Daily disrepute (updated)

Email received:

You are, of course, spot on in your criticisms of Decca Aitkenhead's latest witterings in the Guardian. But you are also too kind. You say that 'it's plainly an accident that her article appeared when it did, just two days after the bombings'.

If only this were the case. Having run a newspaper op-ed page... I know that nothing appears on those pages by accident. Even if a piece has been commissioned at considerable expense some time in advance of the date of publication the option to spike it is always present if it should happen to be overtaken by events. This is true right up until maybe three hours in advance of the first edition being pinged off to the printing presses. The Guardian could easily have pulled this piece but, unsurprisingly alas, chose not to do so.

Personally I would have rejected it on grounds, not of taste, but of quality. There is no coherent or sensible argument in this piece. There is nothing to persuade (as good and/or controversial op-eds should) the sceptic to think, 'Well, I don't agree with the conclusions but I can respect the coherence of the argument.'

I'd also say, merely in passing, that a sentence such as 'New York is just better than anywhere else at converting America's ambition for consumption into urban reality' is, no matter how many times I read it, meaningless.

Furthermore, though it scarcely needs saying, the 'I love New York' t-shirts, hats and mugs were available on many a Big Apple street corner on my first visit there a dozen years ago (and, I reckon, before that too) and are not in any reasonable sense 'a clever response to 9/11'. And, not to beat a poor, dead horse, anyone who thinks that poster urging 'fuck the bid' counts as 'reckless wit' ought to, shall we say, get a grip on themselves.

The Guardian remains - it's op-ed pages aside - a considerable newspaper... but those op-ed pages bring it into daily disrepute of a sort that I like to think would have CP Scott turning in his grave...

Update at 6.50 PM: Three readers have emailed me to point out that Guardian Weekend is printed midweek, and so Aitkenhead's column could not have been pulled.