Dan Quayle said, “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful.”  Amen Dan.  So what is the New York Times thinking, or wasting as our former Vice President so aptly puts it.

I am, at very best, a fair weather fan of Adam Liptak’s Sidebar column.  Granted, he’s demonstrated little grasp of criminal justice issues, and often shown a bias toward the facile as if he’s auditioning to take over Dunleavy’s desk at the New York Post.  But he writes for the New York Times!  This is no tabloid, but the great Gray Lady.

It’s not that he isn’t a good writer.  His words flow fairly well, though usually lacking much color or imagery to convey complex ideas to the reader in a cognizable fashion.  But then complex ideas rarely find their way into his columns.

It’s not that he isn’t a good lawyer.  Frankly, I haven’t a clue how good a lawyer he is (or was), but I have no reason to disparage his legal skills.

It’s that he is committing a crime, journalistic murder if you will, by taking up something that is enormously precious and wasting it:  Space in the New York Times.  It is dead space, and he killed it.

Gideon posted about the insipid  Sidebar column this week, asking the crucial question, which state’s court has been followed the most over since 1940.  While this may (arguably) pique the interest of some lawprof in the bowels of some left coast law school library, desperate for a subject to write about to pad his wad for tenure, it is utterly inconsequential.  No, that’s unfair.  It is monumentally, shockingly and utterly inconsequential.  That’s better.

The law is a never ending source of wonderment.  I have trouble keeping my postings down to a half dozen a day, there are just too many things that strike me as relevant and important, worthy of my time and yours.  Why is Liptak unaware of any of these?  Is his vision of the law so myopic that he found absolutely nothing worth writing about last week other than this inane study?  Lawyers don’t care about it.  Did he think the public would be fascinated by something so arcane and meaningless?

But now it’s time to address the Times editors.  Hello?  Anybody there? 

The New York Times has given Adam Liptak a bully pulpit, should he choose to use it.  Regardless, he has been given one of the most significant opportunities to educate and enlighten the public on matters crucial to society.  He has squandered this opportunity.  It is a crime.  It is an outrage.  How can anyone take such an opportunity and waste it this way?

I’ve asked a variety of the people I know in the media how certain choices are made, such as the pundits who opine on the variety shows that masquerade as news who demonstrate a total lack of understanding of the subject matter.  The answer for TV is generally that they look pretty.  Think Kimberly Guilfoyle.  Sometimes it’s because they are sufficiently outrageous that they draw an audience of the outraged or just regular people who show up to watch a car wreck.  Think Nancy Grace.

But the New York Times doesn’t cater to the sophomoric reader.  On topics political and economic, they offer some brilliant and provocative minds.  Why not law?  What caused them to pluck Liptak from their counsel’s office to their opinion page?  I’ve seen his picture.  He’s no matinée idol.  So why?

To paraphrase Dan Quayle, “Space in the New York Times is a terrible thing to waste.”  To do so is a crime.