Very few times in my life have I not believed my eyes. And the news on these occasions was never good.<\/p>\n
This morning I had such an experience, reading a column in the New York Times by Bret Stephens<\/a>, who was defending the indefensible\u00a0hire of writer Kevin Williamson by the Atlantic Monthly<\/a>. In 2014 Williamson tweeted that women in America who have had abortions and the doctors who performed them should be hanged<\/a>. William has never retracted that statement; indeed, he has endorsed it repeatedly.<\/p>\n On this topic, Stephens wrote:<\/p>\n Shouldn\u2019t great prose and independent judgment count for something? Not according to your critics. We live in the age of guilt by pull-quote, abetted by a combination of lazy journalism, gullible readership, missing context, and technologies that make our every ill-considered utterance instantly accessible and utterly indelible. I jumped at your abortion comment, but for heaven\u2019s sake, it was a\u00a0tweet.<\/em>\u00a0When you write a whole book on the need to execute the tens of millions of American women who\u2019ve had abortions, then I\u2019ll worry.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n “Then I’ll worry.”<\/p>\n I have been reading the Times for about fifty years. When I was young, after church my family would drive to the local drugstore to pick up the Sunday New York Times. My Mom had a copy reserved for her there. Once we got home, we dove into it. I made sure that I did not rush to pick up sections my Mom wanted first: Arts and Leisure and the Sunday Book Review; also let alone was the Week in Review section, which my Dad grabbed right away. The entire paper came my way eventually, though, and I spent hours reading it, practically cover to cover if I had time. Very happy memories.<\/p>\n Anybody who has seen my library – indeed, who has been (un)lucky enough to get into a debate with me – knows that I spend a lot of time reading material that galls, bugs, or even angers me. This is necessary mental and intellectual hygiene. And it is how I hug the world.<\/p>\n Not to have unsubscribed from the Times this morning, though, would have made me … an accomplice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Very few times in my life have I not believed my eyes. And the news on these occasions was never good. This morning I had such an experience, reading a column in the New York Times by Bret Stephens, who … Continue reading \n