Earlier today, I did a little post on the New York Times and religion — or rather, the New York Times as religion. I linked to this article, from the Times, on the recent shuffle at that paper: Veteran Timeswoman Jill Abramson will be the editor in charge. She was quoted as saying, “In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”
A reader now writes me to say (in essence), “Hey, what gives? The quotation is not in the article you link to.”
And, lo, he’s right. That’s a tiny bit strange, isn’t it? I mean, Abramson’s words were not exactly scrubbable, or scrub-worthy: Many thousands of people can say just what she did (really). I’m not sure what the etiquette, or protocol, is on these matters. When you send out a picture of yourself in your skivvies, I guess you recall it. But what if you merely say how your family felt about the Times?