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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.
(Page 2 of 2)
Even Reagan raised taxes to reduce deficits! [This is a first grade teacher doing show-and-tell.]. He also called ketchup a vegetable, but you’ll learn about that at lunch.
So is this a satire on what radicalized teachers would really like to teach their students? (Not that they don’t already fill them with lefty propaganda anyway.). Or is it a “Gee-wouldn’t-it-be-great-if-we-could-really-tell-them-the-truth” kind of in-joke? Your guess is as good as mine. After all, these “obvious” truths are all just liberal shibboleths.
So why go through all this? Well, because every once in a while there’s a gem. This week it was economics reporter Catherine Rampell’s story on pg. 6 entitled “Why Washington Really Likes Itself.” It seems that the Gallup Poll takes a daily reading on how people feel about the economy. They subtract the negative responses from the positive and come up with a number called the “Economic Confidence Index.” The latest results show that every state has a negative confidence rating, ranging from -14 in North Dakota to -44 in West Virginia, with a national median of -30.
However, there’s one jurisdiction that has a positive response — the District of Columbia. There the reading is +11. 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. (The survey only polls those who are employed, which tells you a lot.). And who can argue with them? With the healthcare industry getting to relocate in Washington, with the EPA gearing up to shut down 20 percent of the nation’s power plants, with the Dodd-Frank regulations waiting to be written, with the bureaucracy having grown 10 percent since Obama arrived in office, and with Virginia congressmen holding seminars on how to apply for federal jobs, what more could there be to celebrate?
I think this story should be the top headline of every newspaper in America. It explains everything that’s wrong with the country. Hooray for the New York Times!
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!