The Gray Lady is cutting herself.
Meet The New York Times’ newest editorial hire … Sarah Jeong … who, it seems, has a real problem with white men. And she has a racist problem of her own.
“Dumbass f*cking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants …”
And this …
“… oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get from being cruel to old white men.”
And this …
Wow! I wonder if those are the same “old white men” who put their lives on the line to save South Korea … where this woman was born.
This darling’s ill-tempered past is oozing out of her bitter Twitter history … but the paper’s hierarchy … you know those “Dumbass f*cking white people” … seem to enjoy getting bitch-slapped by this Clairol-crazed goof.
Maybe the Gray Lady does have some fifty shades after all.
“For years now she has been going heavy on the rouge, lipstick, and eyeliner, using a push-up bra, and gadding about in stiletto heels.”
The Times … not the tie-dyed mophead.
That’s the black-and-blue perception of Joseph Epstein … contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. He’s a straight-shooter … says the Gray Lady has begun “whoring after youth through pretending to be with-it.”
And so The Times has lost consequence among those in the business. Professionals … like Epstein … used to begin their day with the “newspaper of record“. Not any more.
After half-a-century, Epstein is “determined to cut her loose” … because he’d rather “read the fine print in my insurance policies than the paper’s perfectly predictable editorials.”
Molly Ivins remarked, “The New York Times is a great newspaper: it is also No Fun.” And now it has no character … no truth … and no virtue.
This was an unfun scribble for me.
My very first paying gig … as a four-year-old … was to clutch the fat Sunday New York Times as tightly as I could … while bouncing around in the rumble seat of my father’s antique car. If the paper survived intact, I was lookin’ at a ten cent payday … and some cavity possibilities.
The Times was part of the tapestry of the house. As usual as a coffee pot. The paper was pulled apart by everyone … littering all three floors. So many headlines were sub-chapters of my life. My brain grew stubble because of that paper.
My father once called it “The Sunday textbook” …
Now I seldom ever bother with it because … because it’s so tilted. So partisan. And worst of all … so predictable.
I’m bored by it.
Bored and unsurprised that they hired such a classless neopunk who checked all the right boxes on the affirmative-action wellness chart.
And I’m unstunned to know The Times is diggin’ in its heels … excusing her racists rants by leaning on her gender and her ethnicity. The Times fired poor Quinn Norton in a finger-snap for more benign tweets. But she wasn’t Asian … or a thirtysomething. And she didn’t color her hair like an anime bitchette.
Arthur Miller had it right, “A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself.” The New York Times needs to have an earnest conversation with itself … because it no longer listens to the nation. And that’s a shame.
It seems to me … The Times has simply given up.
Denis Ian
Missives Worth Reading 