ONLY ONE? WELL, PERHAPS IT’S THE DAY THE GRAY LADY MADE IT OFFICIAL: The Day the New York Times Redefined ‘Liberal’ as ‘Closed-minded Outrage Mob.’

The paper’s editorial page editor James Bennet and its publisher Arthur Sulzberger initially defended its publication on the grounds that it was the paper’s duty to present views that were at odds with its own opinions.

But within 48 hours, the improbable argument that Cotton’s ideas were a threat to the safety of the paper’s African-American staff, or constituted advocacy for fascism, not to mention a flood of canceled online subscriptions, carried the day.

Sulzberger walked back his defense, and, Bennet claimed he hadn’t read it, blaming the decision on a lower level editor named Adam Rubinstein. Ultimately, the Times claimed the article hadn’t been adequately fact-checked — something Cotton’s staff asserted was untrue — and didn’t meet its standards. Two days after that, Bennet was forced to resign.

But the result was also proof that Bennet’s efforts to open up the paper’s opinion section to more conservative views have failed.

According to Wikipedia, Bennet’s career in journalism began with a stint at the New Republic. But is it possible that Bennet is a deep undercover conservative sleeper agent? In 2007, Bennet, then editor of the Atlantic, hired Andrew Sullivan, who the following year, driven by Palin Derangement Syndrome, would become the world’s foremost uterus detective, something the magazine has never quite lived down. And now Bennet has turned the New York Times over to the “safetyism”-driven crybully mob.

Or, as Robert Conquest’s Third Law of Politics states, “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”