New York Times

I got a letter today from the New York Times. They want me to subscribe--at half price--but they didn't get my middle initial right. They sent it to Skye T. Puppy, not Skye J. Puppy.

This idea came from a Focus on the Family magazine letter to the editor. A woman had written that whenever she orders something or subscribes to a publication, she uses a different middle initial, so she can see who is selling her name to other companies. She said she used "X" for Focus on the Family, and in 15 years, she had never received mail from any other company with an "X" as the middle initial. So she was coming clean with them and admitting that "X" wasn't true. She finally realized she could trust them with her real initial.

So I tried the same thing. "T" is for the travel magazine I subscribed to. "H" was the health products I ordered about the same time. I got a lot of Skye H. Puppy for a while, but that one hasn't come lately. The travel magazine is still going strong selling my name, though, and now they think I fit the profile of the New York Times.

The letter the Times sent said, "In addition to producing Pulitzer Prize-winning world and national news coverage...." This made me think of Walter Duranty and his discredited Pulitzer for his reporting on Stalin's Soviet Union in the 1930s. The NY Times still lists Duranty's Pulitzer in their list of awards, but they include this statement.

Another selling point they thought might make me cough up the subscription price was this beauty: "With TimesSelect, you'll get access to content that isn't accessible anywhere else online, including the Times Archive, interactive features with Times columnists like Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman...." You can't go much further left than Paul Krugman.

Reading the Times would only give me Lefty Propaganda Apoplexy Syndrome (LPAS) in addition to fattening the coffers of a newspaper whose goals are at cross-purposes to mine.

No, I don't think I'll be subscribing, as "T" or "H" or "J" or any other initial.