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Eminentoes
Adventures in Timesland
The paper’s new “Sunday Review” section is beyond parody. Yet every once in a while it produces a gem.
For years the Sunday New York Times’ “Week in Review” was a discard pile for beat reporters’ stories that were too opinionated or irrelevant to put anywhere else in the paper. Then about two months ago, shortly after Bill Keller announced he’s turning the paper over to Jill Abramson, the section was revamped into something called the “Sunday Review” that is even longer and more boring. It’s enough to ruin any Sunday.
This week’s edition, for example, kicks off with an awkwardly titled story by Frank Bruni, “The Fall This Summer.” It starts out with something about eating insects, but the point he arrives at is that things aren’t going so well in this country. (Remember, this is NewYorkTimesLand, where the view is from a cabana in the Hamptons.) Bruni settles on the word “down” as his starting point — “drawdown,” as in Afghanistan, “downturn,” as in economy, “downgrade” as in bond rating. Then he ends with this gem: “Where are Batman, Superman and Spidey when the economy is in free fall, the president needs an emergency gumption transfusion (or maybe spinal replacement surgery) and Grover Norquist must be vanquished?”
Inside a story called “Give Pacifism a Chance” occupies a full page. Opposite that is “Glittering Rage,” which tells how dumping boxes of gold sprinkles on conservatives such as Newt Gingrich has become “the latest act of political theater from the L.G.B.T. (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights movement.” (Gay, in case you haven’t noticed, is getting kind of old at the Times, what with gay marriage legalized and all. The paper is now focusing on transgendering and runs at least one story a week on someone who is making the surgical leap.)
On the op-ed page, the peripatetic Nicholas D. Kristof just returned for a brief stay from the distant parts of the world. Usually he’s telling us how many women were raped this week in Rwanda. But summer has brought him back to his hometown of Yamill, Oregon, where he finds people are more concerned about — would you believe it? — jobs!
I can’t help feeling that national politicians and national journalists alike have dropped the ball on jobs. Some 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed — that’s more than 16 percent of the work force — but jobs haven’t been nearly high enough on the national agenda.
Only a globetrotting New York Times reporter in love with his own moral rectitude could write that sentence.
On the back page a trial-lawyer primer makes the case that ugly people are victims of discrimination. Those in the bottom one-seventh of what is generally considered unattractive make 15 percent less than those in the top third. The author takes a typical Times approach:
With all the gains to being good-looking, you would think that more people would get plastic surgery or makeover to improve their looks.… [B]ut studies have shown such refinements make only a small difference.… A more radial solution may be needed: why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals? [What happened to the transgendered?]
Finally, there are things that are simply untranslatable unless you understand NewYorkTimesSpeak. Consider the following. An eight-panel cartoon on pg. 3 entitled “Educating the Obvious” begins with the following observation:
In a rare victory for reality, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that teachers can call creationism “superstitious nonsense,” paving the way for even more reality-based education.
Fair enough. So we don’t have to deal with those Creationists anymore. But then the comic strip goes on with six more panels of NEA-type teachers instructing their classes:
That’s right, kids. Evolution is real. The sky is blue and above it is space, not heaven. [We’re getting very 20th century here.]
Climate change is happening. And if anyone tries to tell you differently, yell “No!” run away and tell a grownup. [Wait a minute, are we making fun of the teachers here?]
Supply side economics doesn’t work. [This is an avuncular professor teaching high school.]. It’s chiefly a way for the wealthy to hoard more money.
[An embarrassed redhead has written on the board, “2 + 2 = Obama’s a Socialist.”] There are two things wrong with that equation, Billy.
About the Author
Green Lantern is the pen-name of an East Coast writer.
Pecos Pete| 8.29.11 @ 8:02AM
"Even with a poverty rate of 18.4 percent, one of the highest in the country, the majority of folks in Washington think everything is hunky-dory."
Huh? D.C. has a poverty rate of 18.4 percent? How did that happen?
grant1863| 8.29.11 @ 10:07AM
Didn't Rome attract a lot of people for bread and circuses? They were unemployed too but fed and entertained. Some things never change.
martin j smith| 8.29.11 @ 9:14AM
The NYT has degerated from a news papaer of dubious distinction to a virtual rag worthy of Nazi or Communist Propaganda sheets.
C. S. P. Schofield| 8.29.11 @ 10:20AM
Nonsense; Propaganda sheets are written to engage the mind of the common man with the narrative of his Masters. They have to be written with sparkle and bounce. The NYT would be a spectacular failure on that level. It is a club newsletter for smug insider twits.
