Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Republicans in disarray!

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Let me file that under fuck it.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Let there be snark.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Open Thread: NYTimes: Our Sucking-Up Will Continue!

Open Thread: NYTimes: Our Sucking-Up Will Continue!

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The Grey Lady will not be intimidated by a bunch of bloggers and comedians! Like the Republican Party, the more we mock them, the harder they shall burnish Lord Smallgloves’… credentials!!!


The NYTimes is still too “dignified” to run cartoons, but ya gotta admit, they’re keeping us entertained… after their own hapless fashion.

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  3. 3.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m hoping that raven checks in tonight to tell us about his Rose Parade/Rose Bowl day, but he’s probably still prostrated by that game’s photo finish.

    (Or so I gleaned from the other thread. I do not partake of sportsball.)

  5. 5.

    chopper

    @Jerzy Russian:

    Lionel Hutz – Of course you did. But there’s the truth [shakes his head] and the truth [smiles brightly and nods]. Let me show you. [opens a book full of houses for sale]

    Marge – It’s awfully small.

    Lionel Hutz – I’d say it’s awfully cozy. [turns page]

    Marge – That’s dilapidated.

    Lionel Hutz – Rustic! [turns page]

    Marge – That house is on fire!

    Lionel Hutz – Motivated seller!

  6. 6.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jerzy Russian: It is. There’s one really bad/troubling paragraph in the article. The overall point it is trying to make is okay: that the President’s behavior and actions are radically altering the presidency and American politics, this may or may not outlast him, and it may or may not be a good thing. The author kind of went off the rails while making it.

  8. 8.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Millard Filmore: Steady. 1) They’ve already developed a CRISP genetically modified cacao plant that can grow in other places and 2) the real issues/problems are where cacao is grown as a monocultured product. So there are a lot of ways to ensure that cacao doesn’t go extinct.

  10. 10.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Adam L Silverman: I don’t hold a degree in journalism, but I don’t see how anything Trump does can be a good thing (apart from firing his whole staff, including Pence, before resigning and turning himself in to the federal marshals).

  11. 11.

    Duane

    FTFNYT must enjoy being mocked, ridiculed, and generally abused around the world. Why else write these Trumpsucking articles. It can’t sell papers, can it?

  13. 13.

    danielx

    Clearly the NYT is of the opinion that lord shortfingers will be mightily impressed with the use of Preparation H for lip gloss.

  17. 17.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jerzy Russian: The only good things would be if it forces a long overdue rebalancing of power away from the executive to the legislative – this of course requires members of Congress who actually want to do their jobs. And if it leads to a lot of the taken for granted norms, customs, and traditions to be codified into law so that this meshugas can’t be repeated. Finally, if it leads to reforms for how Congress functions so that the legislative branch check the Founders and Framers envisioned protecting against a President like the current actually can’t be stymied by one feckless party when it is in the majority.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    Repeating a recommendation from the thread below for people in chilly climes:

    People on Amazon are weirdly enthusastic about this blanket. I’m not ready to marry it like some people are, but it really is very soft and warm without being heavy. WaterGirl’s niece bought one for her for her holiday stay in IL but I haven’t heard how it worked out.

    I would be under it right now except that the cat is napping on it and she bites.

    (I used Cole’s Amazon affiliate link for the above link so he’ll get a few pennies if people buy one.)

  19. 19.

    danielx

    Stephen Tignor‏ @SameSteveTignor
    Replying to @SeanMcElwee

    Every sentence must be crafted to balance perfectly at the summit of Both Sides Mountain.
    2:14 PM – 31 Dec 2017

  20. 20.

    James E. Powell

    I always get pushback for saying this, but I really think we’d be better off without the New York Times as it currently functions in the press/media world. The supposedly good reporting can be published elsewhere by other people. What needs to die is the NYT as the official decider of what stories will be covered and how they will be covered.

    The NYT’s deliberate editorial and coverage decisions on Whitewater, the War on Gore, the promotion of George W. Bush as Our Young Churchill, the cheerleading of the Iraq invasion, the normalization of McConnell & the GOP’s obstruction, Benghazi, EMAILS!!!, Clinton Foundation, Shadows & Clouds! Shadows & Clouds!

