Goodbye to Bad Rubbish

Daniel Okrent is leaving his spot as the "omnibudsman" for the New York Times. He won't be missed, especially after using his final column to not only lambast Times' columnists, but to lambast exclusively non-GOP apologist columnists. In fact, that seemed to sum up Okrent's job at The Times, gifted to him after the Jayson Blair debacle, apparently to make the right-wing less murderous toward the newspaper.

Here's this from his Sunday column:

Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales "called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' " nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. Before his retirement in January, William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess.

No one deserves the personal vituperation that regularly comes Dowd's way, and some of Krugman's enemies are every bit as ideological (and consequently unfair) as he is. But that doesn't mean that their boss, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., shouldn't hold his columnists to higher standards.

I didn't give Krugman, Dowd or Safire the chance to respond before writing the last two paragraphs. I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist.

I don't hold with the opinion that Krugman cherry picks. First, I've learned a great deal about issues like health care, America's finances, Social Security and more from him. Second, what Krugman says is often confirmed by solid, apolotical economists appearing both in print and online. That he's become a target by the mad right (and yet again, I remind folks that I distinguish moderate and reality-based righties from the crop currently in power).

So why doesn't Okrent use the space to discuss the sheer lunacy of Brooks' columns, the many Safire columns that existed just to lament the fact that Dick Nixon was not only dead but forever disgraced? And this doesn't even touch on Safire's replacement, Tierney, who graces us with lovely bullshit like how great being fat can be.

Okrent clearly had one job: kill any columnist who didn't lick the royal rumps of the Bushies. Shame on The Times for hiring him. Glad he's gone. Now who the hell hired him next? The Bush Propaganda Office?

BTW, you may want to check out Daily Howler on this issue. They're even angrier than I am.