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.
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!
