The Gray Lady

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There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the coming ascension of Bill Kristol to the august pages of The New York Times.  I’m afraid to say that I mostly agree with Andy Rosenthal (as reported by Editor and Publisher, h/t Atrios), I don’t understand what the fuss is all about.  After all, “We have views on our op-ed page that are as hawkish or more so than Bill”.

If you expect The New York Times  to be a progressive voice championing the values of the “community” they supposedly serve, the citizens of the Metropolitan New York area, they do; but that “community” may not have exactly the demographics you think.  The Gray Lady stands for the truth of the informed insider, the justice of the powerful and connected, and the Wall Street Way.

They are mired in the media madness that traps most of the dead tree dying dinosaurs.  Confronted with their own inevitable extinction as organs of influence they are in denial of the retreat of the ice age, doomed to suffocate under the tangled fur of the web of deceit and lies they have peddled over the last 20 years.

There was a time I’d read 4 or more newspapers a day, The Courant, The Times, The News, and The Stars Hollow Shopper, and consider myself informed.  More than that I’d read the supermarket glossies- Time, Newsweek, and U.S News and World Report.  WCBS Newsradio 88 with traffic and weather together at 8, 18, 28, 38, 48, and 58 minutes past the hour (WINS was first in the format, but not clear channel).

The only ones who survive are WCBS (did I mention traffic and weather together?) and The Stars Hollow Shopper (♥ me some coupons).

The disconnect in the plain reality that my own two eyes show me every single day and the dusty dirty gray tissues stained with blood and other less identifiable and honorable fluids that pile up in our landfills as pristine and unread as the day it was delivered on your doorstep, useful as a stop or for wrapping fish or lining litter boxes and bird cages; has led me to more productive pursuits.

Earlier (but not in the new media of record thank goodness) I mourned the passing of these shambling shadows of former greatness, these future fossils of folly and hubris; now I ignore them as irrelevant when I don’t hunt them for sport.

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  1. Five to one baby

    One in five

    No one here

    Gets out alive

    They’ve got the guns, but

    We’ve got the numbers

    Gonna win, yeah we’re taking over-

    C’mon!

  2. I mind them giving voice to a hawk who has never been right in his whole frikkin life …yet still is allowed to spew his wrongness as if it had some sort of credence or validity.

  3. When I lived in Canada, I read our local paper plus the Globe and Mail ( mildly conservative) and the Toronto Star ( mildly liberal) but like cable news they have become irrelevant to me.

    I got more interesting analysis from half an hour on BBC world news on the radio about the implications for Pakistan than hours of CNN. If I want news about what happens outside of the US I listen to BBC radio or go look at the Guardian on line.

    Because I am not American, the whole New York Times is “the universe” attitude never quite permeated with me. My impression, fair or not, is that the NYT was always quite taken with itself and rather narcissistic.

    In general, since moving here, I have learned that Americans are not interested in news that is not about them anyway. For all I know Canadians were much the same, they were maybe better at pretending to be be interested in the outside world.

  4. we were a New York Herald Tribune family — where Art Buchwald, and I believe Red Smith, got their start.  I started reading the Times also, when it was required by my Fifth Grade teacher, Mrs. Eisen.

    But now, I am sorely tempted to stop subscribing and read it like any other blog on the web.  Aside from Krugman, there’s now bupkis.  (Did you even attempt to read that raving nonsense by Maureen Dowd today?).

    • Nordic on December 30, 2007 at 20:07

    I wrote them yesterday.  Here’s what I wrote:


    To: [email protected]

    Cc: [email protected]

    Subject: you must be joking

    You’re giving Bill Kristol a gig as a columnist?

    And this is NOT a joke?

    Could you please inform your readers as to one time that Bill Kristol has ever been right about ANYTHING?

    The man is an utter fool, and a dangerous one to boot.

    It’s pathetic, it’s suspect, and it’s insulting that you would even CONSIDER giving him a voice at the NY Times.

    Why in the world would you do it unless:

    a.  He’s a close personal friend (in which case I would never want to read you again.  Yuck!)

    b.  You agree with his “views” (in which case your judgment is so psychotically flawed that I would never want to read you again).

    c.  Somebody’s paying you to do so (which I know sounds paranoid but I’m looking for ANY reasons that make any sense).

    Please wipe that smarmy smile off his face and FIRE HIM pre-emptively.  (I understand he’s into that pre-emptive stuff.)   He’s already made a mockery of the United States and now he’s about to do it to the New York Times.

    Puh-leeeeze!

    To be blunt:  He’s a quasi-fascist little weasel who’s never had to work a day in his life, following in his equally wrong-headed Daddy’s footsteps.

    What are you people smoking over there!!??

  5. it is obvious (to me anyway and the way my mind works) that the taking on of Kristol as a columnist is a direct response to Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of the Wall Street Journal.  They have already let their op-ed columnists out of the ‘Select’ cages as a first response, this is a second salvo.

    Makes total sense to me in the dynamics of the scramble for ad revenue.  I just don’t understand the naivete of the progressive community at times. If people want to read progressive opinions reads the Nation, stick with their predictable blogs, who are doing the same thing   the MSM  does,  appeal to their select audiences, because the reality is that once they diverge they start to lose audience.

    I only wish I could kick my own addiction, it is beginning to really get to me and i am starting to lash out instead of trying to remain reasonable and tolerant.

  6. I found a lot of interesting conversations regarding Docudharma on the internet.  The following post however really blew my socks off:

    The good site Docudharma.Com

    Take 5 minutes if you can, it may give everyone some new life.  

    • kj on December 30, 2007 at 21:52

    is pretty much it, for me.  Not to say NYT and WaPo headlines aren’t scanned on occasion, if mostly to satisfy curiosity about what isn’t being covered.  

  7. How they used to try to charge you for their wonderful content?  And then after a while (a year or two?) they gave up and made it free.  And they even refunded my dime.  Can you smell the desperation in that?  And can you sense the bad marketing advice that went into that bonkers decision?

    And now this.  Thank goddess they’re not trying to sell this sob to us.  He sucks.  I won’t read his stuff.  But for the Times it’s already too late.   The paper is already permeated with the rotten, morbid stink of a dying organ.  Maybe they think the outrage will sell papers.  That would be stupid, and it wouldn’t be the first mistake they’ve made in trying to sell papers.  Simple fact: they’re dying, they know it, and they have no way to save themselves.  I’m waving good bye as I type.

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