From Bad to Worse at the Times
So, Bill Keller, who as executive editor presided over the descent of The New York Times from an important left-wing soap box to a nearly bankrupt left-over left-wing irrelevancy, is stepping down. He’s not leaving the Times, though. Heaven forfend. He will henceforth—connoisseurs of fatuousness take note: this Bud’s for you!—yes, henceforth Bill Keller will devote himself to writing for our former paper of record. We obviously have a lot to look forward to.
But the real news is Keller’s replacement: it’s Jill Abramson, former “investigative reporter,” i.e., the woman who co-authored, Strange Justice, a despicable hatchet job on Justice Clarence Thomas in the 1990s. (Her co-author, by the way, was Jane “aren’t-the-Koch-Brothers-awful” Mayer).
Aside: Why, I wonder, did I keep thinking about Macbeth? Where was the third weird sister?
Anyway, the piece the Times ran about the succession was plenty emetic—my favorite bit was Abramson’s declaration that becoming executive editor of a superannuated business novelty was like “ascending to Valhalla.” (Well, there is something posthumous about the whole scenario, but I don’t think that’s quite what she meant.)
The very best line about the whole development, however, did not appear in the Times. I saw it in the ever-percipient Micahel Walsh’s column on NRO:
“In my house growing up, the Times substituted for religion,” she said. “If the Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”
There you have it, folks. Upper-West-Side-Limousine-Liberalism as your “substitute for religion.” Almost comically biased reporting as “the absolute truth.” Don;t say you weren’t warned.
UPDATE:: Wait!! Shame is not dead. That bit about how the Times had “substituted for religion” etc. was in the original story. Obviously, they ran out of airsickness bags and so decided to scrub that little bijou.
Comparing the New York Times to Valhalla may not be a good idea. Look what happened to the home of the gods at the end of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
How appropriate. Its Gotterdammerung – the twilight of the Gods,
But the good news is having a credulous boob in charge of a fountain of credulous boobery will likely do nothing to reverse the course it’s now on, the road to irrelevance.
The perfect appointment, absolutely perfect! The sheep, the sheep dogs, and the shepherds slowly congeal into a single, undifferentiated herd. Will there be a Herdendaemmerung? We must hope.
The end is near! Sign up for your NYT subscription now!
One of the most egregious recent malfeasances of The New York Times was their leading participation in the mainstream media’s unvetted coronation of Barack Obama in 2008.
Virtually the entire paper trail of Barack Obama’s existence continues to remain deeply hidden away in a tight shroud of secrecy.
Quite apart from the issue of any sort of birth certificates, real or imagined, genuine or forged, is the fact that Barack Obama’s school records, SAT and LSAT scores, college and law school admission records and scholarship paperwork and grade transcripts and thesis papers, medical records, passport history, Illinois state senate tenure records, presidential campaign foreign donor lists, complete White House visitor logs and many other relevant records and documents have all never been released or allowed to be subjected to any sort of scrutiny.
The Obama 2008 campaign and subsequent administration have to date spent a considerable sum on legal fees, estimated in the millions of dollars, to fight Freedom of Information Act filings and other motions and requests to examine some of this material. The powerful international law firm Perkins Coie, the counsel of record to the Democratic National Committee, has been their primary provider of these services and continues in that role.
It had become customary in postwar modern times for presidential candidates to allow for the release and scrutiny of the substantive body of their personal records and credentials, up until 2008 largely because of a strong interest from the mainstream media.
The appearance of Barack Obama upon the national political stage changed that tradition, and he was given an astonishing special exception from this important unofficial practice that American voters had come to expect.
In their eagerness to “make history” by helping to elect The Chosen One as the first black president, the mainstream media failed in their essential national responsibility to report with thorough impartial objectivity. They ignored their duty to search for the truth and should be regarded with disdain by all people who value information in a free society.
Democratic incumbents at all levels of government, as well as rank and file voters, might well demand to know exactly how Nanacy Pelosi and Harry Reid and the rest of their party leadership allowed a person who was clearly given only the most cursory sort of vetting to become their presidential nominee.
The past associations, ideological convictions, behavioral influences and ongoing relationships of the man of mystery known as Barack Hussein Obama are matters of great importance to a vast growing number of people who just want to understand the truth.
This is the sort of information about their presidential candidates that American voters believe they have the need, and the right, to know.
The sort of information that Obama and his handlers, and organizations such as The New York Times, actively continue to keep from them.
Is the NYT maybe courting more potential female readers in a why-not, maybe-last-ditch effort to boost circulation?
The reasons not to read the NYT, formerly as long as my arm, have now reached the knee.
Abramson sounds like a strange, brain-washed cult member or a religious zealot, rather than a manager or a journalist. I am sure that is exactly what Pinch and Soros were looking for.
We are about to see the NYT take a sharp turn for the worse.
But I really want to know why Keller was abruptly demoted. I sense there is a really juicy (and probably appalling) story there.
The NYT is just selling its audience to its advertisers. They don’t do any meaningful investigative journalism or (apparently) fact checking.
How in the world did we end up in Camel Lot instead of Camelot?