[thucydides]

Bingo, you've got it in what your parents said. I believe most NY Times readers are people with some intellectual pretensions but who do not really think issues through carefully on their own. They see the Times as furnishing a source of authoritative socially acceptable opinions in the "right circles." I don't know how many times I have seen reasonably intelligent people repeating some utterly absurd thing that they have obviously picked up from the Times and accepted without stopping to think. In biblical times, "shibboleths" were passwords used for identification. So too in modern times - positions on issues are used primarily to signal one's membership in the group of good right thinking people. It is pure narcissism - "we agree to these things, we are with the good people who are sophisticated and thoughtful - not like those simple people with bad motives who betray themselves by admitting they diffently about certain issues." In fact, uncritical readership of the Times has become the badge of membership in the class of shallow intellectual wannabes who are in fact profoundly anti-intellectual without realizing it.

[Steve_Seattle]

Very well said. I see these people at the bus stop all the time. They go through life constantly looking over their shoulders to make sure that what they say and think gains approval from the "right" people.

[Steve_Seattle]

And these uncritical New York Times aficianados are the first to criticize Fox viewers as uncritical imbibers of propaganda. But the combative debate-style of Hannity and O'Reilly and Greta is the antithesis of the style of propaganda, in which opposing views are simply not heard.

[mel]

Excellent observation!