NY Times Front Page: 'Gruff' Ted Cruz a ‘Bomb-Thrower...Grating and Pompous’ Clown

NewsBusters ^ | December 11, 2015

[Isara]

In his Thursday front-page New York Times profile of "gruff" Sen. Ted Cruz on the trail in Iowa political reporter Matt Flegenheimer took pains to portray the Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate as an unlikeable, socially awkward “bomb-thrower” ideologue (“appraised as grating and pompous as a matter of bipartisan consensus”) in “Cruz the Gruff Taking a Turn At Being Nice.” The online headline was no less hostile: "After Making Enemies, Ted Cruz Tries to Make Friends.” Never mind that his poll numbers show he's gaining a lot of supporters in Iowa.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders suffer heavy deficits in the charisma department, but don’t get personally attacked for it on the front page the Times. Flegenheimer’s opinionated profile piece, which characterized Cruz’s demeanor as growling and his rhetoric as “apocalyptic,” was more suitable for a guest essay in the magazine than an ostensibly balanced front-page news story from one of the paper’s stable of political reporters.

Senator Ted Cruz had been at it for several minutes, offering handshakes and uneasy smiles, when he encountered an apparent holdout in the crowd.

Mr. Cruz squatted. He squinted. He had heard something about a toy collection. And so, about three feet above the floor of an American Legion hall here, the senator began his questioning.

“You have lots of toys?” he asked 3-year-old Isaac Josselyn. Nothing.

“What’s your favorite toy?” More silence.

“Do you have a dinosaur?’”

“Do you have a fire truck?”

“You have a toy monkey?”

Isaac stared blankly.

“A toy monkey!” Mr. Cruz shouted, revving for a punch line no one understood. “You know what that means? You get to be the monkey in the house!”

The Times trotted out its favorite hostile description of aggressive conservative reformers. Evidently there’s a new “bomb-thrower” on the Hill to take over from Newt Gingrich.

Less than two months before voting begins, Mr. Cruz, of Texas, has vaulted into the Republican presidential race’s top tier as the consummate Washington bomb thrower -- wagging fingers, pounding lecterns and gleefully accumulating enemies in both parties.

Now comes the hard part: making friends.

As his crowds swell in Iowa and he battles with Donald J. Trump to lock down the party’s more conservative voters, Mr. Cruz -- appraised as grating and pompous as a matter of bipartisan consensus -- is working diligently at the simple task of establishing human connections.

It is a bigger lift than it might seem. Mr. Cruz appears keenly aware of his charm deficit, acknowledging in private that his retail campaigning skills can lag behind his grasp of policy. At a debate in October, he became perhaps the first candidate in modern history to declare himself unappealing bar company.

....

His vocabulary can seem culled from another era, flecked with flourishes like “Jiminy Cricket!”

And Bernie Sanders’ rhetoric isn’t retro?

He occasionally tells uncomfortable sex jokes, recalling the 50-cent condoms available in his college bathroom or musing about his great-grandparents’ 17 children: “They were Irish Catholic. They didn’t know what else to do on a Saturday night.”

Flegenheimer managed to hold Cruz’s facial features against him.

As cameras click, his lower lip quivers as he smiles, as if allergic to the top, settling into a sort of smirk. His eyes narrow in parallel.

Event attendees are almost universally grateful to meet Mr. Cruz, admiring the fights he has waged in Washington and his frequent invocation of his faith. Still, even firm supporters often strain to define his personal appeal.

....

A Cruz spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, disputed her boss’s uncharitable self-assessment from the debate, citing enjoyable social outings with him. She suggested that Americans would increasingly come to appreciate his personality, and his patience.

....

Elsewhere, though, Mr. Cruz’s disposition has rarely been described warmly. A college roommate has said he would prefer as president anyone else in the United States, chosen at random from a phone book. In 2013, three months into Mr. Cruz’s tenure, Foreign Policy magazine identified him as both “the most hated man in the Senate” and “the human equivalent of one of those flower-squirters that clowns wear on their lapels.”

Flegheimer found fellow Republicans to dismiss Cruz, then revived a silly fake controversy about Cruz allegedly frightening little children via metaphor (which Cruz actually handled pretty well, for such a “growling” awkward guy):

Mr. Cruz has a habit of speaking apocalyptically, even when responding to the questions of children.

In New Hampshire in March, he appeared to rouse a 3-year-old girl when he declared that the world was “on fire.”

“The world’s on fire?” she asked.

“The world is on fire, yes,” Mr. Cruz replied. “Your world is on fire. But you know what? Your mommy’s here and everyone’s here to make sure that the world you grow up in is even better.”

He concluded the hostile profile with a vignette from Des Moines to underline the paper’s theme of Cruz’s alienation from society.

