New York Times Reporters Go Full Driftglass -- UPDATE

We join a senior New York Times editorial board staff meeting already in progress...

So it turns out that in a world where, for want of gainful employment, real journalists wait tables and real writers busk for nickles, the Texas deck of America's newspaper of record has been stocked with monstrously overpaid and over-privileged hacks (Not you Krugman) that anyone who can string five words together regards as a joke...by a trustifarian fop in the thrall of a bullying asshole.

Yep.  

The New York Times op-ed page is a fucking disaster.

To the surprise of no Liberal anywhere...

The Tyranny and Lethargy of the Times Editorial Page

Reporters in ‘semi-open revolt’ against Andrew Rosenthal

...

Asked if this stirring resentment toward the editorial page might not just be garden variety news vs. edit stuff or even the leanings of a conservative news reporter toward a liberal editorial page, one current Times staffer said, “It really isn’t about politics, because I land more to the left than I do to the right. I just find it …”

He paused for a long time before continuing and then, unprompted, returned to Mr. Friedman. “I just think it’s bad, and nobody is acknowledging that they suck, but everybody in the newsroom knows it, and we really are embarrassed by what goes on with Friedman. I mean anybody who knows anything about most of what he’s writing about understands that he’s, like, literally mailing it in from wherever he is on the globe. He’s a travel reporter. A joke. The guy gets $75,000 for speeches and probably charges the paper for his first-class airfare.”

Another former Times writer, someone who has gone on to great success elsewhere, expressed similar contempt (and even used the word “embarrass”) and says it’s longstanding.

“I think the editorials are viewed by most reporters as largely irrelevant, and there’s not a lot of respect for the editorial page. The editorials are dull, and that’s a cardinal sin. They aren’t getting any less dull. As for the columnists, Friedman is the worst. He hasn’t had an original thought in 20 years; he’s an embarrassment. He’s perceived as an idiot who has been wrong about every major issue for 20 years, from favoring the invasion of Iraq to the notion that green energy is the most important topic in the world even as the financial markets were imploding. Then there’s Maureen Dowd, who has been writing the same column since George H. W. Bush was president.”

Yet another former Times writer concurred. “Andy is a wrecking ball, a lot like his father but without the gravitas. What strikes me about the editorial and op-ed pages is that they have become relentlessly grim. With very few exceptions, there’s almost nothing light-hearted or whimsical or sprightly about them, nothing to gladden the soul. They’re horribly doctrinaire, down the line, and that goes for the couple of conservatives in the bunch. It wasn’t always like that on those pages.”

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Also too this:


And this:


And a little of the vintage '07, I think.  From back when Mr. Friedman and Iraq were going through a messy, public divorce and The Mustache of Understanding columns were mostly public paroxysms about how he loveses too much and careses too deeply!



Once upon a time I worked for a 3rd generation, family-owned company that has since vanished from the face of the Earth.

It disappeared from the memory of man due to the sheer, inbred ineptitude of its owners, which manifested itself in all the usual ways: the rogue's gallery of unfireable toadstools who had been promoted into upper management, a spectacular array of useless vanity projects, and a steady outflow of money into the pockets of high-flying management consultant grifters who promised that all of the emperor's problems could be turned around with a new suit of clothing which, while very expensive, would be the finest raiment in all the land!

The Times has had this kind of stink coming off of it for years, and as long as its Beltway rot is allowed to continue, it will continue to gangrenize every other media institution it touches.  

In other words, there is a Club.

But you already knew that.

And we on the Left are going to continue to eat smoke and sift the ruins of one media disaster after another until somebody bothers to ask us how to do it right: