Photo by afagenEven though the Rev. Sun Myung Moon has been dead for 10 months, The Washington Times is as conservative as ever. And today it entrenched itself even further with the hiring of David Keene as its opinion editor.
Who is David Keene, one asks? Oh, just the former president of the National Rifle Association. Keene left the gun rights organization in May, but he’s joining the Times with the newspaper’s press release heralding him for “leading the [NRA’s] successful effort to block new restrictions on gun ownership and sales in the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings.”
Keene is the latest right-wing hero to be picked up by the Times, which last November scrapped much of its local and sports coverage in favor of hiring more conservative opinion writers under a plan the paper’s owners referred to as “Times 3.0.”
In addition to Keene, Politico reports the Times also recently hired Ben Carson, a former pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital who in March came under fire for remarks opposing same-sex marriage in which he equated gay couples with bestiality and pedophila, as a weekly columnist.
“David has been a tireless advocate for conservatism, demonstrating time and again how the movement’s values and ideas can address the problems of the day,” Larry Beasley, the Times’ chief executive, said in the paper’s announcement. “He’s a deep intellectual with the sharp wit, unwavering values and the endless civility needed to guide the thought leadership of Washington’s most important opinion pages.”
In addition to the Times’ in-house praise, it also released a list of plaudits from high-profile conservatives including National Review editor Rich Lowrey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
