{"id":494,"date":"2004-03-04T23:06:28","date_gmt":"2004-03-05T03:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=494"},"modified":"2009-01-16T17:39:07","modified_gmt":"2009-01-16T21:39:07","slug":"favorite-colmunists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2004\/03\/favorite-colmunists\/","title":{"rendered":"Favorite Colmunist(s)"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s completely off-topic, but I saw Greg’s comment about Maureen Dowd,<\/a> and thought that it might be fun to start a discussion of our favorite, and \/ or least favorite, columnists.
\n
\nLike Greg, I’m not a particularly big fan of many of the NYT crew. The top of the list is probably Friedman and Kristof, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to read either of them. Krugman is very good when talking about economics, and an awful, one-note song when talking about politics — and he talks about politics far more than he talks about economics. Safire’s Magazine column is good, but his op-eds don’t usually appeal to me. And as for Maureen Dowd, I think Josh Chafetz’s discussion of the “Immutable Laws of Dowd”<\/a> sums up many of the problems.<\/p>\n

Outside of the NYT, I’ve liked what I’ve read by Anne Applebaum (but I must admit I don’t read all that much of her stuff); I find both Zuckerman and John Leo (U.S. News) to be awful, and Rick Reilly (Sports Illustrated) to be underrated. Of the Corner <\/a>crowd, Jonah is the best, and Derbyshire is clearly the worst (yuck!). (Derbyshire and the despicable Alexander Cockburn are the two I detest most.)<\/p>\n

The really fun question is what line-up I would assemble if I could pick the NYT columnists. I think I would choose:<\/p>\n

1. Gregg Easterbrook<\/a>. Hands down, the best columnist around today. Writes a hilarious football column with political asides; writes regularly for the New Republic and The Atlantic (the #2 and #1 magazines in politics, repectively, in my opinion; the Weekly Standard comes in at #3); and he now has a blog which is generally very good too.<\/p>\n

2. Eve Tushnet<\/a>. She’s been published a few times — Weekly Standard, a Jewish World Review column. She also has a well-known blog. It’s clear that she’s a fantastic writer.<\/p>\n

(Yes, my #1 choice is related to a federal judge and my #2 is related to a law professor). I would substitute those two for Dowd and Brooks in a heartbeat. <\/p>\n

It’s a little less clear-cut after those two. I think I would want to add in Eugene Volokh — he’s an excellent writer with broad range and he is not afraid to defend controversial ideas. Perhaps he could sub out Krugman. I think Krugman would be an ideal guest columnist. His economic stuff remains great, but economics doesn’t provide enough grist for a twice-weekly column, and when he’s low on econo-grist, he talks (screeches) politics instead.<\/p>\n

Others who should be considered (I’m not exactly sure in what order): Michael Kinsley, Christopher Hitchens, Larry Lessig, Nate Oman, Heidi Bond<\/a>, Dahlia Lithwick, Josh Marshall. (Maybe Slate<\/a> should just take over the NYT op-ed page). I used to like both Andrew Sullivan and Mickey Kaus a lot more, but in my opinion they both got less interesting when they became hawks — Andrew Sullivan is at his best writing about culture, not war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s completely off-topic, but I saw Greg’s comment about Maureen Dowd, and thought that it might be fun to start a discussion of our favorite, and \/ or least favorite, columnists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5816,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions\/5816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}