Perhaps one day we'll find out the real reason why editors at the New York Times decided to inexplicably sponsor Zev Chafets, a professional Dittohead, and to habitually publish his mash notes to Rush Limbaugh.

The Times' ill-advised association dates back to the summer of 2008 when the Times assigned Chafets to pen an embarrassing whitewash of Limbaugh for the newspaper's Sunday magazine. As I noted at the time, with the assignment Chafets, a Dem-bashing Iraq War cheerleader, turned playing dumb into an Olympic sport:

That's why there was no mention in the very long profile about the fact that Limbaugh has called Sen. John Kerry a “gigolo,” mocked Democratic Party chief Howard Dean as “a very sick man,” agreed that liberal philanthropist George Soros is a “self-hating Jew,” denounced then-Sen. Tom Daschle as an Al Qaeda sympathizer, mocked anti-war crusader Cindy Sheehan, whose son was slain in Iraq, by teasing, " 'Oh, she lost her son' -- well, yes. Yes. Yes. But you know, this is [sigh] -- aaah. We all lose things."

Or that Limbaugh has claimed Democrats “hate this country” (i.e. “What's good for Al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party in this country today”); denigrated members of the U.S. Armed Forces, calling military men and women who criticized the war in Iraq and advocated withdrawal “phony soldiers”; toasted photos of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib as “good old American pornography”; suggested actor Michael J. Fox faked symptoms of his life-threatening illness while taping a pro-stem-cell-research commercial; called Sen. Barack Obama a “Halfrican American”; and announced Obama and Osama bin Laden are “on the same page.”

So naturally Chafets parlayed that marshmallow-soft profile into a bio book deal with the right-wing loving arm of Penguin publishing. This month his love letter to Limbaugh is being published and the Times, for some odd reasons, feels compelled to help sell copies. So last week Chafets was invited onto the Times' Op-ed page (a marketing coup for any author releasing a new book), where he typed up his unimaginative Limbaugh talking points. (i.e. He's really, really smart and influential!)

What more could any author want from the Times? How about if the newspaper published a lengthy book excerpt? Because, that's what the Times recently did for Chafets, as it dipped back into the Limbaugh valentine stack and published online a long, drooling and kinda creepy excerpt. (Question: Does Chafets also park Limbaugh's cars and pick him up at the airport?)

Even more Chafets in the Times? Okay. But this is where it gets interesting. In today's Times, Janet Maslin reviews Chavet's man crush bio and announces it is (surprise!) just awful. Maslin's language is unusually sharp for the Times book review (Chafets is dismissed as a “cheerleader” suffering a case of Stockholm syndrome), and she leaves no doubt that Chafets hasn't written a Limbaugh biography. Instead, he's written a 229-page, thumb-sucking Limbaugh press release.

So yes, the Chavets book is quite bad. Can Times editors now please explain why they have devoted so much space over the years to Chafets and his slobbering, star-struck passages?