Decision ‘08

We Have A New Champion…

…in the increasingly popular sport of Times-bashing, with this piece from the New Criterion’s Roger Kimball. I had seen it linked to earlier today in the Power Line piece I mentioned elsewhere, but I had not taken the time to read it until it was highlighted by regular reader and commenter Fred.

The highlights are so many that I will only share a couple, as you really must read the whole thing, particularly its brutally on-target desconstruction of the politically correct twaddle surrounding a dance piece, “[a]2,200-word valentine to the fifty-three-year-old black, HIV-positive choreographer-activist [Bill T. Jones] (get the picture?) [that is] partly an exercise in hagiography, partly an ideological position paper.” I can’t resist a couple of choice excerpts, however:

…[W]e are talking about a newspaper that actually employs Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and Bob Herbert, not as comic relief but as some of its star pundits. These are moveon.org folks, infatuated by a combination of narcissism, ideology, and moral hysteria.

…[D]eterioration at the Times is a rich subject, full of cautionary tales about how a great liberal institution can go rancid by making a caricature of its principles and adulterating its work. When a great newspaper’s front page is indistinguishable from its editorial page, and its editorial page is indistinguishable from a transcript of a Democratic Party rally, journalistic decay is a certainty.

Ahh, sweet satisfaction…

11 Responses to “We Have A New Champion…”

1 Bruce Moomaw Says:
October 3rd, 2005 at 6:40 pm
Let’s see. This is the Kimball of “Gandhi and his rabble” fame? ( http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2005/05/there_they_go_a.html )
2 Mark Says:
October 3rd, 2005 at 7:23 pm
The same…I didn’t endorse his lifetime output, I happen to like this piece…
3 Bruce Moomaw Says:
October 4th, 2005 at 10:55 am
Well, that’s reassuring. But tell you what, guys: we’ll start taking you seriously when you stop screaming apopletically about minor mistakes by Krugman while remaining as silent as a cathedral about hugely bigger and more frequent mistakes (and deliberate lies) by the likes of Safire — to say nothing of Judith Miller and the Phantom WMD Menace. (The Times, you’ll notice, has never apologized for her stories, either — a fact which disturbs Kimball not a bit.)
4 Mark Says:
October 4th, 2005 at 11:06 am
Again, Bruce, I could care less whether you take me seriously or not (and what’s with the use of the royal ‘we’?). I’m not distracted by your Safire smoke screen, nor your Judy Miller one (stick to the point - Krugman screwed up, won’t admit it, I find that amusing, my blog, my rules)…
5 Bruce Moomaw Says:
October 4th, 2005 at 3:39 pm
OK: your blog, your rules, your bias. As you yourself said once, thanks to the Internet we’re entering an age in which “wolves without editors” can destroy a person, but you failed to mention the just-reconfirmed fact that you’re one of said wolves. Once again: why won’t you talk about the much more serious unadmitted errors of Safire and Miller? Well, we know the answer to that, don’t we?
6 Mark Says:
October 4th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
Because that wasn’t the purpose of my post, Safire has already retired, and I never claimed to be unobjective…I have an absolute bias towards conservatism. I don’t hide it and don’t pretend to. This is a blog, not the New York Times…believe it or not, I expect the Times to live up to higher standards than blogs. If you want to obsess over Miller and Safire like I do Krugman, then for God’s sake, start your own blog…who’s stopping you?…that’s the beauty of a free society…
7 Mark Says:
October 4th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
And Bruce, by the way, you’re welcome to post here…I admit to being a bit grumpy with you, and I’m not trying to be a jerk. I just get a little perturbed when people who aren’t regular commenters show up out of the blue and start making assumptions about me, and lumping me in with ‘you guys’. I speak for myself only and never pretended to speak for anyone else…
8 Bruce Moomaw Says:
October 4th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
Well, for somebody who doesn’t claim to be “speaking for anybody else”, you’re certainly enthusiastic about broadcasting your views — which means, presumably, that you want to convince other people you’re right. (I don’t have a blog because I’m not so interested, but I can’t resist the temptation to jump in to others occasionally.)

