Can Just Anyone Claim to Be an Ethicist?

The NYTimes word-putter-together currently so described seems to be a sports and arts journalist?

In any case, he certainly seems a step-up from the last one whom I read with any frequency, who was a comic, or something of the sort, and fairly ignorant on most issues, and very inconsistent in the application of his "principles."

The column today addresses a subject that is kinda ironic for the Times to address, at least from the point of view of a Roman Catholic.

It deals with the credentials one needs for being a weather forecaster, (since there is little expectation that that anyone is usually, or even often correct, regardless of advanced degrees in meteorology, the question seems moot, but I digress.)

I don't recall who, but some blogger, in answer to the Times' insistence on humoring people who were not to proclaim themselves "Roman Catholic priests" despite the Roman Catholic Church's holding that these presbyteral wannabes were no such thing, wrote a very funny piece claiming his identity as a New York TImes journalist, despite the Times' refusal to pay him a salary, or give him a byline.

'Cause isn't that how it works?

And me?
I'm the Queen of Romania,.