Posted on 01/24/2015 9:31:07 AM PST by Kaslin
I have been a loyal reader of the New York Times for decades, and I rely upon The Grey Lady for the news. Although it is the flagship paper of American Liberalism, it is also the paper of record, and at least in their international reporting their reporters usually get the facts straight. But the editorial pages of the Times are an entirely different story. I read the op-eds neither for edification nor for enlightenment (as their authors surely expect I should) but rather for cheap laughs. And in that spirit I want to offer Townhall readers a weekly review of the most ridiculous nonsense and even outright BS that the Times deems to publish in its august pages.
Literally, when I read most of the NYT house op-ed writers, I find myself laughing out loud, as in “WTF? How can someone really write something this inane and idiotic?" It’s a guilty little pleasure of mine, but not one I waste a lot of time on. Of course, the NYT publishes writers who are almost always predictably liberal and who reliably subscribe to Eastern Establishment Conventional Wisdom. But if you read regularly enough, you realize very quickly that their writers are almost always saying the same thing, over and over--literally. And so once you read the first paragraph of a column, you can pretty much recite the rest of the piece from memory.
Paul Krugman is the Princeton economist who is the darling of the Left. Krugman is an ultra-orthodox Keynesian liberal who has unlimited faith in the blessing of government spending and easy money. And he is a serial plagiarist of his own op-ed pieces. For the last seven years, almost every column he’s written has been devoted to one theme and one theme only: Austerity Doesn’t Work, Deficit Spending Does. And he shamelessly copies over and over and over not only the same argument, but even the same words, practically verbatim. Professor Krugman, I respect the fact you got a Nobel, but really, I got your point after about five columns. Isn’t 300 plus a bit much to make the same point?
Charles Blow also has one column that he writes over and over: Life Is Unfair For Black People in America. He is also fond of referring to his long suffering family and his hardscrabble youth back in the bayous of Louisiana. For example, this week his column is devoted to the pressing problems of his hometown, population 1000, and a potential environmental risk posed by a nearby defunct ammo dump being decommissioned by the Army. And Blow’s major complaint: it’s “unfair” that the Army located a large ammo dump in rural Louisiana instead of in Manhattan or Seattle. Sure, they should have put it somewhere heavily populated, preferably by rich white people or mean ole’ corporations, just to be “fair.”
Maureen Dowd also has basically one column, which is "Look How Clever I Am." She sees her self-anointed task as skewering the powerful in DC and NYC, and she has two time-worn techniques for doing so. One is to imagine the interior thoughts of, say, John Boehner. And predictably enough, her version of what John Boehner really thinks makes him look like a pompous and vain fool. Her other technique is to combine literary allusions, usually to Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and truly awful puns to show off her erudition. She is so busy trying to mock other people she doesn’t realize just how pompous, vain and foolish she sounds.
The Times also publishes some real gems from guest columnists, like the memorable piece by Fatina Abdrabboh, a student at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. And Fatina’s urgent op-ed message to the World? When working out in the Harvard gym, she felt people were looking at her funny because she was wearing a hijab while running on the treadmill. During her workout, she dropped her keys on the floor. But then Al Gore, also working out that day, bent over and picked up her keys, and thus restored her faith in America. Really, you can’t make this stuff up.
Almost all NYT columnists are died-in-the-wool liberals. The lonely exception is David Brooks, who is an interesting writer, but I am not sure someone who openly admires and likes Obama is representative of the conservative world view. Really, for the NYT, a “conservative” is someone like Brooks who likes Obama but wishes Obama’s policies were a little less liberal or left radical. So much for diversity of opinion.
So I hope to give you a weekly round-up highlighting the most outrageous falsehoods, most ignorant assertions, and the most hilarious non sequiturs from the NY Times op-ed pages. That way you can have a few cheap laughs, without actually having to endure reading two full pages of mind-bendingly dreary blather every day.
The author does not mention reading the comments to the editorials.
