Neither of them actually addressed her accusations. Mertha (sic) deflected them to another group against whom they are false

So we just KNOW that these accusations are false when applied to Jews, but it is up to Atheists to PROVE they are false?

And the vitriol and hatred spews forth from the theists daily. Just look at Faux, I mean, Fox News.

Writing letters to the editor will accomplish nothing. Neither Charlotte Allen nor the editorial staff at the LA Times will be held accountable for that editorial.

Huh? The paper published a bad opinion piece, and now we’re reacting to it. Isn’t that how this works?

I think they will be “held accountable” in the court of public opinion if and only if we make a furur over it.

Sometimes newspapers print controversial opinion pieces they don’t agree with, just to stir things up and increase reader interest.

I fully expect that this will be the gist of their response to the complaints, if they bother to give an official one. However it’s a poor argument because it does not remove the double standard involved. I deeply doubt the LAT would put an openly racist or openly anti-semitic (and I do mean openly, not just criticizing Israel as much as “Jewish banking conspiracy, protocols of Zion”) screed on their paper to “stir things up”. They would (rightly) judge that such bigotry is completely unacceptable and therefore had no place in their paper, not even to stir up controversy. The same standard is not applied for atheists.

That’s not to say that you can’t say anything bad about atheism (insofar as you can talk about “atheism” as a phenomenon and not the absence of one). You can publish a controversial piece slamming the so-called “new atheists” as arrogant, or ignorant or complaining about the tone of certain secular organizations. That’s valid, just as criticising AIPAC or the NAACP does not in itself constitute anti-semitism or racism. But when you jump from the organization to the population you make an important, and dangerous, conceptual leap.

Yes, the LATimes is the dominant newspaper in Southern California.

I see they have corrected their mistakes in the Thornton piece.

Sometimes newspapers print controversial opinion pieces they don’t agree with, just to stir things up and increase reader interest. It’s a balancing act though, because sometimes they get tarred with their own brush.

More likely they will print the angry vitriolic letters that support the claims of the original article.