Keith Schneider

At the New York Times yesterday (appearing on the front page in today's print edition), Keith Schneider's Jack Kevorkian obituary described the late assisted suicide practitioner as "fiercely principled."

An advanced search on that term (in quotes) indicates that the Old Gray Lady has only used it to describe a real human being one other time since 1981, in reference to composer Peter Maxwell Davies in January 2009. The same Times search done on 1851-1980 comes up empty. Think of all the eminently nobler and saintly people who have passed through this life during the past 160 years. Not one of them was ever described by the Times as "fiercely principled" during their lives or after their deaths. Amazing.

Additionally, the Times has had some difficulty adequately describing the nature of Kevorkian's "accomplishments." In the obit's window title and currently at the paper's home page, Kevorkian is headlined only as someone who "backed assisted suicide." The story's actual headline at the web obit and in today's print edition is still somewhat non-descriptive: "Dr. Jack Kevorkian Dies at 83; A Doctor Who Helped End Lives."