This image was lost some time after publication, but you can still view it here.

One of the problems with spending all day focused on media news and amusing ephemera is that we don't actually flip through the real, print Times till we're on the train heading out at night. And so, somehow, it wasn't until after we'd finished Gawking for the day that we discovered William Sloane Coffin had died. Coffin was Yale's chaplain from 1958 to 1976, and he was a leading voice in the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam struggles. We're neither Yalies nor of the Vietnam generation, but we know of Coffin as one of the great liberal heroes of the last half-century. He was our kind of guy, as we understand it — a smart, tough New Yorker who fought the good fight. It'd be nice to have more of those these days.

[Image from The Smoking Gun.]

Rev. William Sloane Coffin Dies at 81; Fought for Civil Rights and Against a War [NYT]