Bush -- don't also count as going too far. After all, they're such glaring insults to taste and decency that they merit an intervention, too, if only for the sake of the readers.
As Digby lamented the other day, there seems to be nothing that will get Times brass to take Dowd gently aside and say it's time to bag it with this sort of stuff. But now we know that there is a line somewhere that can be crossed, however. What a relief!
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