[gigawatt]

Andy Rutledge has very strong right-wing/libertarian opinions and has long hated the New York Times. I think that's why he chose it to dissect, when there are more obvious choices with a clearly strong editorial bias that need a "re-design"

[donohoe]

Does he? To be fair, I would not have gathered that from his post. I think he kept that much separate.

[gigawatt]

In this post, yes (though he does insinuate that the NY Times has too strong of an editorial bias). In others, no:

https://twitter.com/#!/andyrutledge/status/95664717669994496

https://twitter.com/#!/andyrutledge/status/94536441488621569

http://www.andyrutledge.com/how-to-join-aiga.php

Again, if it works for him, great. It just makes it harder for me personally to be objective about him and his work.

[Drossman]

Actually, he's a pretty staunch conservative, not to mention an all around douche. Remember his 2008 redesign of USA.gov?

http://www.andyrutledge.com/usa-dot-gov-redux.php

[innes]

Thanks for the heads-up. The problem with the Internet is that sometimes you end up reading things by people with inappropriate political positions, and it's not immediately apparent. Hopefully the addition of social networking features to search, etc, will help resolve this problem in future.

[biaxident]

Does his political position really have any impact on his ability to redesign? How would knowing his political positions help you to come to a judgement on whether the redesign made a position difference or not?

However, knowing his political positions would immediately put you in either a positive or negative (depending on your position) frame of mind and would stop you from having a fair and balanced opinion.

[scott_s]

I think innes had tongue firmly planted in cheek.

[innes]

Yes indeed. Maybe too deadpan for some.

[gigawatt]

While I disagree with most or all of his political opinions, I wouldn't necessarily call them inappropriate. I find it strange that he consistently chooses to combine business and politics, but it's his company so it's really not my problem. Maybe it works really well for him.

[akdetrick]

You beat me to my reply about Andy. I almost regret taking his blog off my reading list, because he's a fantastic designer that has a special skill for teaching design fundamentals by example. Unfortunately, I couldn't tollerate slogging through all the political grit to get to any design points he had to make in his posts.