Riff Raff| 8.29.11 @ 10:55AM
In my humble opinion, propaganda is not intended to engage the mind. It is clearly intended to elicit an EMOTIONAL reaction. Mark Antony wasn't trying to debate the morality Caesar's assassins, he was trying to stir up the crowd into vengeance. Goebbels' assertions were intended to stir the emotions of the germanic peoples to unify them against a common (if manufactured) enemy, not logically persuade the population. Michael Moore's movies are described a s "thought-provoking" but this is a conceit of the left. His movies defy logic and clearly focus on generating emotional reactions in his audiences. Respectfully, I must disagree with the notion that propaganda "engages the mind."
Who Knows?| 8.29.11 @ 12:01PM
What a surprise!
Kristof is from my liberal state of Oregon.
Oh well. We, us Oregonians, can be proud to have Kim Strassel, from Banks Oregon, writing for the Wall Street Journal.
PCC| 8.29.11 @ 2:07PM
A comment I posted to this thread several hours ago was blocked and I received a message, purportedly from AmSpec, saying it had been identified as spam by a "third party filter". However, when I emailed the indicated "WilliamsG" email address to assure AmSpec I wasn't a spammer, the email was undeliverable. Strange.
Anyone else ever have a similar experience?
Bill| 8.29.11 @ 2:20PM
On the comic strip, I agree that climate change is happening. Everyone does. What I, and many like me, have trouble with is the idea that climate change is significantly affected by human beings to the extent that modifying human atmospheric effluences will make a difference in climate change.
Bill| 8.29.11 @ 2:31PM
By the way, what if we humans actually CAN change the climate, and then we take steps to lower the temperature of the troposphere, and then it turns out that we've really been in a long-term cooling trend, and have just kicked off the next Ice Age?
Bill| 8.29.11 @ 2:23PM
On the panel "2+ 2 = Obama's a socialist," I doubt that any kid educated outside of a public school would think of such an equivalence, suggesting that liberal resistance to school vouchers is really stupid.
Bill| 8.29.11 @ 2:25PM
How does the teacher know that above the sky there is no Heaven?
Bill| 8.29.11 @ 2:26PM
If supply-side economics is just a way for the wealthy to hoard more money for themselves, what explains the post-Reagan economic boom that lasted for about 15 years?
Bill| 8.29.11 @ 2:27PM
Sorry for the repeated posts: I keep forgetting that conservatives are the Stupid Party, as John Stuart Mill so charmingly put it.
Occam's Tool| 8.29.11 @ 2:31PM
The power to tax is the power to destroy. I therefore fail to see how increasing destructive power on earning potential is supposed to create a more robust economy.
But, then again, I'm not a Liberal. I'm just an ordinary guy who got his MD at age 25.
martin j smith| 8.29.11 @ 3:40PM
The NYT now seems to be written for and read largely by a small group who believe they are better than the 90% of adult voters who do not read that rag. The NYT is NOW total propaganda and all one has to do ( I would not suggest spending one penny on the NYT--perhaps getting it from a recycled paper garbage can ) one can
predict "hit pieces" against Conservatives. One can predict supportive headlines exaggerating positive aspects of even the most negative outcomes in terms of results such an unemployment and other negative economic matters. And, one can predict what issues will not be covered--especially ones that paint a negative picture of the LEFT. One can go on and on to have a general sense about how each NYT
issue will be laid out both in terms of contents, spin and lack of coverage.
Lord Karth| 9.1.11 @ 5:31AM
I must admit that I read the NY Times primarily to see what their editorial/columnist idiots are going to say next. Then I spend the next half-hour or so wondering how said idiots have managed to live as long as they have.
A never-ending source of amazement, they are.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
Dacron Mather| 8.30.11 @ 12:31AM
Why must the strange force that drives The Times to advocate insects as cuisine compel The American Spectator to publish them ?
Bob K.| 8.30.11 @ 1:48AM
Whoever this "Green Lantern" is he is smart to hide his identity. I wouldn't want to let anybody I know that the best thing I could find to write about was stuff like this.
Darragh| 8.30.11 @ 3:38PM
I wondered what was going on with the transgender thing ever since I read the latest from Jennifer Finney Boylan, who has made an entire career out of being Transgender Wo/Man, rather than just another depressed middle aged male professor at a remote college. I live in Maine and wish s/he would just shut up. Anyway, luckily there's always the WSJ "Best of the web" for real amusement.
shipley130| 8.31.11 @ 4:13PM
I think America should focus on getting the confidence index for all those 50 states (or 57 in Obamaland) into positive territory and keep DC in the negative territory.
supra | 10.18.11 @ 1:45AM
Article is brilliant, thank u for sharing with us!