PD Editor and President George Rodrigue confirmed by email that O’Brien was one of “a handful” of managers to take a voluntary buyout.
“I’ll miss him as a colleague,” Rodrigue wrote. “He’s a very capable editor, a forceful writer, and a great human being.”
(Perhaps we would do well to recall the odd-couple friendship between Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia: “If you can’t disagree ardently with your colleagues about some issues … and yet personally still be friends, get another job, for Pete’s sake,” Scalia once remarked. Maybe that’s as true in the newsroom as it is in the courthouse?)
O’Brien has long been the paper’s older white male screaming his “opinions” in the direction of the deepest, dumbest suburbs, opinions so wrongheaded and destitute of logic and citation that Scene, in the mid-aughts, began a column devoted to his work. “The O’Brien Factor,” it was called: We read Kevin O’Brien so you don’t have to.
Our derision of O’Brien — much like the mockery by other outlets of tuneless racists and corporate goons who dot the editorial pages of mid-market dailies around the country — has been a staple of Cleveland’s alternative media for years. So in the respect that we’ll be losing a piece of very low-hanging fruit, we, too, will miss him. In general, we share the view of attorney Richard Herman, who respected O’Brien’s First Amendment rights to rant and rave, but questioned the Plain Dealer’s motives in publishing him.
“Would you publish an Op-Ed by L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling that explained why African Americans are inferior to others,” inquired Herman in 2014, after an unsavory column by O’Brien about illegal immigration, “simply because he believed in this viewpoint?”
O’Brien was joined — dangling on the leeward branches of conservatism’s outermost trees — by former “Reader Representative” Ted Diadiun. Diadiun will continue his Forum section crusades, though it’s unlikely that even he will adopt O’Brien’s favorite position: Climate Change is Fake Because Today it’s Cold Outside.
“[O’Brien] is not our only conservative columnist,” George Rodrigue wrote, when questioned about potential issues of editorial balance in the wake of O’Brien’s departure. “We will continue to offer that local conservative point of view through other writers.”
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2017.
O’Brien tried for years to screech his way out of the print media and into the warm embrace of a national cable-news outlet….and failed miserably. Special Ted is too stupid to realize that he is also stuck yelping at the local level for the daily advertising tab.
Scathingly perfect.
Yes, Diadiun has inherited the mantle of ‘equal time’ for idiots.
Being a ‘sports guy’ has prepared him well. The comments section is saved.
“Forceful writer” in the way you have to force a shit when you don’t really have to go? It would definitely take some force to consistently champion political causes that go against the grain of common sense. I always thought he was under pressure to provide the conservative voice, and wondered if he could really think some of the things he claims to. I’m sure he believes what he writes, but I’m almost certain it had more to do with retaining conservative readership than adding any thoughtfulness to the discourse. I’ve only agreed with Kevin maybe three times in several years (he had a great idea about colleges collecting a percentage of future income. That way your degree costs you relative to what it earns you, which would discourage colleges from offering basket weaving degrees by making them have a little skin in the game). So if Kevin happens to read these comments, I want to say I wish you well, Kevin. Ted Diadiun is half the Limbaugh wannabe you wannabee. 😉
Maybe the era of point/counterpoint is ending, as readers have increased subscriptions to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, and NPR stations are experiencing a jump in the Nielsen ratings. After all, if you’re still willing to pay for your news sources, you’ll spend your money on those that have reputations for quality reporting, and retain international bureaus and investigative teams. Those who want their news for free (and for its entertainment value) are more likely to be drawn to sources that tell them what they want to hear. So skip the phoney “balance” features: tell us what’s really happening, and don’t sugarcoat it, and you’ll earn my subscription.
Way to rip someone to shreds just because they don’t think like you.
I discovered Ted on my first day here, in the summer of ’92, and thought he was a doofus. He hasn’t changed.
As for Kevin, I have always dealt with his opinions the way I do with certain comic strips that bore me or offend me…I totally ignored him.
Two parting words for Mr. O’Brien: Toodles, asshat.
Chuckles the Clown
I got to a point with O’Brien where I quit reading him. I read (and disagree with) a lot of conservative writers. O’Brien was a negative, obnoxious SOB who provided nothing but a waste of my time. Good luck with your future endeavors, but don’t let the door hit ya on the way out.