Peas in a pesticide-covered pod

YOU ARE VISITING THE OLD MALKIN(S)WATCH. THAT'S FANTASTIC. PLEASE VISIT THE NEW MALKIN(S)WATCH WHEN YOU GET A CHANCE.

Malkin welcomes the news that John Tierney has been picked by the New York Times to replace William Safire:

Some of the stand-out classic pieces he has penned:

Recyling is garbage--making mincemeat of an environmental shibboleth.

When crutch for education is an anchor--challenging the educational conventional wisdom about bilingual education.

The Autonomist Manifesto--a rousing and politically incorrect ode to the car.

More on Tierney's pro-free market writings here.

Indeed. Via Atrios (who calls Tierney "A columnist for the Tech Central Station crowd"), Zachary Roth from the Columbia Journalism Review has some concerns:

There was often a feeling that Tierney was writing less to advocate than to provoke. When Chris Mooney, in a 2001 profile of Tierney written for The American Prospect, asked him about a Times magazine cover story he had written arguing against recycling, he replied, "I could write something about the good side of recycling ... But everybody else writes that."

...Tierney has a tendency to support his point of view using sources with a clear ideological or special interest agenda, without properly identifying them. In a 2000 column Tierney attacked CBS for an old report in which it had suggested that apples treated with the pesticide Alar carried a cancer risk. He wrote that the American Council on Science and Health, which he identified as "a consumer education group in New York," had demanded a correction and an apology from CBS. But Tierney left out the fact that ACSH is funded by major corporations -- including McDonalds, Pfizer, Kraft Foods, ExxonMobil, and Anheuser Busch -- all with stakes in the issues it focuses on. And one of those corporate funders, Uniroyal Chemical Company, is the manufacturer of Alar.

Takes contrarian positions and supports them with cherrypicked evidence provided by questionable sources? Gee, I can't think why Malkin likes the guy.