Crushing of Dissent at the Wall Street Journal
Tunku Varadarajan confesses:
My small team and I edit the editorial features--or op-ed--page of this newspaper, and our job includes commissioning illustrations to accompany the pieces we run. I'd seen a drawing by this free-lance chappie in another section of the Journal and had liked it a lot, so I tracked him down. Hi, would you like to draw for us? I asked him, in my most solicitous voice. (My intention, you will understand, was not merely to be friendly but actually to give this fellow money for his time.)Imagine my surprise when he responded, first, by saying "Oh! You're one of the flame-throwers!"--the editorial page tilts in a conservative direction--and then by declaring, in a voice that oozed a certain sort of metropolitan smugness, that he'd have "important conditions to lay down." He'd have to first read the op-ed piece he was going to illustrate--to see if he was in accord with it politically--before he could agree to go ahead.
"Hang on a minute!" I said, "I can't let myself be mugged at deadline by an illustrator who says, Sorry, but I don't like that author's views on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, so I won't draw."
There followed an Arctic sort of silence, after which he asked me (with the same amour-propre of a moment earlier): "Is the concept of an artist having political views alien to you, sir?" Convinced, now, that the man had no future on our page, I was prepared to burn my bridges. "Is the concept of a daily newspaper," I replied, "alien to you, sir?"
We then wished each other good day, and hung up grumpily, one set all.
Soul-searching, at least on Varadarajan's part, follows. I'm quite sure the unnamed illustrator felt no such need.