no way NYT

There’s Nothing Woke About a Tofu Burger
—Pamela Paul

finally read this about her: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-rules-according-to-pamela-paul

brilliant example of just letting someone explain how much they suck in their own words

i used to listen to the book review podcast which i always thought she did a nice job hosting, i was disappointed to find out that she is completely insane

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI-8hst0bho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxcI4iaWHGk

Max Read wrote a characteristically funny editor’s note about her column. https://maxread.substack.com/p/editing-the-new-york-times

Who Wins the Language Wars?

—Nicholas Kristoff

*sigh*

If only Cindy Williams had gotten that part in Language Wars.

Ever since reading this piece on copaganda in the Times, it always jumps out. The latest: yesterday's The Morning, while discussing Tyre Nichols, kept referring to paramilitary units as "well-intentioned".

christ

What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis

fucking hell. might as well make this a Pamela Paul thread

I hope it has something to do with manliness.

"prison is appropriate for some people"

A Yale economics professor has some ideas for how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society. The “only solution,” he said, is mass suicide of the elderly, including ritual disembowelment. https://t.co/krlL3Ytd2e

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 12, 2023

"what did he mean?"

It's just metaphorical ritual suicide

We’ll be using that solution in the USA in a decade don’t you worry

Apparently this professor has become a cult figure among disgruntled Japanese youth who believe their futures have been impacted by the society’s aging demographics. They put his face on t shirts and things.

kudos to threadstarter for this important public service

I preferred quiddities and agonies of the ruling class

different topics imho, that one is "oh noes how will rich people cope", this one is more abt documenting their truly disturbing rightward shift

"their" being the NYT ofc

soon Bret Stephens will be the liberal columnist of the bunch

We’ll be using that solution in the USA in a decade don’t you worry

Some would suggest that American Covid response policy looks an awful lot like this even without trying

I preferred quiddities and agonies of the ruling class

― treeship., Sunday, February 12, 2023 4:31 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

different topics imho, that one is "oh noes how will rich people cope", this one is more abt documenting their truly disturbing rightward shift

― sleeve, Sunday, February 12, 2023 4:39 PM (one hour ago)

I like the quid-ag thread a lot too and will continue to post things there, but for better or worse I actually read those articles! and sleeve otm about the political bent

my sole regret wrt this thread is that I capitalized NYT, breaking from the past no-way thread convention :(

torn between the point of reporting on people like that Japanese Yale loon; like, guy hangs around with the person who runs 4chan, is clearly some edgelord discourse idiot, and doesn't deserve to be given attention by anyone, particularly the NYT and Yale. Yet maybe ignoring him isn't a good idea? Dunno.

There are ways to pay attention to him that don't involve writing articles about him

I thought this was an interesting article tbh. The “4chan edgelord” audience he panders to is a real thing, in Japan as well as the West. It’s worth keeping tabs on them.

also worth keeping tabs on ivy league/chicago-accredited economists, all of whom are latent genocidaires

and people who *wish* they were accredited so, like mcardle, yglesias and brett stephens's ex-wife

Yes, exactly.

that one is "oh noes how will rich people cope", this one is more abt documenting their truly disturbing rightward shift

Okay I get why ilxors respond to the content in the Times in these ways, and I have no serious counterargument.

That said, both of these characterizations fill me with cognitive dissonance though, and for different reasons.

First, my experience of salaries in print journalism was decidedly grim. My first journalism job paid $6 an hour. My second journalism job paid $16,000 a year. My third journalism job paid... $8 an hour. My third journalism job paid $12 an hour. My fourth journalism job paid $20,000 a year, which felt like a fortune. In 1996.

Referring to NYT staffers - or even its editorial columnists - as "the ruling class" is comprehensible only due to a perverse quirk of the economics of cultural production.

Basically, for most of my life, the ONLY people who could survive in NYC-based print-media industries (newspaper journalism, magazine journalism, and of course book publishing) were subsidized by wealthy parents.

Journalism - on its own - is not now, nor has it ever been, a path to riches. No one is getting wealthy from print journalism any more (and almost no one did so in prior decades either).

