Patterico's Pontifications

9/13/2005

Kinsley Gone

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 6:14 pm



When Michael Kinsley first arrived at the L.A. Times, I wasn’t impressed. He was famously liberal, having occupied the “left” seat on “Crossfire” for many years. His very first day on the job, he ran a column by Erwin Chemerinsky on the Pledge of Allegiance case, which failed to disclose that Chemerinsky had advised Newdow on the brief and his oral argument presentation. I wrote Kinsley about this, and he completely failed to respond — something that, I’m told, he does to a lot of people. His columns were initially unsatisfying, sometimes verging on courage, but never quite making it — as exemplified by his silly column on judicial activism.

But I came to appreciate Kinsley. He threw open his ideas on Social Security to the blogosphere and was respectful about the results. And he was the one who came up with the idea of the Outside the Tent feature, which I consider to be the most courageous thing this paper has done in ages, with the possible exception of last year’s series on MLK Hospital. He came up with the idea of the “wikitorial,” which many declared a failure because it was defaced with porn by scumbags, but which I considered a bold experiment in interactivity.

Kinsley also got bolder with his opinions, bucking the editorial line on Judith Miller’s assertion of journalistic privilege, and most recently taking on the critics of Bush over Katrina.

In short, I was starting to become a fan.

So naturally, they had to can the guy.

I guess the only consolation is that Kinsley’s former spot is being taken over by Andres Martinez, who has shown some ability to be an independent thinker.

But the bottom line is what Xrlq said to the publisher today: “There are a lot of things broken at your paper that needed fixing. Michael Kinsley was not one of them.”

11 Responses to “Kinsley Gone”

  1. I was amazed at Michael Kinsley’s “don’t blame Bush” op-ed piece. But I remain curious about the timing of this article and his departure from the Times. Was he finally fed up with the tripe and tactics the DNC is feeding the MSM? Or was the article written to save his skin from a publisher who was demanding a more balanced persective on the op-ed page?

    I wes so impressed with the article I sent him a congratulatory note. Doubt he got a chance to read it. Was probably buried in several thousand vitriolic messages from liberals who felt betrayed.

    Would love to find someone who would “out” the the coordinated efforts of the DNC and the MSM. Maybe Mr. Kinsley is the man. Maybe that’s too much to hope for.

    Corky Boyd (a8cc75)

  2. I agree, but grudingly. Kinsley was starting to look like a real reporter. Robert Scheer will never rise to that category. As far as Scheer is concerned, the only path he can take is deeper into the sewer.

    Mescalero (90f9f1)

  3. I viewed Kinsley as a member of a dying breed, one who gave an intelligent and articulate argument for the wrong side. Most of that breed have been pushed out by the shrill screamers of the absurd. Maybe his banishment from the dark side will drive him to become one of us over here in the sunlight.

    Lew Clark (68353f)

  4. I think the Kinsley reign is decidely mixed, but tends towards the negative. I remember when he started at the paper the Times announcement of the hire quoted him as promising that the editorial page would surprise people with some of the positons they would take, but I can really only think of two editorials on national issues that departed from liberal orthodoxy or, worse, Democratic Party talking points. One was when they defended V.P. Cheney for saying that Kerry/Edwards would make America less safe (not that they agreed with him, but they defended it as legitimate political debate), and the other was when they came out in favor of ending judicial filibusters.

    Patterico is correct that Kinsley brought some interesting features to the page, with “Outside the Tent” and the blog and some fairly interesting columns of his own, but under his leadership the editorial page took asinine positions such as suggesting a vote for a $6 billion stem cell bond just to “thumb our nose at the Bush Administration” (or some such childish reason), and Kinsley brought in some really tired hacks to the Opinion pages like Margaret Carlson and Joel Stein.

    Ultimately, if I were writing a piece on the Kinsley tenure at the Times I think I might title it “The Failed Editorship of Michael Kinsley.” It would probably have a familiar ring to him.

    JVW (54c318)

  5. This Martinez fellow might be brilliant and talented, but I can’t imagine that somebody who is only 39 yrs. old can have the depth of experience needed to properly handle all of this.
    Chances are he’ll just be a toady for somebody at the top who wants to better control the slant.
    But I’m not in the news business, so what do I know?

    Bill Schumm (7df33f)

  6. JVW, I agree with your negative points about the L.A. Times, but am reluctant to attribute them to Kinsley. The L.A. Times has been taking similarly idiotic positions for decades before they brought Kinsley on, and will likely continue to do so for decades after he’s gone. The staff is and was full of knee-jerk liberal idiots, so I’m not sure what we accomplish by losing one less-knee jerk, albeit equally liberal non-idiot.

    Xrlq (6c76c4)

  7. Oh, no doubt you are right Xrlq. I don’t expect the page to suddenly start sounding like the Wall St. Journal is gone, but I agree with the article in the Times today that the editorial page moved further left under Kinsley. For instance, you may recall that in 1998 the editorial board endorsed moderate Republican Matt Fong over Barbara Boxer for the Senate, writing essentially that Boxer was too strident and narrowly focused to be effective. Come 2004 and Kinsley, the board suddenly finds Boxer to be very representative of what California needs in the Senate. As I said earlier, I can deal with an honest liberalism, but what I couldn’t stand was the rote recitation of whatever position the Democratic National Committee had taken.

    Kinsley would have been better suited to be some sort of consultant who could have pushed for innovative changes to the Op/Ed pages, rather than the manager of the pages. His ideas (such as full-page comics by a NY cartoonist on the front page of the Sunday Opinion, er Current, section) need to be filtered through a layer of quality control, but some of them actually are very intriguing.

    Now can we get rid of Margaret Carlson, Joel Stein, Bill Maher, and some of the other nimrods who have been regular contributors under Kinsley?

    JVW (54c318)

  8. […] Regular readers will know that I was genuinely disappointed by Kinsley’s tenure at the Times — not at all up to the standard Kinsley set at The New Republic decades ago. Patterico sees things differently, perhaps not being aware of the editor Kinsley once was. […]

    PrestoPundit » Blog Archive » Michael Kinsley gets canned (d881ce)

  9. JWV, I didn’t live in SoCal in 1998, so I had no idea the Dog Trainer endorsed Fong. Still, I’m not sure how much of an institutional flip that is, as Matt Fong was a more credible challenger in 1998 than Jones was in 2004.

    Assuming the “editorial” you refer to is this piece, which wasn’t even supposed to be an editorial, I think you’ve nicely summed up what has long been wrong with the paper, and was slightly better under Kinsley.

    Xrlq (ffb240)

  10. Now that Kinsley has been replaced by Andres Martinez, can we anticipate that the L. A. Times will appear in both English and Spanish editions, much like the Miami Herald?

    dchamil (a57570)

  11. Kinsley’s arguments were almost beginning to make sense — which is more than I can say about most of the left these days.

    Now if the LA Times would just get their news straight, they might make a nice blog. But newspapers are not ever again going to have the sway it once had. They squandered that long ago.

    From now on, it’s a two way world — join or die.

    From the Swamp (26027c)


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