LOS ANGELES - Barbra Streisand has canceled her subscription to the Los Angeles Times over the firing of the paper's liberal columnist. The newspaper dropped Robert Scheer and several other columnists last month; Scheer speculated he was let go because the Times had tired of his politics.Or maybe itâs because the LA Times is going broke.
Perhaps the most liberal voice on the paper's opinion pages, Scheer had been a Times columnist for 12 years. He was a reporter for the newspaper for 17 years before that. "Robert Scheer's column, with its often singular voice of dissent and groundbreaking expositional content, has been among the most notable features that have sustained my interest in subscribing to the LA Times for many years now," Streisand wrote in a letter she sent to the newspaper and posted on her Web site.
Thatâs a pretty complex sentence for Babs. I hope her ghost blogger got a raise.
Streisand, a well-known supporter of Democratic candidates and liberal causes, wrote that by firing Scheer the Times had reduced the diversity of voices on its opinion pages. A shortened version of her letter was printed in the Times Nov. 23. The full letter is posted on her Web site.
In a note to its readers, the Times reported Nov. 15 that hundreds of readers had written or called to complain about Scheer's departure.
An L.A. Times âhundredsâ actually means dozens.
| As the Captain notes, the LA Times edited her letter and upset her even more. Heh. |