The Times

by Cliopatria

When she was an op-ed columnist, Gail Collins was my favorite on the page, and I think that by and large, she's done an excellent job as editor of the editorial page of the Times. But when you know that conservative critics are scrutinizing you, why give them ammunition?

Today's Times runs an editorial claiming,"To the extent that voters registered an opinion on environmental issues, they did it in local settings, and they consistently asked for more environmental protection than Mr. Bush has been offering them" (emphasis added). Yet the feature story in the national section analyzed a horrible anti-environmental referendum passed 3-to-2 in (of all places) Oregon. Do the editorial page writers even read their own newspaper?

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Adam Kotsko - 11/28/2004

You mean to say that the Times editorial board didn't mention an exception to their claim that the people "consistently" (NB: not "unanimously," not even "overwhelmingly," but "consistently") chose stronger environmental regulations?

Your one example in Oregon (of all places!) may well indicate that a different trend was going on, but I daresay that the editorial board looked over the actual election results and concluded that their statement was warranted -- whereas you apparently just looked at one particularly vivid counter-example and concluded from there that the editorial board of the Times must be wrong in citing a broader trend. Or maybe you already figured that most Times editorials were going to be wrong, then went looking for whatever flimsy evidence you could find to take pot-shots at them.

Overall -- Internet, we can do better.