HOWARD KURTZ’S DEFENESTRATION: Dispatches from the Department of That Which Cannot Be Said At Any Time.

Meanwhile, Ann Althouse comments:

This is an important basis for criticism of Collins, who’s being hailed as a hero. Giving up on living a lie is a good idea, but it’s not heroic. Maybe 30 years ago, it was heroic to be openly gay, but even back then, if you chose to keep your sexual orientation quiet, it was still wrong to delude another person to the extent that Collins apparently did. Collins graduated from Stanford in 2001, and it’s just ridiculous that someone who lived in that environment at that time — he roomed with Joe Kennedy and was friends with Chelsea Clinton — would be seriously burdened with backward ideas about sexual orientation. I’ll refrain from lambasting the man for his deceit and cowardice, but extolling him as a hero is absurd. I think that’s what Kurtz might have wanted to say, but he botched his attack.

It would be interesting to know which powerful Democrats, if any, interacted with Tina Brown over the downfall of Howard Kurtz.

Indeed. If Tina Brown had let Kurtz go because his work was becoming slapdash and predictably partisan compared to, say, 10 years ago — which it was — that would be one thing. But just as bringing Kurtz on initially did a lot to enhance the brand of the Daily Beast back then, the manner of his departure serves only to confirm the brand of the Daily Beast today.

Related: Actually, Jason Collins Isn’t the First Openly Gay Man in a Major Pro Sport: Major-league baseball player Glenn Burke was comfortably out to his teammates and friends in 1976—but back then, it was the press that wasn’t ready for a gay male athlete. “The media in general and the sports media in particular found Burke’s homosexuality an inconvenient truth.” They run into a lot of those, and still respond to them with silence.