Truthbomb: if you are someone with one or more degrees in English, yes, you can work as an editorial assistant at Alfred A. Knopf (or the New Yorker, or whatever). But only if you have no student debt and your parents pay your rent. This has been true for half a century; it should not be news.

Now about the "disturbing rightward shift," please remember that approximately half the nation believes anyone involved in mainstream media - including and especially print media like NYT/WaPo - is essentially communist. Conservative media is clear on this point: the NYT is basically communist.

This disconnect is vexing. Ilxorz and lefties in general believe the NYT is center-right at best, and not to be trusted. Most of the conservasphere believes the NYT is hard left, left of Che Guevara, left of Lenin, left of Bernie, and not to be trusted.

Can both of these descriptions be true? I dunno. In the meantime I still feel like the NYT has a pretty good crossword puzzle app so I feel like sticking with it.

the way I feel about the Times is this:

it’s the paper I’ve been yelling at since i was a teenager, i don’t want to find a new paper to yell at. it has decent reporting on occasion, and the best online recipe depository.

i still think it sucks.

The ruling class experiencing quiddities and agonies are not NY Times staffers - it's the rich people being profiled in the lifestyle/real estate/etc sections.

Now about the "disturbing rightward shift," please remember that approximately half the nation believes anyone involved in mainstream media - including and especially print media like NYT/WaPo - is essentially communist. Conservative media is clear on this point: the NYT is basically communist.

This disconnect is vexing. Ilxorz and lefties in general believe the NYT is center-right at best, and not to be trusted. Most of the conservasphere believes the NYT is hard left, left of Che Guevara, left of Lenin, left of Bernie, and not to be trusted.

Can both of these descriptions be true? I dunno.

Why would the right's attitude be taken into account at all? They also think Joe Biden is a Stalinist baby blood-drinking pedophile or at least a Stalinist doing the bidding of baby blood-drinking pedophiles.

All major news media is center-right (at best) - they're capitalist enterprises who in the end have to protect their bottom line. This means 'printing the controversy,' an overwhelming focus on crime at every level, following the lead of American imperialism in anything outside our borders, dehumanizing anyone or anything that makes the upper-middle class anxious (the homeless, BLM activists, etc.), protecting fellow capitalist enterprises (ie advertisers).

The shift in the Times has been embracing deep reactionary takes on social issues - which is not new ground but a shift from the last couple of decades.

Referring to NYT staffers - or even its editorial columnists - as "the ruling class" is comprehensible only due to a perverse quirk of the economics of cultural production.

oh, i think there's a vast difference between NYT staffers and editorial columnists. it's a perverse quirk that the latter are accorded such attention, but, nevertheless, they are. (i was going to say 'fading quirk' but iirc the WaPo just fired a bunch of journalists while hiring a bunch of NRO/AEI columnists)

might be fading away now, but it's long been common knowledge that WSJ reporters can be relied upon even while the WSJ editorial page is fucking bonkers

i would first suggest that literally no one deserves a regular NYT opinion column -- no one has anything interesting to say twice a week for decades on end. but apart from that, who's left? a guy who just recently grasped climate change after a visit to greenland. a woman who thinks liberals should learn things from ron desantis. a guy who quit, to run for political office in a jurisdiction he didn't live, then came back. maureen fucking dowd. these people are all terrible, and obviously so. but they are voices that matter in the 'discourse' and the 'sunday morning shows'. and if they didn't suck so badly, perhaps those things would be slightly better

that all sounds right to me

wait which one of those is jamelle bouie

(to be clear i fully agree with you that there should not be such a thing as a regular NYT opinion columnist, and that nobody's 20th best opinion of the year is worth a damn)

jamelle bouie is grebt, and i suspect that as black man extremely well-versed in the last 300+ years of american history, he has almost endless things to write about twice a week

i have no idea what pamela paul will offer us on a weekly basis? ideally it won't be about the tragedy of taking her stupid friends to a sandwich place that offers soppressata, but i guess we'll see

This disconnect is vexing. Ilxorz and lefties in general believe the NYT is center-right at best, and not to be trusted. Most of the conservasphere believes the NYT is hard left, left of Che Guevara, left of Lenin, left of Bernie, and not to be trusted.

