defending my favorite newspaper.

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On Twitter a user named @TheAgeofShoddy
told the union boss of the LA Times, which had its first walk out in the paper’s 142 year history: 
You have no business asking for solidarity, now or ever. Your institution and your membership are a mockery of the term.
And then he pasted this opinion column from 2022 that has irked a bunch of anti-vaxxers, to no surprise of anyone. 

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To which I replied thusly:
That’s an opinion column, sweetie.

Every decent newspaper from high school to the pros have them. Subscribe to the LA Times for the next 6 months for just a dollar and you’ll be amazed how much more you’ll learn. latimes.com/subscriptions/

To which he wrote:

@TheAgeofShoddy

As though “it’s opinion” somehow gave a pass to that kind of evil, or remove the responsibility form everyone from the writer of it, to the editors who passed it, to the publisher, to the people like you who defend it without being willing to acknowledge what it is.
And since I am a crazy person with no respect for Time Management I wrote this novella: 
You don’t come across as a young person. Therefore you must have heard a wide variety of opinions through your life on many topics.

The best newspapers provide a place for many voices. The United States, and great newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, prides itself on freedom of speech.

It separates us from other parts of this globe where people have been known to be censored, jailed, or executed for mere words.

In Putin’s Russia last year a man holding a blank sign was beaten and arrested. Then others who followed his lead. It would be irresponsible and unAmerican for those editors who passed the column you mention, or the publisher who paid the writer, as well as people like me who defend it, to claim this is a truly free country if a veteran opinion columnist was censored for writing something that may ruffle feathers — or in your opinion is “evil.”

TV censors once believed Elvis’ hip-shaking was evil.

Performative politicians in Florida today claim American history and even the dictionary in school libraries are evil.

My opinion is the prevention of an earnest exchange of ideas in a newspaper is evil and echoes some of the darkest days in human history. Far darker than a take that rubs you the wrong way.

After a quick search through your Twitter history, you have made mention of the previous POTUS who is now leading the GOP hopefuls for that party’s nomination.

That man last year was found to have raped a woman and, years ago, gave the most notorious pedophile in this nation’s history a positive review. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump said.

And famously, Trump did his best to overthrow his election loss by any means necessary.

Not only have you not called any of that evil, but you called Trump and his GOP (a party that has forced women to deliver stillborn fetuses), “the lesser of two evils.”

If words are capable of being evil, in your opinion, surely countless violent actions upon innocent children, mourning mothers, and outnumbered capitol policemen are far more evil and do way more damage than a dozen paragraphs in a paper you don’t subscribe to — a paper you should support.

Because that paper, in Voltaire’s words may wholly disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.

latimes.com/subscriptions/