LA TIMES WATCH….Ironically, Susan Estrich’s war against LA Times editorial page editor Michael Kinsley over the low number of women on the op-ed page was apparently brought to a boil over last week’s Sunday Opinion section, which focused specifically on gender issues and featured op-eds by four women. Even more ironically, this week’s Sunday Opinion, which was finalized and sent to press before the Kinsley-Estrich fight broke out, features four op-eds by women and four by men. Just what Estrich wanted! And two of them are even by local writers, something else she wanted. Too bad they couldn’t wait a week to go public with their feud.
(On the other hand, the daily part of the opinion section is still wall-to-wall men. On the third hand, though, the daily op-ed section also has two regular female columnists, which is double the number of any other major newspaper.)
Switching topics, how’s that “Outside the Tent” feature going, the one where they invite critics to thrash them on their own pages? So far Mickey Kaus has complained that the paper is boring because it doesn’t have a gossip column; Hugh Hewitt has complained about liberal bias in its Iraq reporting; Marc Cooper has complained that the paper is boring because of its dedication to objective reporting; Patrick Frey has complained about liberal bias causing so many retractions; and today Jack Dunphy complains about liberal bias in its police reporting.
We seem to have this figured out, don’t we? Conservatives think the LA Times is liberal and liberals think it’s boring. I have to say I don’t find this a big surprise. Besides, I refuse to take this feature seriously until they invite Jill Stewart to tear them a new one. Sure, it would be just another complaint that the Times is liberal (and maybe boring too), but at least it would have the vein-throbbing drama of, say, Khan going after Captain Kirk in the second Star Trek movie. Fun for the whole family!
I’ll stop now. I realize that the vast majority of you aren’t much interested in the LA Times editorial page and don’t get the Jill Stewart joke in any case. Regular blogging will resume shortly.
