Goofy L.A. Times Editorial Uses Word 'Jihad'

Michael Kinsley must still be lurking around at the L.A. Times editorial pages, despite his dismissal. On Monday, Oct. 10, in an editorial, "The Mayor's jihad," the Times criticized Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for what it termed his "wobbly" policy on the public schools, and concluded, "Bring on the jihad."

This represents a total misunderstanding of the word 'jihad.' A jihad is what is going on in Iraq, where a group of insurgents recently swooped down on a school, seized five Shiite teachers in front of their young students and shot them to death.

This, I must inform the goofballs who have taken over the Times editorial pages, is not what we need the mayor to do in Los Angeles.

I thought maybe Andres Martinez and his crew may have some inside meaning that eludes me, so I took the precaution of looking up the word 'jihad' in Webster's New World Dictionary.

There it is on Page 726: "jihad. 1. a war by Muslims against unbelievers or enemies of Islam, carried out as a religious duty. 2. a fanatic campaign for or against an idea, etc; crusade."

Is this what the editorial writers of the Times want? They want the devoutly Catholic Villaraigosa, inaugurated back in July at the cathedral in the presence of Cardinal Mahony, to undertake a fanatic crusade involving Los Angeles school children?

Heavan forbid! And heaven forbid such an editorial page. It is discrediting the Times in the eyes of the people of this city.

Yahoo has a headline this morning: "Iraqi insurgents kill more than 40 people," mostly on the streets of Baghdad. This is not what we need in the L.A. schools.

I suspect that when Kinsley conducted the Stalin-like purge of the editorial page staff, he got rid of the wrong people and kept the loons. The Times is paying for that now.