The Critical Shopper, After Mike Albo

Last night I spent some time thinking about my feelings (I have a regular Tuesday appointment with them), and I realized that ever since the firing of Mike Albo as a Times freelancer, I’ve been unable to read much of that paper’s Style sections, much less make note here of any of the stories they publish. And I haven’t been able to look at Albo’s former part-time column, the Critical Shopper, at all, because it just makes me feel bad. Albo was canned in a bizarre twisting of the Times ethics policy, was publicly pilloried and then became a symbol, to me at least, of the disposable freelancer. They wanted his talent but they didn’t want to treat him right-and the Times expressly ignored both the letter and the law of their own ethics policy when they canned him on their stupid little witch hunt. (Their ethics rules say: “In connection with their work for us, freelancers will not accept free transportation, free lodging, gifts, junkets, commissions or assignments from current or potential news sources.” In connection with his work for them, Albo never did that.) And so a gray pall hangs over Critical Shopper, like the paper carries on it a dark thumb smudge of bad feeling-even on something as hysterically candy-colored as Cintra Wilson’s Critical Shopper visit to Lilly Pulitzer. And I love the Lilly Pulitzer store unabashedly and her piece is entirely on the nose, but all the fun has gone out of talking about this.