The media anonymous op ed circus

The anonymous NY Times op ed is a perfect sort of story for today's mass media: a Washington insider transaction with no known answer but endless speculative possibilities. Yet the debate over who wrote it gives the story a prominence way beyond what it deserves without enlightening the public at all.

Suggestions from the White House and elsewhere that this might be treason, legally actionable disloyalty or a crime worth investigation by the Justice Department is, in fact, nonsense. Actually, given the mental instability of the president, writing the piece anonymously was a wise idea since it allows the writer to stay in a position where he or she (or them) can continue to try to keep the brakes on Donald Trump. If the author were fired, it is far less likely that the successor would perform such a useful function.