My Husband's Farewell To The Times

My husband, Chris Noblet, just sent this to The New York Times. Feel free to use it as a model for your e-mail to them.

"I have read the Times for over three decades, have many times been a home subscriber, and have been a premium internet subscriber since you offered the service. Many times, I have emailed friends and associates with interesting Times articles. Many years, in many places, such as Connecticut, Manhattan and California, I subscribed to the paper edition of the Times.

As a former journalist, I admired the Times immensely. As a corporate communications professional for many years, I worked with the Times on numerous occasions, and in the last 15 years have been very disappointed to see the slippage in the quality and objectivity of your reporters.

I accepted, even occasionally admired, William Safire. I accepted David Brooks.

All that said, if you hire William Kristol, it will be the final cut. You will have betrayed everything I have ever admired in the Times. I am serious about this. I will terminate my email and any premium subscription. I will no longer purchase the Times or the Herald Tribune at newsstands. My interest in the success of your publication will cease, and I will get all my news from elsewhere. Any regrets I may have will be assuaged by my knowledge that your hiring of that arrogant, blockheaded, smirking, war-mongering scumbag proves you have finally lost your way."

I probably would have left out "scumbag." But it wouldn't have been easy!

See also

Comments

[ColeenRowleyMN2]

The NY Times did write a great editorial today "Looking at America" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin. Their editorial writers said they feel horrified and estranged at the sort of lawless behavior that has become standard practice in this country since Sept. 11, 2001. So how can they not see the hypocrisy of their paper's hiring one of the main architects that deplorable lawless behavior?!
If they do not resign en masse in protest, it will be hard to view them as other than hypocrites.
Fellow Veteran Intelligence Professional for Sanity Tom Maertens wrote a good letter to the NY Times as well: http://voxverax.blogspot.com/

[Veritas]

Anybody remember Scotty Reston? He'd cancel his subscription too if he were still around. "Nation's newspaper of record," my ass.

[wadenelson1]

The Gray Lady, like the Titanic, appears to be sinking. Judith Miller may have carved the hole, but it's the inferior bulkheads (management) that are now allowing bilge-water like Kristol to pour in.

[julianne]

It's not a free speech issue. Outside of certain places in Dixieland, you can stand on a corner and say whatever you want. Bill Kristol is a pathologically arrogant idealogue directly responsible for illegal war, genocide, and institutionalized torture. He supports the concept of the Unitary Executive. Thomas Jefferson would take Bill Kristol out behind a barn and come back alone. Over the years, Bill Kristol has exhibited himself as a pathological liar, a mentally ill Hitlerian caricature. His appointment as editorial writer for the New York Times is an implicit acceptance by the Times of the violence, ultra-conformity, secrecy, and hubris associated with what the world now sees as American Neocon Fascism.

[DouginCT]

I sent the same letter, really quite close. Here's my template if anyone wants to use this one:

Dear Mr. Sulzberger,

My family has thrived for two generations on the NYT as our preferred newspaper; so diverse, so researched that even massive reporting blunders like Iran and Iraq haven't overshadowed the value within. But given the waning of the number of credible news outlets in this country, you have a unique position to maintain the integrity of the NYT, and the NYT is uniquely important to the health of our country. A re-read of William Shirer's Berlin Diary would nicely drive this point home.

Fully aware of my moderate liberal mindset, I still say with complete understanding and self-awareness that Bill Kristol diminishes the NYT credibility in the fact-based world. He is far different from Bill Safire and David Brooks. He is malignant. THE neo-conservative master of smooth talking propaganda from a group so repeatedly and thoroughly discredited that were it a boxer rather than a powerful fringe movement, the referee would have called the fight long ago. So if the rumors are true, this is the iceberg moment Judith Miller almost was.

Please reconsider this exceptionally ill-advised decision. There are other outlets out there, and you will drive people like us away in search of them.

In case you are wondering.­..here are my demographic vital stats: 41 year old white male, married, one child and one dog, homeowner, make over 100k/yr. Plug this into your marketing equation..

Respectfully,

Doug

[JerryWalden]

I wholeheartedly agree. While the op-ed columnists at the Times may be wrong, they may also be right. They have their opinions, don't they? Kristol, however, is a liar and a propogandist.

[bronceye]

They have a target herd. They could care less about progrssive thinkers. If the paper goes defunct, they still win as they have shut out a dissenting view. Get it??

