"the principal defect of The New York Times et al is that they're so bloody boring."

You read an article in the NY Times, it will go on and on for thousands of words and never seem to get to the goddam point! If it ever does, it will be buried near the end, especially if its facts get in the way of their left leaning writer's agenda. 
I might add that Mark Steyn is a fair hand at writing himself. m/r

The Full English
AA Gill, 1954-2016

by Mark Steyn  Ave ate vale   December 14, 2016

I can't really say I knew AA Gill, although for a brief period he was my next-door neighbor in South Kensington. He was more successful than I, which a lot of writers are, but also more glamorous, which is something more mysterious and less quantifiable, and on which I brooded from my window when I spied him sauntering the sidewalk. But he was a beautiful writer, of a kind that does not really exist in the colorless American press. Setting aside their partisan homogeneity, the principal defect of The New York Times et al is that they're so bloody boring. Gill was one of those fellows you enjoyed reading on almost any subject, and regardless of what position he took on it. Nor was he, as is generally the case today, a newspaper man who becomes known because he goes on TV and radio at the drop of a hat. For the most part he eschewed the broadcast media: He was a writer who was known for his writing.
His death at the weekend reminded me of a time in my life when you'd leave a London restaurant late on a Saturday night and pick up the first editions of the Sunday papers from a Tube kiosk on the way home - because they were such marvelous reads. Even before they entered their present death spiral, I have never felt that way about The Boston Globe or The Washington Post. As Hugh Laurie tweets:

I never met AA Gill, and cursed his name often; but he was funny, clever, honest, and wrote terrific sentences. I will miss him very much.

He "wrote terrific sentences". I'll bet, during his Hollywood sojourn, Hugh Laurie has never said that about any LA Times columnist.

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