Can both of these descriptions be true? I dunno. In the meantime I still feel like the NYT has a pretty good crossword puzzle app so I feel like sticking with it.

trust fund kids have their own class politics. they resent the bourgeoisie (their parents) and feel guilty that they are part of it. so there is an incentive to evade directly dealing with uncomfortable questions of class. this accounts for the dissonance i think.

Not sure I understand how that is supposed to square the circle but OK I guess.

My final question is the extent to which the New York Times is actually influencing anything or anyone. That is, how many minds are getting changed because people type things and the NYT prints them or "prints" them?

I am skeptical. I don't think there are very many people being swayed to or from their preexisting attitudes because of something appearing in legacy print media. Maybe I'm wrong about this. As noted, I have been in the bubble since birth (child of journalists, journalism major, former journalist, etc.). But I have cultivated a humility about the influence of the field because I have been awake for the last quarter-century and see that it's only a tiny minority of weirdos who read anything any more, let alone something so dinosaurian as a printed newspaper.

Me? I have been read the Washington Post and New York Times all my life, but (a) I know I am an outlier and (b) Doing so hasn't put very many ideas in my head that weren't already there.

People who read, like, and believe newspapers do so because newspapers reflect a worldview they already hold, and which they probably inherited from their parents.

People who ignore, hate, and disparage newspapers do so because that course of actions reflects a worldview they already hold, and which they probably inherited from their parents.

What are you going on about?

so has the NYT always been center right? or did it execute a turnabout a few years ago? surely it was seen as much worse than center-right by the counter culture left in the late 1960s…

one difference from 10 years ago is that is not teetering on the edge of financial collapse: it is now a totemic product that the members of bourgie center left (such as me) use to signal their allegiance, their class, etc etc…and is calling it "center right" as a pejorative an ILX thing or is it widespread throughout the left internet?

so has the NYT always been center right? or did it execute a turnabout a few years ago? surely it was seen as much worse than center-right by the counter culture left in the late 1960s…

I'm pretty sure the Times came in for a kicking in Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent, which I read 30 years ago. And it definitely features prominently in Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media?, which came out in 2003. Calling it a "liberal" paper basically amounts to the broader public adopting a Nixon-era attack line.

Oh, it's just a viral marketing campaign

https://twitter.com/KimStimFilms/status/1625183907833430033

Shocking but this Yale prof says the quite part out loud suggesting mass suicide for old folks in Japan! This is the premise of Chie Hayakawa's moving, & unforgettable PLAN 75- a Cannes winner is set in a chilling, sci-fi tinged near future. Opens Spring!https://t.co/022TIc8heF

— KimStim (@KimStimFilms) February 13, 2023

The glasses are bothering me tbh

Yeah sorry, you can’t Gramsci your way out of this one, treeship— by any objective measure, the Times has been a center-right paper for my entire life, at least, and I am nearing 40. unperson otm.

Rob et al.

the number of minors receiving gender-affirming medical care

I am posting this link knowing that it might not be up much longer.

As with any pseudo moral panic it helps to have some information about just how prevalent it is, and some researchers did a science.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11211955/#:~:text=Gender%2Daffirming%20health%20care%20aims,for%20cisgender%20males%20with%20gynecomastia.

97% of these surgeries were cis males with gynecomastia.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=11211955_jamanetwopen-e2418814-g002.jpg

thanks YMP, I'd read somewhere that cis minors receive more gender-affirming care than trans minors do, but I didn't know those surgery percentages, geez

and fwiw the second link routed through my Canadian university library account, so hopefully that means it's at least being stored on servers outside the US...?

Maybe, but it doesn't hurt to print to PDF and save somewhere

97% of these surgeries were cis males with gynecomastia.

never thought about the surgery I had when I was 13 as "gender-affirming care," but I suppose it was!

i expect transphobes will simply make sure that treatment of gynecomastia in cis males is legally defined as something other than "gender-affirming"

I got operated for cryptorchidism when I was 12. Count me in.

Sadly this isn't a legal loophole. Most of the laws I'm aware of plus trump's EO very very explicitly ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth only rather than banning categories of treatments.

It's just the NYT and other so-called liberals who have to thread the needle of showing fake concern over hormones, puberty-blockers, and surgical procedures while avoiding expressing reactionary hatred of trans kids

For These 20-Somethings, Trump ‘Is Making It Sexy’ to Be Republican

4 min read

death penalty for anyone at any outlet writing this stuff

the bullying bubble is about to break!

