Sunday, June 27, 2010

This is what happens when you abandon journalism and become simply a mouthpiece for the lunitic fringe

7 comments:

  1. Ironically, I know a number of readers who refused to read it when they hired Kristol for the editorial page(now gone again). I wonder how that would figure into those numbers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. No, this is what happens when spending goes toward defense and tax cuts to ExxonMobil instead of education. Most of America is too functionally illiterate to read the NY Times.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It easy to find other things to occupy your time allotted for entertainment a day. And reading a newspaper is at the bottom of my list.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Not being an expert on the NYT, I can't help but wonder, looking at your bar-graph, if it doesn't simply reflect a loss of circulation that seems to have afflicted most newspapers in this internet age?
    Here in the u.k., most of the papers, no matter their quality or political affiliation, have seen large falls in circulation.
    In an age where people watch television as they eat breakfast, and fidget with ipod and smartphone as they commute, to offices where they spend their days clicking between work and their ebay account, oh yes.... where I work, whenever I enter the office, I find the drones are as likely to be trying to find a bargain holiday in Turkey, as they are to be furthering the company aethos.
    My father's day always started with perusal of the paper, his office always had a selection of papers present, and for him, an hour's study of the Financial Times was an integral part of the working day.
    Now? It's on your screen.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, I think everybody is right. The NY Times is a gem of unbiased non-ideological reporting.

    Kristol? He lost any small credibility he might have had when he whored himself out to the Times. Good riddance and may his magazine die a quick death. The only positive thing he accomplished was to further drain their sinking circulation. Amen.

    I would agree with the Red One about the oil companies needing to be cut off, and I don't just mean tax-break-wise, though that would be a start. Also, our president's (and past president's) love of big banks on Wall Street, General Motors, and Insurance Companies would be another place we need a change in tax attitude and bailouts.

    As for defense, I must respectfully disagree. While I agree with you that we don't need no stinking army to protect us, I happen to view the military as part of a larger stimulus package, in that the money poured into it serves to take tens of thousands of young, eager, inventive, physically fit men and women out of the domestic work force, giving you (and me, I suppose) a chance at holding a job you might not otherwise be the best qualified person for. So it all works out, you know?

    Ummmm, we spend an AWFUL lot on education. It must be being pissed away by our government. As usual, there is a silver lining to this, though, since the illiterate graduates can't read the Times, eh?

    I'm actually with Jeff King: reading newspapers today will only waste your time and make you all frustrated and unfocused for important things. I do subscribe to my local paper. God only knows why. Scumbag idiots.

    Well, Soubriquet, the age of the internet certainly did hit the smug newspaper industry in this country very hard. So did rising illiteracy and rap music brain damage. It's all relative, though: subtract the circulation loss from those things and you still would have a declining graph.

    My own father subscribed to the Detroit Times for the right reason; the paper boy was a neighbor.

    Incidentally, if any of you others think the chart is biased, I would call your attention to the respected organization that put it out.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Of course they (and you) are biased. But I think it would be incorrect to wrongly label them as "a mouthpiece of the lunatic fringe", which happens to be the 50.9% which elected your new favorite president. Hardly constitutes a "fringe", "lunatic" as we may be in your opinion.

    ReplyDelete
  7. But of course you are lunatics, both left and right alike; the very textbook definition of mentally ill by doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. You keep electing new batches of politicians and keep thinking this new batch is going to be different than the old batch.

    Sadly, "fringe" you are not. You are the majority. I retract.

    When I say "you" I mean left right and middle of the road, as long as you still believe politicians will someday start acting in your best interest instead of theirs. That's insane. Tell me it isn't.

    The NY Times caters to your particular mindset. Therefore they are a mouthpiece of lunatics.

    Nothing meaningful is going to change. It is only going to continue to get worse. We must start over. I keep telling you.

    I'm not biased. :)

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails