New York Times Rejects McCain Op-Ed Piece, Says Author "Too Obscure"

The New York Times today rejected an Op-Ed piece written by Republican candidate Sen. John McCain on the grounds that the newspaper considered McCain’s candidacy “too obscure and unheard of.”

“We’re The New York Times,” Times executive editor Bill Keller told a hastily assembled New York news conference. “We can’t publish opinion pieces by every crank, obscure, unheard of, fringe candidate who wants to use our paper to gain credibility.

“We’ve polled our reporters and editors,” Keller added, “and none of them had ever heard of this McCain guy. We didn’t publish Ron Paul. We didn’t publish Ross Perot. We didn’t publish Mike Huckabee or Walter Mondale the tall guy who was on the Love Boat, what’s his name. And we certainly aren’t going to publish McCain. Our readers only want to read opinion pieces from mainstream Presidential candidates with a real possibility of winning.”

Keller also noted that McCain’s opinion piece “in any event did not meet the quality standards of the New York Times. Our pieces are usually 800 words long. This McCain guy’s piece was 8,000 words. It rambled, it repeated itself, it had a lot of crossouts. By the way, the piece came into our offices in longhand. I mean, isn’t there anyone on his campaign who can use a computer?

“We figured maybe he didn’t even have any staffers,” Keller added. “That’s how it is with these fringe guys, but usually they have a kid on the staff who can at least put up a website. That was just further evidence that this McCain is a fringe guy, somebody you can’t take seriously.”

Keller said that the opinion piece started off with a long defense of the War in Iraq, followed by lengthy, acerbic critiques of Jane Fonda movies including Barbarella, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, and the China Syndrome, descriptions of various Naval vessels, a long section that appeared to argue both for and against campaign financing, an analysis of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ pitching rotation, and about fifteen other topics.

When a reporter pointed out that McCain was actually a sitting U.S. Senator from Arizona, Keller appeared relieved.

“To be honest,” he admitted, “we thought maybe he had some sort of obscure career in politics. Judging from his loopy handwriting, his obsessive thinking patterns, and some of the threatening remarks concerning Ms. Fonda, we thought we had another Unabomber on our hands.

“Cabin in the woods, guy who blows stuff up, the whole nine yards. If he’s really just a Senator, then I guess I feel a little relieved. We had both internal security and the NYPD involved, and we were thinking of turning the whole thing over to the FBI. But we’re still not publishing that article.”