What on Earth Do You Have To Do To Lose Your New York Times Column???!!!???!?!?

Not even *leaving the Times* will do it!

Screenshot: Nick Kristof/YouTube

If you are anything like me, you have probably found yourself asking a simple question at some point in your life: what in the world does it take to lose your job as a New York Times opinion columnist?

A Times column is not an easy thing to get, but once you have it, it seems that there is absolutely nothing that will dislodge you from your perch. Blatant ethical lapses won’t do it. Outrageous attempts to abuse your power won’t do it. Writing lazy, hacky columns won’t do it. Having terrible opinions for decades on end certainly won’t do it. Only positions like “Supreme Court justice” or “pope” come close to matching the kind of job security you get as a Times columnist (and even popes get hounded out once every few hundred years).

Now, though, we’ve suddenly been given an exciting new category of “thing that won’t cost you your New York Times column”: voluntarily quitting the New York Times to pursue a completely different career. That’s right: if you’re a Times op-ed writer, you can hand in your notice, go do something else entirely, and then just saunter back to the Times and pick up your column—and your very large paycheck—as if nothing happened.

We know this because that is what has just happened to one of the most historically annoying people at the Times, Nick Kristof. Must be nice!!!