Editors’ Note: A million years ago, the New York Times decided that its readers deserved an advocate who would review their concerns about its work product, investigate, and report their findings. It worked well — for the readers that is. After a few years, the Times mandarins decided that it no longer needed any critique of its work, presumably because in their minds it was flawless. So they s***tcanned the public editor and everything worked out great, for the easily bruised sensibilities of Times hacks, that is.
For the rest of us, not so much. It turns out the Times gets stuff wrong. A lot. For that reason, at least one former public editor, the formidable Margaret Sullivan, has continued her fearless criticism in The Guardian. To further assist her and others, the Spy has appointed its own Meta-Content Generator, A.J. Liebling, to serve as the Times Public Editor in Exile. Today he takes a look at the Editorial Page or whatever the f*** they are calling it now.
By A.J.Liebling
Meta-Content Generator
The collapse of The Washington Post Editorial Page into a thinly-disguised agitprop outlet for Rocketman Jeff Bezos's wet dream of plutocrat supremacy over the entire universe has had its inevitable results: anyone who had anything intelligent to say (e.g., Catherine Rampell or Eugene Robinson) has lit out for the territories and no one takes it seriously anymore.
Imagine looking at the wreckage of a once if not great at least pretty good newspaper and saying, “Cut me a slice of that!”
Enter King Arthur XVI, the highly-qualified supremo of The New York Times, who obtained his post through the usual triumph of meritocracy: from daddy. Having purged his Editorial Page of know-nothing hacks who won only one Nobel Prize, like Paul Krugman, he and his minions seem intent to turn the op-ed page into a vast wasteland of right-wing talking points.
His all-dud line up of reactionary white guys – Bretbug, St. David Brooks, Weird Ross Douthat, National Review Dave, and Six-Months Tom Friedman – provides a firm foundation of skippable content. This leaves the Times Opinion Page with exactly two readable columnists: Jamelle Bouie and Michelle Goldberg (at least when she's not transphobia-curious).
Over the past week King Arthur's pages have produced a bounty of clangers. Let's look at a few of the worst.
Let's start with one of the easiest targets: the ever sententious and ever wrong St. David Brooks. He put down his fancy-shmancy soprassata sub this week and explained why he is not a liberal. (Like anyone asked.)
Professor Driftglass took this apart so beautifully we can only quote him in awe.
First he points out that St. David's criticism might better be directed at the saint in the mirror:
Let's start in 2003, when Brooks was a full-throated cheerleader for the Bush administration’s bloody debacle. Liberals who warned it was a disaster in the making were dismissed by Brooks as unserious, soft, elitist, stupid, parochial, un-American dopes who refused to “fully grasp” the urgent reality of WMDs that never fucking existed, in a war we never should have fought, brought to us by a regime who lied us into it.
And when it all fell apart, from Brooks, no apologies, no retractions. Just shuffle on along to the next heap of steaming Conventional Wisdom. And the next. And the next...
He then places St. David's intellectual enterprise in its correct context: a 40-year bad-faith effort to falsely equate white racist plutocratic anti-democratic Republican policies with moderate Democratic policy initiatives like health insurance for all, expanding opportunities for victims of racism and bigotry, or spending on clean energy:
Brooks' columns during the Trump era have been a masterclass in denial, obfuscation, and finger-wagging at the wrong goddamn people. Faced with open fascism, Brooks scolds liberals for being too mean, too smug, too coastal, too online. “Populists are angry because of liberal condescension,” he opined, as though Nazis needed our hugs. Meanwhile, liberals correctly called Trump an existential threat. Brooks squinted real hard and decided the real problem was college kids on Twitter. For Brooks, this is what passes for “grasping reality.”
And now, after decades of being wrong about everything -- literally everything -- David Brooks climbs atop his Times soapbox to inform us that he can’t be a liberal because liberals don’t “fully grasp reality.” ...This is the captain of the Titanic scolding the passengers for not steering the ship correctly.
There's really nothing left of St. David after that demolition. So let's see if Brooks is the exception or the rule of bad-faith Times inanity.
Can you guess the answer? Let's turn to another Times op-ed black hole of nonsense, that fearless advocate of free speech and Bibi Netanyahu, Bretbug:
If bad-faith reactionary Republicans like Bretbug (or their equally dim but marginally less evil both-sider colleagues like Bruni) are going to condition their support of Democrats on “finding” one who adopts his hard-right Likudnik opinions, then they’re really not concerned about the Republican coup against American democracy, are they?
Surely the Times balances these weak-thinking hacks with sparkling guest authors.
Not so, and stop calling us Shirley.
Here's a recent offering from a man named Charles Munger who heads up an organization that opposes California's effort to offset the Texas gerrymander with one of its own:
Who is Charles Munger, you may ask. According to the Times Op-Ed editors:
He's a few other things as well, including one of the heirs to his late daddy's multi-billion dollar fortune made by finagling with Warren Buffett over many decades. It's just barely possible that some lucky kid who inherited a giganto wad of pelf might have a vested interested in Republican success. Do Times readers deserve to know this? According to King Arthur XVI, such superfluous information would just clutter their minds.
Of course, if the lucky underserving winners of inherited wealth who now spend their days shilling for the political order that allows them to hold on to their ill-gotten gains do not persuade, perhaps the Times can interest you in a non-billionaire shill for that same order.
Twice in one week, the Times graced us with musings of one Nicole Gelinas. Here she is complaining that the reason for Zohran Mamdani's popularity is some sort of creepy “charisma” rather than perhaps the power of his idea that not all New York City government should operate for the benefit of the richest 1% (like Charlie):
And by the way, a sex pest doesn't have a charisma problem. He has a creepiness problem and possibly a criminal justice problem.
Gelinas followed that up with another banger:
Because nothing would ease traffic congestion in Manhattan like unleashing thousands of robocars on the streets to crash into pedestrians and each other.
What Gelinas seems to be mad about is NewYork's brilliantly effective congestion charge, which is bad because it meant that after she was injured she had to pay $25 for a ride share into Manhattan. I certainly hope that when she finally fought her way into the city, she was not forced to wait for two minutes for someone at Duane Reade to open a shampoo cabinet, like her predecessor Pamela Pill.
Who is Gelinas by the way and why do Times Editorial Page editors feature her so prominently? Probably they are impressed by her academic background, as the Dyspeptic Fellow in Urban Affairs at that great academic institution:
Well, if she's good enough for PragerU, the insane agitprop website that features crude animations of Frederick Douglass supporting slavery, she's got to be Times material!
By the way, her other distinguished position is as a propagandist for the right wing bulls**** volcano [Surely, think tank? – Ed.] the Manhattan Institute founded by former Reagan black ops spook Bill Casey. Among other delicts, it has provided a forum and a paycheck for the likes of fascist hatemonger and university destroyer Chris Rufo.
The lavishly financed Manhattan Institute appears to have no difficulty flooding the marketplace of ideas with publications designed to push its warped racist plutocratic views. Why they require the assistance of the Times Editorial Page is a mystery known only to King Arthur XVI.
The likely answer is “balance.” We certainly think that an editorial page should offer a diversity of views, which is why we look forward to columns by democratic socialists and even Marxists. We'll let you know when we see one.
Perhaps the Times was simply auditioning Gelinas to fill the the ferbissiner middle aged woman Op-ed slot from which Pamela Pill was recently ejected. If that was the reason, let's just say that Ms. Gelinas has proven herself to be a worthy successor.
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