The New York Times op-ed section has taken an enormous amount of well-deserved criticism and revolt after their editorial head, James Bennet, published Sen. Tom Cotton’s fascistic screed calling for Donald Trump to use the military to squash nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. At the time, Bennet and Times chief publisher A.G. Sulzberger defended their decision with the same bogus “both sides” argument they have made for hiring people like climate change denier Bret Stephens in 2017.
Sen. Cotton had been tweeting out and pushing his fact free and fascist forward anti-Democracy opinions for a week before the opinion piece appeared in the pages of the Times. Staff at the times were furious, and the editorial staff even published an explanation on Thursday, detailing how truly awful the decision by Bennet was, how it did not meet the standards set by the Times, and how Bennett himself admitted to not having even read the fascistic rant before running it to print. Well, on Friday, even more information came out about how this kitty-litter liner of an op-ed came into existence. And that news has added to calls for Bennet to resign or be fired from his position.
On Thursday, New York Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy released the statement that “This review made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an Op-Ed that did not meet our standards. As a result, we’re planning to examine both short-term and long-term changes, to include expanding our fact-checking operation and reducing the number of Op-Eds we publish.”
Sources inside of a town hall where the New York Times leadership is taking turns apologizing to their employees for this lapse in integrity report that Sen. Tom Cotton didn’t write up some op-ed that then the Times published. No, it was Cotton’s weeks of racist tweets and fascist tweets that moved James Bennet to ask for a print version of totalitarianism.
Let’s be clear. Tweets like this one, where Sen. Cotton literally calls for a no mercy, “no quarter,” war crime approach to domestic policy, moved James Bennet to ask Cotton to write an op-ed.
And then Bennet didn’t even read the op-ed before publishing it? That’s the fucking job he has!!!! He should be fired!!! Here’s some clarity, so we can “embrace debate,” a term Bennet enjoys obfuscating with.
Wow. Fire him.