[RTIII]

There was a cathartic moment within the last year when my (now recently deceased) father explained to me his sorrow and disgust that he FINALLY realized that the New York Times INTENTIONALLY lied to him (and that the rest of the media was complicit in their lies).

He went on to say that it was a different world in which he grew up and he _finally_ understood my world-view. In his day, he said, you could count on a self-correcting mechanism that if something were gotten wrong, the media (main stream media, of course) would ferret it out and make whatever corrections were necessary.

...We had a very long and very healthy dialogue that day - a day when these two generations finally came to terms with one another on so many levels. And it's very telling that without doubt the core of the previous disharmonies was his belief in the media and my deep and profound distrust of it. Once he grasped the same essential truth regarding media I had, he had to reevaluate a great many things that were previously in his belief system - and he was a staunch progressive/liberal (who just gave the system too much credit). I'm glad that day came before he passed.

...I am very annoyed at NYT for hiring Krystol, but I am not surprised. I think our author was someone much like my father...

RTIII

[Caveat]

Kathleen, thank you for posting and thank your husband for understandably being outraged by the NYT hiring B.Kristol.
I was hoping this neocon stuff was just a political fad that would soon pass us when the Anthrax and WTC things were moved to the back burner. But, alas, the MSM is insisting in keeping it going, perhaps they find it a viable system of inexpensive propaganda.
Besides being so out of whack with a healthy democracy, neo conservatism has gotten extremely boring. In a way it's sort of deja-vu.
Perhaps yes, we have seen it before, neo conservatism is aided and abetted by the military industry just like the national socialists were, not too long ago, in Germany. We all know the military industry doesn't care what they destroy as long as their stock holders get plenty money. The ideology does not matter that much, it could be Nazi, Communist, even Democratic, and the protagonist could be any idiot like Adolf, Benito, or any of a long list of hawkish presidents like W. who will sell out to the industry for power.
When I look at how much money the German corporations made during the second world war it makes one wonder if whether the Nazis really were the driving force and not German business greed. The same deal is going down here in the U.S. and it's people like Goebbles, and more recently Rove and Kristol who ply us with war mongering propaganda. Ultimately it could be that the owners of the MSM like NYT are making a lot of money selling weapons.
Oops, It seems that I'm going into a rant, I'm sorry, just let me thank you again Kathleen for posting.

[nellie]

To be honest, I don't see how hiring Bill Kristol makes much of a difference in the Times. Those who believe in his point of view will read him; those who recognize him for what he is—will not.

I'm more concerned with the journalists who write for the front page than for the editorial page. If the Times was bringing back Judith Miller—now that would upset me.

[Justis]

I stopped paying for the Times years ago, after the shitty WMD reporting. I didn't--and don't--feel that the Times handled the Miller aftermath particularly badly, because after all, you really can't come back from that kind of dereliction of duty, anyway. Not for a paper of that supposed stature.

My media life has immensely improved since then! I now get my news from a greater variety of sources and remain skeptical of them all (a good thing). As for the columnists, not reading Brooks again is a blessing I would recommend to anyone! I catch up with Krugman and Rich on the Times internet site, for free.

Not paying for the Times hurts the columnists and reporters there I still respect, but there's really no other choice. I did buy Rich's book last year as a kind of consolation.

[Nofoolhere]

Sometimes when bedtime approaches, and I feel too lazy to take my ritual shower, yet I know I should, I think of Billy Krystol.

Then I feel my skin crawl as I recall his various TV appearances and idiocy statements he has made, and I smell the stench of his shameless right wing fascistic odor.

Then I gratefully take an extended hot shower with plenty of soap.

[Caddisfly]

Used to read this paper regularly, it has now become as relevant as "The National Enquirer"

[mpgarr]

I used to love reading the times--especially the Sunday edition---I would spend an nice warm winter afternoon sitting by the pool when I lived in Miami reading both the NY Times and the Miami Herald--sipping on a few beers or maybe a margerita or two--but these days--there are hardly any papers worth reading--I was basically done with the Times a few years ago after the Judy Miller deal and all of the rest of the things with the Times in recent years with fake stories and such--hiring Kristol just seals that deal--I am done for sure with this paper--kind of sad that things have sunk to this low level---

[davy]

Never will I buy another one. The final straw has fallen.