Yes, you'll be shunned by polite society for praising his vegetarianism, economic policies, watercolors, or anything else he did or said. And indeed, he's a biz

Yes, you'll be shunned by polite society for praising his vegetarianism, economic policies, watercolors, or anything else he did or said. And indeed, he's a bizarre choice to cite. There are plenty of non-holocaust-causing people you could cite instead. The NYT's criticism of SSC isn't that he expressed an idea that Murray also had, but that he name-checked Murray. (I haven't read his books so I don't have my own opinion, but I gather he's considered Problematic by some.) It's said that great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people. When you're writing for the public, you'll have all 3 kinds of readers. Journalists are very aware of this, and make sure their stories work on all 3 levels. Actually, mostly just the last 2. A journalist who has trained himself to think this way might read SSC as "blah blah agree Douglas Murray blah blah blah". It is lame of the NYT to try to hold other publications, that are trying to discuss pure ideas, to the same constraint? Yes.