IT’S COME TO THIS: “Want to know what it looks like to be über-woke? Look no further than Entertainment Weekly and New York Times contributor Rebecca Theodore, who dropped a hell of a bomb this morning regarding the upcoming film adaptation of “Murder on the Orient Express.’” A person whose Twitter handle is “Film Fatale” and employed by Entertainment Weekly, Forbes, Roger Ebert.com, and the New York Times actually tweeted this:

Back in 2001, during the very early days of Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds advised pioneering bloggers, “Any time you start to doubt yourself, and wonder if you’re fit for the big leagues of American thought and opinion, you can just read The Times and be thankful that the standards of the big leagues aren’t so high.”

And the Gray Lady certainly hasn’t upped her standards since.

It’s true, as Matthew Continetti wrote in 2014 that “it is to high school, I think, that the New York Times is most aptly compared,” except that when I was in high school, I’m pretty sure most of us already knew where the Orient Express train ran (hint: not to China!) and the characters in Agatha Christie’s novel and its various film adaptations. And as Michael Medved tweets, “The Orient Express is based on a novel & previous film about a famous train. Sorry, trains don’t have ethnicity — either Asian or otherwise.”

Exit Question to Theodore from Iowahawk:

Hey, this is a person employed by the New York Times after all. In other words, the verdict is still out on this query.

Unrelated to today’s beclowning by a Timesperson, but in regards to this latest attempt to remake Murder on the Orient Express, I’ll be curious to read the reviews of Kennth Branagh’s version. Though I doubt I can accept anyone other than David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, and he’s already made Orient Express, an excellent if unremittingly grim 2010 segment of his long-running series for Britain’s ITV.

UPDATE (5:56 PM Eastern): It’s a mystery worthy of Hercule Poirot himself as to why Theodore has made her Twitter account private…