The best thing to happen to the New York Times op-ed page in a long time is stepping down:

Whatever they [the Congress] do the next two years, I won’t be here to kick them around. This is my last column on the Op-Ed page. I’ve enjoyed the past couple of years in Washington, but one election cycle is enough. I’m returning full time to the subject and the city closest to my heart: science and New York. I’ll be writing a column and a blog for the Science Times section.

Our loss. Tierney was an eloquent voice for libertarianism, and the only consistent drug war critic writing at any of the major newspapers. The Times’ stable of contributors now ranges from big government liberals like Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman to big government conservatives like David Brooks. Sweet. Real ideological diversity, there.

One of the more disappointing aspects of Tierney’s tenure is the left’s knee-jerk, red-blue reaction to his appointment, basically from day one. Judging solely by the way the lefty blogs reacted to the guy, you’d never know that he regularly criticized the Bush administration, that he attacked Rush Limbaugh’s hypocrisy on prescription painkiller abuse, and that there were in fact a number of issues where the left ought to have been interested in what he was reporting. Instead, he was immediately dismissed as “Saffire’s replacement,” a token conservative to be loathed and scorned with Brooks. Because that’s how it works. Everybody’s either on your side, or they’re the enemy.

(Disclosure, I’ve gotten to know Tierney over the last couple of years, and consider him to be a friend and all-around good guy, in addition to being a terrific writer.)

Here’s hoping the Times finds another libertarian to replace Tierney, and not do what just about every other major paper has done when looking for a bomb-throwing token from the “right” — hire Jonah Goldberg.

A few suggestions for Tierney’s replacement:

My old boss, David Boaz. My new boss, Nick Gillespie. Slate’s Jack Shafer. Reason colleague Jacob Sullum. P.J. O’Rourke. Frequent letter-to-the-editor writer and GMU Economics Chair Don Boudreaux. Red-meat libertarian Jim Bovard. The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman.

I’m sure there are more. These are merely the first few that come to mind.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 11:17 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Pain Treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.