The nation finally has an answer to the age-old question "what the hell will it take for newspapers to be embarrassed by George Will?" For the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, it was Will's recent column in which he asserted that sexual assaults on college campuses gives the victims "
a coveted status that confers privileges."
That sort of logic may still fly in the pages of the Washington Post, a hallowed land where the Iraq War is still a good idea and torture is a sacrament, but not so much in St. Louis. So the paper is booting him.
The change has been under consideration for several months, but a column published June 5, in which Mr. Will suggested that sexual assault victims on college campuses enjoy a privileged status, made the decision easier. The column was offensive and inaccurate; we apologize for publishing it.
They're replacing him with ex-Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, so the benefit to readers will be small; there will probably be fewer columns on how sexual assault victims are getting too many perks these days, and a few more columns on why George W. Bush was a genius whose vision for Iraq will be recognized any minute now, plus or minus another decade. Still, we now know: there
are things George Will can write that are so stupid that people shun him for it. Not many, but a few.