Lay Off Harriet Meirs's Writing; You Stink Yourself

Mr. Brooks: Since you alit at The Times, I have complained about the thin gruel of your ideas and your infelicitous writing both to you and also to the management. You have a nerve criticizing anybody’s writing since yours shows so wretched. Not only do you mess up commas, but you also bog down in wordiness exacerbated by passive verbs. You suffer cliché addiction. You stuff adverbs into a sentence hey nonny nonny. Your diction is Percy-Dovetonsils bland. Add to these faults your being a Weekly Standard right-wing embed, and we have another of Mr. Sulzberger’s dumb personnel decisions.

You are not as bad as Judy Miller—she’s in a class by herself--and that faux Southern aristocrat Raines, but you are one of the gang that can’t shoot straight with which Mr. Sulzberger has afflicted the paper. The blogs shrill now that The Times will self-destruct. I begin to believe them right. You are a datum in this blow up.

Lay off Harriet Meirs’s writing. You don’t have the bona fides to blast her. She gets a D minus; you get a D. Both of you stink.

lee drury de cesare