L.A. Times Sinks Deeper Into the Abyss

The Los Angeles Times published a deeply disturbing editorial column today by Joel Stein. It starts out "I don't support the troops" and goes downhill from there: "I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War...but, please, no parades."

Hugh Hewitt immediately booked Stein for an interview, to which I'm listening as I post this. As with Hewitt's interview of last week with CNN's Ed Henry (scroll down to January 19th), through polite questioning Hugh slowly peels back the layers to reveal Stein's level of ignorance on his subject. Stein doesn't know anyone in the military, hasn't done any reading on the military, doesn't know how big the military is, and so on.

Hugh writes of Stein on his site: "He does not feel grateful for their service. These are not illegal opinions, of course, but they are deeply repulsive ones, and I don't believe the Los Angeles Times ought to have run this column."

I heartily second that.

To contact the Los Angeles Times with a letter to the editor, email: letters@latimes.com; include your address and phone number if you wish to be considered for publication.

For more insight into why these members of the mainstream media are the way they are, I highly recommend Hugh's piece on the Columbia School of Journalism in The Weekly Standard. (Click on "The Ancien Regime" on the left menu bar at the Standard's site.)

Update: Michelle Malkin, Power Line, and Captain's Quarters react to Hugh's interview. Rick Moore at Holy Coast found the column so unbelievable that at first he thought it might be satire.

John Podhoretz at The Corner went so far tonight as to say Hugh's interview of Stein was "one of the best interviews ever conducted." Stein was "calmly, straightforwardly and meticulously eviscerated."

One of the things I love about Hugh is the way he asks questions -- he's firm in his beliefs, but polite and relatively nonconfrontational; he simply asks a lot of questions and lets the subject talk at length. The interviewee usually does himself in on his own, without much help needed from Hugh.