Interestingly, most regular readers and commenters of the NY Times do not drink the Kool-Aid. Krugman probably has the biggest fan club, but at least half the comments say he is an idiot and don’t know what he is talking about. For Blow, Kristoff, and Friedman, it is more like 75%. It must be discouraging for liberals if their core audience no longer supports them.
Nonsense!
“It must be discouraging for liberals if their core audience no longer supports them.”
So If I understand you correctly, NY liberals have been “inbreeding” (not unlike their Muslim “brothers”) for so long that they have succeeded in driving down their IQ’s into at least the double digit range, thereby abolishing any “powers of discernment” they may have ever had. Is that it?
Why? There really is no reason to do so anymore.
The only news from the NYT I care about:
1) how much their ad revenue is shrinking
2) how much their subscription base is shrinking
3) how much their workforce is shrinking
But don’t tell them that.
The NYT’s readers think they are the most intelligent people in any room they enter.
I read the comments because it gives me such a good laugh to read the horrible writing as they try to make themselves sound as intelligent and sophisticated as possible.
“But don’t tell them that.
The NYT’s readers think they are the most intelligent people in any room they enter.”
NYC is such an insular place politically that they can continue to operate in their “group think” mentality and get away with it. The “real world” for them is bounded by a couple of rivers that they seldom cross. Funny thing is it takes nearly 40,000 cops to keep them from killing each other.
‘’Newspaper of record’’ did not originate with the editors.
According to Times archivist Lora Korbut, the phrase first appeared in 1927, when the paper sponsored an essay contest to promote its annual index. Entrants were asked to elaborate on the contest’s title, ‘’The Value of The New York Times Index and Files as a Newspaper of Record.’’ (This probably did not attract as many contestants as ‘’The Apprentice.’’) Somehow what began as a promotion for an index service soon adhered to the skin of the paper itself, perhaps because the meticulous presentation of the acts of officialdom was long one of the ways The Times distinguished itself in an eight-newspaper town.
the paper of record?
The paper of broken record is more like it.
Here are some examples, and they are just for this month
Brooks is PBS' idea of "balance."
I often tell the story — I used to listen to NPR. They had EJ Dionne and David Brooks discuss the issues of the day. EJ Dionne was (of course) solidly for Obama. Now, once in a while, Dionne would try to be reasonable and he would allow that (maybe) Obama made a small mistake here or there. Then Brooks would give the Republican perspective. He was ALWAYS more supportive of Obama than Dionne. Obama, in his opinion, seemed to be a living god.
I think the reason that LIBERALS tend to appear to have the upper hand is because they control the PA system and the microphone.
Simply put: They have been put in the select positions to expound their LIBERAL LUNACY thus making it appear they're POV is much stronger and dominate than it actually is.
Most of these people fall into a very simple category:
"There are those who do not know and think they do."
Well, in that case, the NY Times is foolish to allow their readers to respond to these editorials. It shows how little support their positions really have.
On the other hand, it does bring in the subscriptions. Many people subscribe to be able to read the comments and reply themselves.
I use a different nic there.
Yet, they continue to spew and expound the same old sorry bull$hit.
Maybe they should come up with an app where their viewers could say they are idiots, and the answers would appear on the screen.
That would attract many viewers, I would imagine.
[Charles Blow also has one column that he writes over and over: Life Is Unfair For Black People in America.]
It doesn’t matter what Blow writes in The Times. He is the paper’s token African American columnist. A computer couldn’t produce more predictable “insights.”
On General Principle, one does not give financial support to deadly and murderous enemies. I don't care HOW occasionally a reporter reports an international fact. They are the enemy. Period.
But even scarier is that my kids don’t read ANY newspaper. They deem them outdated. My daughter said no one will be reading newspapers in 100 years. But she believes EVERYTHING she reads on the internet. Well at least newspapers are dated and recorded and files are kept and names of people who write the articles are kept. With the internet there is nothing of that. I find that even scarier. I can’t get our kids, who are in their 30s, grown, out on their own, to read a newspaper, or to vote anymore!
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