ROD DREHER: Times Pushes Don McN-Word Out.

This is one of the most shocking examples yet of cancel culture: The New York Times has parted ways with science correspondent Donald G. McNeil, Jr., over his use of the N-word on a student trip sponsored by the Times:

Nearly a half-century of work for the Times, gone. And on the way out, McNeil abased himself before his colleagues:

As Dreher writes:

You watch: the Times is okay for now, because it’s got a deep bench. But what happens when it starts driving other talented journalists out because they feel they can no longer work under conditions in which any little thing they might say could attract the attention of the mob, and Nikole Hannah-Jones gets to go to Dean Baquet’s office to threaten him about the journalist? If you don’t think things like this affect the kinds of stories that get proposed and written at the Times, you don’t know how newsrooms work. You might think that the impact of this will be for Times reporters in the future not to use the N-word on field trips with students. Well, yes, that is one result, and a good one. But the deeper fallout is that it reveals no one is safe from cancel culture at that newspaper, not even one of its most valuable reporter assets, not even a reporter who has loyally served there for decades, and not even if he apologizes for having said a word.

Andrew Sullivan responds thusly:

And Andrew (at least in one of his earlier incarnations) definitely knows ridiculous and terrifying.

(Via Stacy McCain.)