"Politically correct is never a term one would apply to [Maureen] Dowd’s commentary", the New York Times ombudsperson Clark Hoyt writes. If you say so, though standard-issue East Coast establishment liberal boilerplate are all terms that readily come to mind.

In any case, as Hoyt's predecessor ombudsman wrote, "Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is." And now it's time to pay the piper:

Over the course of the campaign, I received complaints that Times coverage of Clinton included too much emphasis on her appearance, too many stereotypical words that appeared to put her down and dismiss a woman’s potential for leadership and too many snide references to her as cold or unlikable. When I pressed for details, the subject often boiled down to Dowd.

Andrew Rosenthal, the editor of the editorial page, said it was unfair to hold a columnist accountable for perceptions of bias in news coverage. A columnist is supposed to present strong opinions, he said, and “a thorough reading of Maureen’s work shows that she does that without regard to gender, partisanship or ideology.”

Some complaints about Times news coverage seem justified. A “Political Memo” last fall analyzed “the Clinton Cackle” — a laugh, it was suggested, that she used to fend off political attacks or tough media attention. Cackle? That’s what witches do in fairy tales. Times editors express regret about using the word, though they defend the examination of the laugh. The Times never did a similar dissection of the way Rudolph Giuliani burst into odd gales of laughter under tough questioning.

But other complaints seemed to reflect a shoot-the-messenger anger at The Times. A reader from San Francisco railed against a litany of offending words that she said the paper had used, but most of the slights were imagined. (I can assure you that the word “skank” was never printed in an article about Clinton.)

I asked my assistant, Michael McElroy, to run a database search for some key words that might indicate sexism in The Times — “shrill,” “strident,” “pantsuit” and “giggle,” among them.

(Via Hot Air.)