It turns out that two of the most inflammatory op-ed columns in recent memory were not unsolicited pieces that happened to impress editors at the Washington Post and New York Times; they were, instead, commissioned pieces that those newspapers actively solicited.

A few weeks ago, the Post ran an almost unbelievably bad op-ed in which Gerard Alexander asserted that liberals are more condescending to conservatives than conservatives are to liberals. Alexander later revealed that the Post approached him about the column, raising the question of whether the Post is asking around to see if anyone wants to write a column about conservatives being a bunch of ignorant jerks. I kind of doubt it.

And now, The Hillman Foundation's Charles Kaiser has gotten to the bottom of a mystery surrounding a New York Times op-ed by the heretofore unknown Lara M. Dadkhah, whose column in favor of increased civilian casualties in Afghanistan identified her only as “an intelligence analyst.” It turns out the Times searched far and wide to find Dadkhah. A Times editor explained to Kaiser:

We found Ms. Dadkhah from work she did in Small Wars Journal, work that was part of her Ph.D. dissertation at Georgetown. Ms. Dadkhah only recently took a job at Booz Allen. We tend not to mention the names of companies -- as it can run the risk of seeming self-promotional.

As Salon's Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, that second part doesn't fly -- the Times frequently mentions “the names of companies” in the bio lines on op-ed columns. And, as Greenwald notes, the whole thing is rather bizarre:

To summarize: the NYT Op-Ed Page decided, for whatever reasons, that it wanted to find someone to urge more civilian deaths in Afghanistan. The person it found to do that is someone about whom virtually nothing was known, yet works for one of the largest, most sprawling and influential defense firms in the nation, a virtual arm of the Pentagon, but they decided there was no reason to have its readers know that.

It's hard to imagine an editor thinking “Hey, you know what we need? A column calling liberals condescending jerks” or “Maybe we can find some obscure analyst at a defense contractor who is willing to argue in favor of killing more civilians, then fail to give readers any idea who she is.” I mean, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if it happened at the New York Post or one of Andrew Breitbart's sites. But apparently that's exactly what goes on at the Washington Post and New York Times, too.