SO IF READING THE NEW YORK TIMES IS A RELIGION, then does that make Jill Abramson pope?

Trouble is, it’s more a cult these days than a religion. And James Taranto observes:

After the Times propagated the blood libel that conservative media figures were behind the murders in Tucson, we wrote that this campaign of vilification “is really about competition in the media industry–not commercial competition but competition for authority.” Abramson’s quote confirms that we were precisely on target in assessing the Times’s view of its own authority.

“If the Times said it, it was the absolute truth.” No. A newspaper is not a substitute for religion, and a lie is still a lie even if the New York Times says otherwise.

Ouch.

UPDATE: Scrub-a-dub-dub: An inauspicious start. “That’s a tiny bit strange, isn’t it? I mean, Abramson’s words were not exactly scrubbable, or scrub-worthy: Many thousands of people can say just what she did (really). I’m not sure what the etiquette, or protocol, is on these matters. When you send out a picture of yourself in your skivvies, I guess you recall it. But what if you merely say how your family felt about the Times?”