(On this site, the little cupula next to the title means that the title is a link. This one will take you to Kristoff's editorial page on the NY Times website.)
Nicholas Kristoff, an editorial columnist for the New York Times, strikes me as a Decent Guy on the Left. Why Decent? For one, he seems to own his own mind, and does not simply parrot slogans or line up dutifully with other liberals for mud-slinging fests. He is the opposite of Maureen Dowd. He researches his positions carefully, and they are usually very nuanced. His recent column on Bush's Social Security policy is a case in point. He basically challenges the Democrats, "Hey...how 'bout a solution from your side if you don't like Bush's." I have been very impressed with his columns about forced prostitution in Indonesia, in which he has purchased the freedom of several teenage prostitutes (for merely hundreds of dollars) and returned them to their villages, only to find that many return to their slavery. He wrote several on-site pieces about "multinational corporations" with "sweat-shop" factories in the third world last fall, prior to the elections, and found that, by any measure one chooses to use, employment in these factories is far preferable to the "work" these employees had before their arrival. A very non-Left conclusion, and one which he was obviously surprised to draw himself.
Check him out. One can subscribe to the NY Times without payment, by supplying a username and password. Back articles, however, need to be purchased.
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