It was nice to see you admit to an “obsession” with Krugman — even the longest journey begins with a single step. But I regret giving you false credit for supposedly recognizing Kimball as a swine — which his get-the-wogs comment is more than adequate to identify him as being. (So is his willingness to sneer at Herbert for his habit of trying to identify and correct individual injustices, with a very high accuracy level).

He’s also, by the way, a first-class historical ignoramus, since not only was Gandhi trying frantically to avoid partitioning India, but the British were very actively — and ultimately successfully — working to CREATE that partition by inflaming Hindu-Moslem divisions. (If they couldn’t have a subjugated India, they were determined to have a divided one.)

http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050214&s=nussbaum021405
http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2005/05/assrocket.html
9 Mark Says:
October 4th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
Bruce, I do try to be reasonable with you, but you are unfailingly rude…of course I broadcast my views on MY BLOG! Your point is? Or are you unfamiliar with the concept…you talk a good game about Kimball, Safire, anyone, it seems, but Krugman, who made such a ‘minor’ error that the New York Times had to trumpet it across is a special editorial. My obsession with Krugman is freely admitted - I think he is a laughable buffoon and he provides me with much amusement in this far too brief stint on Earth we call life…
10 Bruce Moomaw Says:
October 4th, 2005 at 6:31 pm
Unfailingly rude compared to your original statements? Really. Anyone who runs a political blog devoted to acrid comments about various figures with whom he disagrees should not be so delicate-stomached about getting acrid comments back. Comes with the territory, after all, and I ahven’t heard any such they-hit-me-back complaints from any other poltical blogger of any view except Brad Delong.

In any case, if this is your idea of evidence that Krugman is a “laughable buffoon”, you’re awfully hard up for evidence. Meanwhile, I await the Times’ coming special editorial admitting the no-longer-exactly-nonpublic facts regarding Judith Miller’s long parade of credulous howlers that played such a significant role in helping shoehorn us into the Iraq War — which are just a wee bit more important than complaints about precisely how many versions of a Florida recount would have given the win to Bush. Given the mounting pressure, Pinch Sulzberger may have to give a reluctant go-ahead to Collins for that special editorial pretty soon, and it’s going to do MUCH more to queer the Times’ reputation that the current Krugman recounts-on-the-head-of-a-pin business. Especially since Krugman’s Aug. 22 statement remains perfectly correct:

“One is what would have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court hadn’t intervened; the answer is that unless the judge overseeing the recount had revised his order (which is a possibility), George W. Bush would still have been declared the winner.” Yep.

“The second is what would have happened if there had been a full, statewide manual recount - as there should have been. The probable answer is that Al Gore would have won, by a tiny margin.” Yep — especially given what would have happened if they had done the proper thing and not counted any votes of ambiguous interpretation, but had counted those in which the voter simply wrote in his candidate’s name in addition to checking him off.

“The third is what would have happened if the intentions of the voters hadn’t been frustrated by butterfly ballots, felon purges and more; the answer is that Mr. Gore would have won by a much larger margin.” Yep.

Well, I’ll leave you now to your consistent nonrudeness.
11 Mark Says:
October 4th, 2005 at 6:57 pm
Whatever, Bruce…I can take the heat; it’s just nice to have a reasonable conversation with people - I don’t make a fetish out of ridiculing people unless they really deserve it, like your hero Krugman…In any event, you continue to ignore Krugman’s original column (smartly, as it demolishes all your excuse-making)….well, once a sycophant, always a sycophant, eh, Bruce? Have a good life stuck up Krugman’s posterior - it must get stuffy up there. And with that, I bid you goodbye, sir.

Post here all you want, I will no longer reply - I’ve given your silliness far more time than it deserves…