Sometimes I liken The New York Times to an especially difficult crossword puzzle, and that’s why I read it with a pencil. More than a dozen years ago, before the company went full-tilt-peppermint-twist on the digital side, finding ways to make money that were unrivaled in the industry, I was certain that a billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg would make a hostile bid to buy the paper, with a offer so far above its market evaluation—say, $14 billion—that even a majority of the entitled-and-they-know-it Class B shareholders would put up such a stink that the unthinkable might come to pass. I’ve used the eraser of a #2 Ticonderoga pencil countless times since then, since it was so off the mark. Perhaps it was the Jeff Bezos purchase of The Washington Post for a pittance that threw a monkey wrench into my logic. Never mind that Bezos now likely regrets that impulse buy; he’s exhausted the good will of the Permanent Government.
I’d guess Trump’s tariff wars will consume most of smog-filled air for at least the next week, and from this corner it’s foolhardy to weigh in—unlike all the faux-economists tapping out their finger-in-the-air posts about What It All Means; never mind that legitimate men and women who study the financial markets are holding off—because as with almost everything Trump does or doesn’t do it it’s prudent to wait at least 10 days before drawing any conclusions. I do laugh at the dumbbells, whether they’re investors or not or even have two Mercury Dimes in a mothballed jacket in the closet, who warn others, “Do yourself a favor and don’t look at your 401(k) today,” as if playing Wally the Ostrich is sound thinking.
I was more curious about Pamela Paul’s farewell column in the Times—finally, after it was announced earlier this year she was in front of a firing squad—since it was fairly nasty, as she thanked her readers (how many of those existed, I’ve no idea) and had nary a word about her colleagues and editors at the paper, which is usually mandatory (and phony) behavior for someone getting the boot or taking a buyout.
Paul wasn’t a “star” columnist at the Times—not like Maureen Dowd (who hasn’t written much lately), the execrable Ezra Klein or Michelle Goldberg From Brooklyn—but her essays were worth a skim; even though a liberal she often tossed Elite Orthodoxy in the trash, criticizing “cultural appropriation,” for example, or challenging “a politicized medical establishment” for encouraging gay teenagers to receive “dubious gender transition treatments.” Times editorial management, screwy as a zoned-out Billie Joe Armstrong, had to pull the plug. (On the flip side, Paul Krugman, notorious for his Democratic Party sycophancy, left the paper because he didn’t like the editing.)
Paul writes: “I did not want my positions to be unduly guided [she eschewed social media] by what others might think, be they friends or strangers, office colleagues or online trolls, activist organizations or institutional powers. And the lure of affirmation can be just as potent as the fear of attack. I wasn’t looking to be loved or even liked. I had friends and family for that.” That’s self-aggrandizing—a rule for journalists—but in this case not too offensive considering she was a pariah at her workplace.
Consider the latest column from Thomas Friedman—the butt of jokes in the industry, even from faithful Harris/Walz contemporaries—a pro forma Trump attack (tariffs, illegal immigration, alienation of European allies, militarism and so on) that was possibly co-written with ChatGPT. A typical paragraph: “When I was in China last week, more than a few people asked me if Trump was launching a ‘cultural revolution’ the way that Mao did. Mao’s lasted 10 years—from 1966 to 1976—and it wrecked the whole economy after he instructed his party’s youth to destroy the bureaucrats who he thought were opposing him.”
Finally, an April 6th editorial in the-paper-that-nobody-records, headlined “A Playbook for Standing Up to President Trump,” and perhaps jotted down at one of the massive, massive (and stupendous) anti-Trump rallies on Saturday, reeks of desperation. The Times corporal writes: “Standing up to the abuse of power is inherently difficult. It can also be inspiring. People who do so often look back proudly on their actions and are justly celebrated for it after a crisis has passed. But crises usually do not end on their own. Resolving them requires courage and action.”
Go Team Blue! Go Courage! Go Proud Citizens standing up to the schoolyard bully!
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023