The Boston Globe's website on Wednesday published — then revised and, on Thursday evening, deleted — an op-ed column that said it was "serving America" to tamper with prominent Republicans' food.
The piece, titled "Keep Kirstjen Nielsen unemployed and eating Grubhub over her kitchen sink," advocated the harassment of Trump allies in public. It began with writer Luke O'Neil's own animating regret that, as a waiter in a Cambridge restaurant, he once missed an opportunity to urinate on the entree of conservative pundit William Kristol.
After sustaining outrage from a range of right-leaning voices, the Globe first softened, then dropped the column entirely — an unusual move which caused critics on the left to question the newspaper's editorial integrity.
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O'Neil himself decried the decision to modify and delete the article, accusing the Globe on Twitter of bowing to "bad faith critics who would hate them no matter what." But in an interview with The Washington Post, he said, "I wasn't really advocating to piss in somebody's food, that's crazy... But I do think these people should be made uncomfortable in public."
The Globe, for its part, added a note to its opinion page saying that the piece "did not receive sufficient editorial oversight and did not meet Globe standards. The Globe regrets its lack of vigilance on the matter. O'Neil is not on staff."
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