LA Weekly: The Michael Kinsley Experiment Ends

[question everything]

JULY 29 - AUG. 4, 2005

Deadline Hollywood

The Michael Kinsley Experiment Ends

Why he was the wrong guy for the Los Angeles Times
by NIKKI FINKE

Years ago, there was a notorious movie based on a best-selling book called The Harrad Experiment, whose plot centers on a college that conducts an avant-garde policy of encouraging students to experience sexual freedom. Tension and confrontation ensue, yet this intentionally dramatic film just appears ludicrous. That’s how it is with The Kinsley Experiment, which officially ended this week at the Los Angeles Times not with a bang but with him whimpering to a rival newspaper. It also leaves behind a readership confused by Michael Kinsley’s yearlong fling with editorial freedom during which he flippantly recast the venerable editorial and opinion sections into a comedy of errors — describing readers as “assholes,” hyping wikitorials, inciting blog porn on the Web site, and snidely dubbing his domain “The Opinion Manufacturing Division.”

Good riddance, Mikey. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out to your new $6.2 mil Seattle mansion, purchased right before you took the LAT job.

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LAT spokesperson Martha Goldstein did not confirm or deny that Kinsley was leaving, repeating only the mantra that “Kinsley’s role is evolving.” At first it looked like nothing would be decided right away since Johnson was vacationing this week, and Kinsley was working from his principal residence in Seattle before taking the entire month of August out of the office. Yet the buzz among his staffers Monday was that Kinsley wouldn’t be returning from vacation, and there was also word that he was giving up his downtown L.A. pied-á-terre in Bunker Hill Towers. That’s the same place he’d recently boasted afforded him only a 10-minute commute from the paper’s headquarters if he walked, but inevitably drove. That small revelation only served to underscore how little actual contact he’s had with his unadopted city.

In typical Kinsley fashion, self-serving and self-righteous, he beat his own paper to the punch and on Monday gave the news of his stepping down to the LAT’s arch-rival, The New York Times. He claimed he told the editorial staff last week, “Something’s going to change in my job description, but I’m not leaving the Times and nothing will happen for months.” He also blamed his demotion on the always-ridiculous circumstances that had him commuting between Seattle and Los Angeles. (His first TV appearance in the job was on CNN with the Space Needle prominent in the background.)

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http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/36/deadline-finke.php

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[SteppingRazor]

1. So long, jackass.

How long has it been since Michael Kinsley had a whiff of relevance for the Left, the ideological side he supposedly represents? A decade? More?