As the room began to empty, an 8-year-old named Grace presented Mr. Cruz a chance at redemption with the nonvoting set. He asked her age and complimented her hat, observing that it featured a character from the movie “Frozen.”

“Can I get a fist bump?” Mr. Cruz asked. Grace obliged.

“Whoosh!” the senator said, stretching his fingers on contact to simulate an explosion.

Grace walked off smiling. The space was nearly bare now, and an aide signaled that it was safe to wrap up.

“Excellent,” Mr. Cruz said, finding himself alone again.

[Isara]

Ted Cruz to the New York Times: "Thanks for the endorsement!"

[Common Sense 101]

Hey New York Slimes.... Project much?

[Parley Baer]

The nyt can go to hell.

[exit82]

Grating and pompous clown?

Hillary is the first person I thought of.

[depressed in 06]

I call him Mr. President.

[Steely Tom]

The limousine liberals around the world - in the MSM, government and big corporations - have joined, up using their private means of communication and travel, to create a virtual Elysium here on Earth.

They do not live among or even have any contact with ordinary people. They live in gated, guarded environments in which they feel utterly invulnerable, just as if they lived on a self-sufficient satellite in orbit high above us.

They actually believe this, and they think ordinary people are taken in by the nonsense propaganda BS they spout for public consumption.

[McGruff]

If the NY Times said something nice about Ted Cruz I’d be concerned. He must be ok.

[TTFlyer]

Hmm, the NYT and FNC’s Greg Gutfeld share the same opinion of Ted Cruz.

[Da Coyote]

A pompous clown beats the incumbent talking anus and the alternate ignorant lying witch-bitch.

[rightwingcrazy]

“’Bomb-Thrower...Grating and Pompous’ Clown”

In my view, when you’re reduced to name-calling, you’ve lost the argument.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

They accidentally typed the name “Ted Cruz” when I know they meant “Barak Obama” and “Hillary Clinton.”

[ExCTCitizen]

Another front page editorial, Slimes? Why not put ‘We endorse Bernie Sanders/Hillary Clinton in 2016’ instead of ‘All the BS fit to print’?

[Georgia Girl 2]

Thank God for the bomb throwers. :-)

[Calpublican]

Good News! He’s scaring them.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Grating and pompous clown.
""Hillary is the first person I thought of."

I thought of Hillary, Obama, Gore, Kerry, Bernie Sanders, Harry Reid, Stephen Colbert, Bill Nye, Tom Brokaw, Bill Mahar, Jon Stewart, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, and Thom Hartmann.

[Yosemitest]

CRUZ: Loretta Lynch told a gathering the day after the San Bernardino attack
that her department would move to prosecute anyone whose, quote, "anti-Muslim rhetoric," quote, "edged towards violence."
The day after a terror attack, 14 innocent lives snuffed away.
As has been the case all too often in the Obama administration,
we may be facing once again the weaponization of one of our own government agencies,
deployed not to protect Americans,
but to force them to submit
to the Obama administration's code
of what is and is not acceptable speech.

RUSH: Heck, I'd go even farther than that.
The day after 14 Americans are wiped out and others are wounded by Islamic extremists,
the attorney general warns the American people
any criticism of those people and we're gonna prosecute you.
Anything you say that might lead to any violence, we're gonna come after you.
"Well, wait a minute,
what about the people that just killed 14 Americans?"
"Well, they were radicalized.
It wasn't their fault,"
or some such drivel.


"The Republican establishment has more experience electing Democrats than I do.
They've shown they know how to do it, in presidential races. "



Sen. Cruz: The Real Story of What Is Happening in Washington ( 59:47 )
Published on Sep 28, 2015

It really IS worth your time.

[Steve_Seattle]

Every time I’ve seen him on TV, Cruz comes across as affable and well-spoken. He does not come across as angry.

[DoughtyOne]

...the NYT is an unlikeable socially awkward "bomb-thrower" rag ("appraised as grating and pompous as a matter of bipartisan consensus") in "NYT the Gruff Taking a Turn At Being Nice." The online headline was no less hostile: "After Making Enemies, the NYT Tries to Make Friends." Never mind that it's subscription numbers show it's gaining no supporters anywhere.

If their version of this showed on the front page, that paper is now middle school tragic. Just wow...

[JimSEA]

They actually have the nerve to call anyone pompous when Obama is their president. A little irony?

[Steve_Seattle]

"Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders suffer heavy deficits in the charisma department."

For some strange reason, even some conservatives think that Obama has charisma and eloquence. I've never seen it. He is petulant, preachy, snarky, and he delivers un-memorable speeches in that clipped, flat, half-sentence-at-a-time monotone, as his head swivels back and forth like he's watching a tennis match somewhere above the horizon.