Not a Destination for Adults
The one-note Times no longer is a comfortable newspaper for grownups. It offers no answers to smart, curious, sophisticated students of current events in search of insight, interpretation and reflective views on policies and leadership. Almost completely lacking in intellectually responsible reporters and commentators, the Times unapologetically recycles a liberal perspective on the days events every morning. Their news stories are filtered through left-wing perspectives. The re-ordered Times staff and apparently the great majority of subscribers are left-wingers. They prefer to talk (loudly) to each other. No dissenters are invited. Reading the embarrassingly puerile self-descriptions of their missions by the 10 Times columnists, I was reminded of my last visit to a kindergarten class. Me, me, me, the children sang out. Most of the 10 essayists sounded as if they were writing for their high school newspaper. They giggled like two 12-year-old boys sharing a naughty joke. If you have been to a home where parents trot out 1, 2 or 3 of their questionably talented children to reluctantly perform for guests, you understand what the Times was doing this morning. The daily Childrens Hour in the Op-Ed section is unworthy of a newspaper that aspires to be classified with the national giants.
The Worst of a Thin Group
Of the 10, Joel Stein, Erin Aubry Kaplan, Rosa Brooks, Meghan Daum and Jonathan Chait are reliably immature in the conduction of their weekly essays. If you were a parent of one of them, you would turn away your face in an attempt to maintain your self-respect. The uselessly silly Mr. Stein wrote, Mostly I write about myself because it is my columns foremost opinion that Im the most fascinating person in the world. The immature, racially illiterate Ms. Aubry Kaplan, a fulltime victim, said, I often write myself into my columns because Im often a part of the problem, or the solution, or, in any case, a character in the narrative Im relating. Neither he nor she quite meets the threshold for introspection. More like brats. Ms. Brooks, who believes all non-conservative women are victims, says, I try to write the kind of columns I like to read columns that surprise readers. She has failed abysmally. Her single note in every essay is human rights. Ms. Daum was the only honest left-wing essayist, admitting that she is a generalist, meaning no area of expertise or vaguely compelling knowledge or writing skill. Fresh off the farm from Iowa or Arkansas, Mr. Chait regularly displays his lack of familiarity with an understanding of how to debate and support his argument beyond contending that he has a good idea. Julie Ryan Green, the Letters Page Editor, watched a vase fall to the floor and shatter when she tried to pass off baloney as the truth. We look for letters with different viewpoints, she wrote. Madam either is willfully or carelessly lying. The last 2 days were typical 18 of the 22 letter-writers endorsed the Times viewpoints. About 96 percent represent the one-note left-wing view of the Times. In their separate, signed pieces, Andres Martinez, the Editorial Page Editor, and Nicholas Goldberg, who edits the facing page, dashed off stream-of-consciousness, surface-level essays intended to explain how Op-Ed works. Cumulatively, the two boys sounded as if they were performing outreach to a liberal audience in search of reinforcement rather than enlightenment.