Opinion
Thomas L. Friedman
Why Trump’s Bullying Is Going to Backfire
6 min read

Thomas L. Friedman

This Has Never Happened With an American President Before

What happened in the Oval Office on Friday — the obviously planned ambush of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine by President Trump and Vice President JD Vance — was something that had never happened in the nearly 250-year history of this country: In a major war in Europe, our president clearly sided with the aggressor, the dictator and the invader against the democrat, the freedom fighter and the invaded.

You want an analogy? Imagine if, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel came to the White House this month, Trump and Vance told him that the war with Hamas had gone on too long, too many lives had been lost and it was costing America too much money, so it was time for Bibi and the Israeli people to do a deal with the Hamas aggressor.

“In Europe” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there

Ukraine is in Eastern Europe

there’s definitely some squirrely commentary lately dividing Europe vs. EU

ime americans generally have a bad idea of european geography past Germany/France/Italy. Ukraine’s just past the center mark (it’s Poland. Poland is Central Europe) and then you have the baltics, the division between southeastern/just eastern, and who gets to claim the mediterranean and black seas

I think sarahell’s point is that the US has repeatedly backed dictators outside of Europe

Thanks but I don't want that analogy

Young Democrats’ Anger Boils Over as Chuck Schumer Retreats on Shutdown:

A generational divide, seen in newer lawmakers’ impatience with bipartisanship and for colleagues who don’t understand new media, has emerged as one of the deepest rifts within the party.

my anger is boiling over at the idea that wanting the democrats to show even a modicum of backbone and prevent our country's rapid slide in to fascism is some inside baseball "impatience with bipartisanship"

Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr.

Forget the Signal Chat. The Strike on the Houthis Was a Necessary Blow.

5 min read

lol nice

Trying to decide between “Trump Has Everything Under Control” vs “Trump Is Selling Jews a Dangerous Lie” … though the latter is more like no way water is wet.

second one is sadly a useful op-ed imo, not that it will necessarily reach the audience that would benefit (liberal Jews who have bought the "antisemitism on college campuses is a horrifying epidemic" story - I know many such people who are being driven to the right by it, with a wide spectrum of opinions about Israel, ranging from reasonable to abhorrent)

This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
- Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

Gift link

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/opinion/ross-douthat-interesting-times.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-k4.YKSX.dqRXgSUCB8fT&smid=url-share

no, thanks, I just ate!

THE EZRA KLEIN SHOW

Ross Douthat on Trump, Mysticism and Psychedelics

https://lede-admin.defector.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-12-at-11.15.09%E2%80%AFAM-e1747063393653.png?w=710&quality=75

https://i.imgur.com/v6Xok47.jpeg

young chinese women have small nimble fingers, supply chain experts tell unquestioning NYT reporter TRIPP MICKLE

https://i.imgur.com/RRwRMnD.jpeg

see also the NYT's response to queries

https://i.imgur.com/5rtwNzu.jpeg

I know the op-ed page is easy pickings, but today's is still something: A big lead essay about how "anti-managerialism" is at the heart of the new Trump vision, and how this is a good thing and we should all get with the program. I was familiar with the rhetoric but not the writer. The brief ID provided just said that he has a Substack (under a different name), and did at least link to it. But I had to go there myself and poke around to ascertain that, shockingly, he's an ethno-nationalist and proponent of/apologist for Great Replacement bullshit. This is from a post he put up in January (not linking because fuck that):

Last autumn I was invited to deliver some remarks at a conference hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. I spoke as part of a panel on the growing relevance of the much-unfairly maligned French thinker Renaud Camus, originator of the constantly-mischaracterized “Great Replacement” (which is not a “conspiracy theory,” as Camus explicitly posits no conspiracy, but simply an observation of the fact of sweeping cultural and demographic change produced by liquid liberal-modernity).

... The ideology of replacism, and the global flattening machine that it animates – which seeks to transform the whole world into what Mary Harrington describes as the stiflingly inhuman “nomos of the airport” – this machine is, in its cold mechanism, practically defined by its complete lack of love.

