Russ Smith offered me a column too, truth requires me to add. I turned him down -- politely -- and that is probably why they attack me so frequently and so crazily, (especially after Alex, in his collegial way, passed on to Mugger some things I supposedly said about the paper)! Some people just can't take rejection.
Of course I wish Doug didn't need Russ Smith's fithy lucre, but I do think there's a difference between writing a column for a paper and writing an occasional piece for an Op-Ed section. For instance, I write a book review every now and then for the New Republic, but I wouldn't want to be a staff writer there. and there are magazines I probably wouldn't write for unless the wolf was really at the door -- Commentary, New Criterion, Hustler (did let Penthouse forum reprint something though).
what is so interesting about Alex's affiliation with the NYP is that while he uses its pages to attack The Nation and every leftist who disagrees with him on any point, however tiny-- he never says a critical word in any of his many other venues about the NYP or its ghastly crew of reactionaries, hasbeens and paranoids. It's really a one-way street.
Katha
ps. I don't read the Village Voice much either -- but Doug, at least they have actual reporting, not just blather. There have been some really good stories in the VV recently -- the AIDS in Africa cover story, and lots of great stuff about the Brooklyn Museum flap. Even Nat Hentoff reports real stories. Truth is, I don't think either paper has much of a general readership--the voice gets the art crowd, GLBTs, politicos, grad students, activists and tattooers. The NYP gets womanhaters, scuzzbags and media junkies.