GREAT MOMENTS IN STOCKHOLM SYNDROME: Just What Did the Times Walkout Change?

The picketing outside the Times’ Renzo Piano–designed headquarters went on for more than an hour this afternoon. Over a hundred people gathered under the scaffolding on West 40th Street, surrounded by a crush of cameras. Nikole Hannah-Jones, their star magazine correspondent and the intellectual force behind “The 1619 Project,” stood next to Scabby the giant inflatable rat and spoke into a microphone: “Let me tell you, I know what it’s like to work at a newspaper and not make enough to pay your bills. I worked two jobs until I was 30 years old. I reported at my local newspaper and then I had to sell mattresses on nights and weekends just to make ends meet. I loved my job, but we shouldn’t have to struggle financially to work at a place like the New York Times, no matter what position we hold.”

Donald McNeil was there, wearing an old union T-shirt and a brown leather coat with a shearling collar. He was ousted from the paper last year, and Hannah-Jones had played a minor role in that, but he’d always been a dedicated union man. He nodded along while she spoke. “I thought she was great,” he told me.

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Sister.

(Found via Guy Benson, who tweets, “Damn, Don, have some self-respect.”)