To love something or someone is to cherish them precisely for their unique particularity. At least for us mere mortals, universal love is an impossibility and an oxymoron. Tell a woman you love her, but only insofar as you love all women as a universal category, and I promise this will not go well for you…

The total absence of genuine love in the project of replacist globalism can help us see the reality of its opposite: that the animating force of nationalism, which we see burgeoning anew today, is not hatred of otherness but the love of one’s own. And that the way out of the replacist nightmare is for us indeed to be found in love: love of people, past, place, and particularity.

See guys, it's not "hatred of otherness"! It's just "love of one's own."

thought this would be about their podcast series about the history of gender affirming care, which is apparently as both-sidesy as you would expect

I've read about that too, yeah.

Oh i thought this would be about the in-depth profile of the right-wing influencer who just makes stuff up constantly and also was briefly banned from twitter for posting a watermarked image of horrific child sexual abuse until Musk personally reinstated him. Luckily you get to hear his side of the story.

I thought it would be this Ethicist column: Is It OK to Earn Rental Income From an ICE Holding Facility?

the answer may not surprise you!

How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost

That story is so infuriating, gah. "Did Dred Scott push things too far too fast?"

I tried to read it but the Eric Andre meme/"why would the trans rights movement do this?" of it all is too nauseating.

I've been mostly avoiding the nyt this year as their ideological project became impossible to look past, but bluesky keeps me apprised of their most blatant bullshit:

Record Debt Limit Increase Would Break Republican Precedent

A proposed $5 trillion debt limit increase could make it hard for Republicans to maintain their fiscal hawk credibility.

well I'm sure you'll do your best to keep the faith even if something as ~unprecedented~ as the national debt increasing under a republican president happens!

I posted a comment on the story, for whatever little good that may do: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/magazine/scotus-transgender-care-tennessee-skrmetti.html#permid=142963641

https://i.imgur.com/GOxX0q0.png

Why Israel Had to Act. The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel showed the need for Israel to pre-empt threats against it rather than react defensively. By Amos Yadlin

Americans Are Thriving. Why Don’t We Feel Like It? Americans experience massive amounts of envy. It has led us to think we lack something, even as our prosperity soars. By Russell C. Ball III

Trump Might Take the U.S. to War. Where Are Schumer and Jeffries? Failing to aggressively defend Congress’s role in authorizing war would be a serious blunder for Democrats. By Peter Beinart

A Progressive Future Depends on National Identity. Tough border policies aren’t just good politics. They’re progressive, as Britain’s Labour Party shows. By Claire Ainsley

The "congress declares war, not presidents" thing is perennial since Korea.

yeah well obviously since democrats control congress this war is totally on them!

Beinart is good tho.

why?

Why not

ok you really sold me on beinart, thx

Do you actually disagree with this:

Since Democrats are in the minority in both chambers, they can’t force a vote on authorizing war. But Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries could help lead a full-throated public campaign in support of one. They haven’t done that.

In a statement with other senators five days after Israel’s attack, Mr. Schumer finally declared that “by law, the president must consult Congress and seek authorization if he is considering taking the country to war.” But he still isn’t backing legislation to give that principle teeth. And Mr. Jeffries has made no public statements on the subject.

Given the gravity of this moment, Democratic leaders should be holding news conferences, addressing mass protests, even bringing Congress to a standstill with all-night filibusters in order to prevent an unauthorized, unjustified war. The public is deeply weary of conflict. And yet top Democrats are not boldly rallying them against the possibility of another.

For real though he’s a Jewish anti-Zionist who speaks very powerfully about the genocide.

i do not disagree with that at all

I'm a longtime Beinart stan as one of the only Jewish voices able to articulate full throated criticism of Israel that is still compassionate and incisive about the complexity and binds American Jews find themselves in trying to navigate these issues. He has also managed to do that without being completely ostracized by the liberal Washington establishment which is an underrated feat. That said I listened to him on a podcast recently after only ever reading him, and he sounded like any other annoying pundit. But I am trying really hard not to hold that against him, not everyone has a persona and voice for radio

David Brooks
I Detest Netanyahu, but on Some Things He’s Actually Right

Should (or Could) Trump Be Added to Mount Rushmore?

Wtaf is this shit