BEING EDITED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES

An old friend, Boris Johnson, whom I remember as a young turk in the Oxford Union, is now a very grand personage in British culture. He’s a Tory MP and editor of the Spectator, one of the house organs of London’s chattering conservative classes. So I was thrilled to see him turn up on the New York Times’ op-ed page last Sunday, with a peppy, funny piece about Mr Tony Blair. Yesterday, in the Spectator, however, he unloaded on the experience of being edited under the p.c. auspices of 43rd Street. A quip about throwing money at the president of Guinea had to be changed to the president of Chile. Why? “Uh, Boris,” said Tobin, the editor of his piece, “it’s just easier in principle if we don’t say anything deprecatory about a black African country, and since Guinea and Chile are both members of the UN Security Council, and since it doesn’t affect your point, we would like to say Chile.” Tom Wolfe couldn’t make this stuff up. Then there was the problem of Boris’ lead sentence, which was a sarcastic reference to Donald Rumsfeld’s ham-fisted dis of the British military effort in Iraq. The piece began: “Gee, thanks, guys.” After some too-ing and fro-ing, Tobin

revealed the true concerns of his multitudinous line-editors and page-editors. ‘OK, Booris, I’ll tell you what the problem is. Our problem is that “Gee” is an abbreviation for Jesus. For a century this has been a Jewish-owned paper, and we have to be extremely sensitive about anything that might offend Christian sensibilities. ‘We can say “God”, “God” is fine, but we have to be very careful about anything that involves the name of the Lord and Saviour.’ ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ I said, ‘this is insane. This is utterly insane.’

No it isn’t, old chum. It’s the New York Times.