A Times Put-On?

Is Joel Stein’s column one giant put-on by Times editors to see if anybody’s really paying attention? Seriously, does The Times need to run more opinion pieces by columnists who are more smug and shallow than the subject they’re covering -- in this case, a movie premiere (May 8)? And what kind of nitwit doesn’t get the difference between eating meat for sustenance and wearing animal skins for vanity? To paraphrase a line in the column, I think The Times is at a point in its career where it can wait for better columnists than Stein.

Judy Graff Fisher

Burbank