Shot: NYT Exec. Editor: Fox News, CNN Campaign Coverage ‘Bad for Democracy.’

Chaser: NYT columnist Thomas Friedman: democracy itself is bad! “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”

Hangover: Then-NYT columnist Frank Rich in 2009: “The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.”

The D.T.s: NYT publisher endorses communist Vietnam: “Pinch was a political activist in the Sixties, and was twice arrested in anti-Vietnam protests. One day, the elder Sulzberger asked his son what Pinch calls, ‘the dumbest question I’ve ever heard in my life.’ If an American soldier runs into a North Vietnamese soldier, which would you like to see get shot? Young Arthur answered, ‘I would want to see the American get shot. It’s the other guy’s country.’ Some Sixties activists have since thought better of their early enthusiasms. Pinch hasn’t. [Emphasis mine; story also reported by the New Yorker–Ed]”

As Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon summed up the Gray Lady a couple of years ago when then-editor Jill Abramson was fired, “I have to say…that scandal confirms one of my pet theories. The theory is this: The men and women who own and operate and produce every day the world’s most important newspaper are basically children.”

All of the above dovetails back to Peggy Noonan’s brilliant recent line: “It’s the big fact of American life now, isn’t it? That we are patronized by our inferiors.”