PRESTOPUNDIT

IN 2004 Michael Kinsley took over the opinion page at the LA Times, and as Patterico reports the results were massively unimpressive. Here's Patterico (from part 2 of LA Times review):

Kinsley's lack of courage is evidenced by his failure to get rid of "Sneering Bob" Scheer. Scheer is the Maureen Dowd of the L.A. Times: an author of contemptuous, poisonous, content-free columns that make silly people chuckle, but which are ignored by most. Scheer generally tries to avoid making factual assertions, since any attempt to do so runs a serious risk of leading to a correction. His continued presence on the L.A. Times op-ed page is a source of embarrassment for any serious person who hopes to see the Times become a great newspaper. Kinsley's new voices on the op-ed page, while not as arrogant and fatuous as Scheer, are rarely thought-provoking. They include Jonathan Chait, the fact-challenged columnist who claims that Republicans are scarce in academia because they are poorly informed and educated, as opposed to the "complex thinkers" of the left. Thanks to Kinsley, readers of the op-ed page are also routinely subjected to the columns of Margaret Carlson ..

Editorials certainly haven't improved under Kinsley. The editorial writers at the Los Angeles Times are typical of editorial writers all across the country: they pretend to be experts on virtually everything, but in fact are stunningly ignorant on many topics. They also routinely make baseless factual assertions and get simple facts wrong .. But the shoddy editorial work product at the L.A. Times doesn't stop with the editors' inaccuracies. It's far worse than that. There is some person on the editorial board of the Times who writes maddeningly cutesy editorials. This person must go ..

As far as I can tell, Patterico is in fact calling for the firing of Michael Kinsley. It's hard to imagine any replacement doing worse than Kinsley's botched job. A true disappointment for those who had hoped Kinsley would fix a stinker of an opinion page with some of the bright light he'd brought to the New Republic and Slate. We're still waiting.

Here's an idea for Kinsley -- add Patterico to you stable of writers. You have nothing to lose but the sheer boredom of your opinion page. My fear, however, is that Kinsley has hardened into an rather inflexable leftie who cares for little besides the hidebound verities wispered to him by long-held political sentiments. This is certainly not the Kinsley I admired as a young man. Posted by Greg Ransom