LA Times, So Far, Missing the Point of Bigoted Op-ed

At Examiner, I shined the spotlight on a startlingly bigoted op-ed by Charlotte Allen, inexplicably found suitable for publication by the Los Angeles Times. Today, the LA Times' Opinion LA blog notes responses by the two most popular atheist bloggers, Hemant Mehta and PZ Myers.

I found the post irritating almost immediately, thanks to its opening sentence:

You couldn't say we didn't see this coming.

No, of course we couldn't say that. Your organization decides to elevate within its pages a juvenile, ham-fisted hissy fit against all nonbelievers, a group already demonized and marginalized within an inch of its life, and the best explanation you have yet to muster is, "Yeah, we knew those angry atheists would be pissed!"

I am still waiting for someone from the LA Times to admit publicly that Allen's post was shameful, and to give it amplification on the Times' editorial page was, at best, a lapse in judgment, or at worst, a profession of antipathy toward millions of good Americans.

Hemant draws an excellent analogy by asking if using "Jew" instead of "atheist" would have ever been acceptable, and I noted in my column that even treating a political or philosophical group in the same manner as Allen treats atheists would have been deemed irrational and absurd, if not outright uncivil and offensive.