    Those decisions gave us George W. Bush, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Alito, Shelby County, Citizens United, the cancellation of Medicaid expansion, and finally Trump in the White House. What the fuck good is the NYT’s other activities if they are going to give us all that horror in less than 25 years?

  21. 21.

    Kylroy

    What blows my mind is that USA Today, a paper dismissed as a hack McNews operation since it’s inception, has *no problem* calling Hair Furor an incompetent embarrassment, while most of the Very Serious Media struggle to say Trump is very different in a *bad* way.

  23. 23.

    seaboogie

    “Mr Trump is creating precedents that may outlast his tenure. He is making our presidency more authentic or more autocratic, depending on the vantage point. Either way, it may never be the same”.

    So says the Vichy Times. But her emails…

    Would like to see Levenson’s take on this.

  24. 24.

    hellslittlestangel

    The New York Times is sure that if it keeps giving Trump its lunch money, eventually he’ll stop beating it up after school.

  25. 25.

    jc

    It may be that the NY Times is stroking Trump’s ego so he’ll keep on talking to their reporters.

    But Trump clearly loves to stroke his own ego, in public, on a regular basis … he obviously gets off on it. But ewww …

  26. 26.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Adam L Silverman:

    And if it leads to a lot of the taken for granted norms, customs, and traditions to be codified into law so that this meshugas can’t be repeated.

    Yup, like full financial disclosure for all candidates for federal office, for example.

    Finally, if it leads to reforms for how Congress functions so that the legislative branch check the Founders and Framers envisioned protecting against a President like the current actually can’t be stymied by one feckless party when it is in the majority.

    Somehow we have to have a representative Congress and Senate. Get rid of gerrymandering, give each state equal representation in Congress (as I recall the average congress critter in California represents a lot more people than the single congress critter from Wyoming or Montana), etc. If by some unlikely (but technically not impossible) string of quantum fluctuations I find myself in charge of everything, I will make you my Chief of Staff so you can figure out how best to implement all of this.

  27. 27.

    hellslittlestangel

    I feel bad for Paul Krugman. When he wrote, ”Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point,” he couldn’t possibly have known he was working for the paper that would one day adopt that framing.

  30. 30.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jerzy Russian:

    For one example: Wyoming, the smallest state, gets 1 House Representative for their population of about 584K.

    My House district in CA (CA-30) has a population of about 726K. That seems like a pretty significant difference in representation.

  32. 32.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Mnemosyne: Shortly after the election I did a quick and dirty computation and found that California would have close to 100 electoral votes if we had truly proportional representation. I wonder how hard it would be to change the number of congress critters so that each member has (roughly) the same number of constituents (although I don’t wonder about it hard enough to actually use google at the moment).

  35. 35.

    seaboogie

    @James E. Powell: You’re not getting pushback here – not from me, at least. Was talking to an AP reporter the other day, and she was kind of surprised that I dismissed the NYT out of hand. Told her that my subscription of choice is WAPO – less than ideal, but more accurate and useful than the Times.

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jerzy Russian:

    IIRC, the standard is that each House member is supposed to have about 710K constituents, which IMO is WAY too many, and it varies a lot even with that as the “average.”

    Montana actually gets kind of screwed because they’ve passed 1 million in population but still only get 1 House rep. If I understand the current formula correctly (and I may not!) they would need a minimum population of 1.42 million to get two Reps, and another state with more than 1 Rep would have to have one taken away, which would then screw people in that state.

  40. 40.

    Yutsano

    @Mnemosyne: Per this article 1.05 million. And the state does have a clear east/west divide, although Montana does see itself as one unit. But yes the old formula is way out of date for the House.

  41. 41.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Mnemosyne: OK, I googled a bit. The total number of congress critters is set at 435 by an act of Congress in 1929. That cap on the number seems dumb to me since states may grow (or shrink) in population at very uneven rates. One assumes a future Congress can increase this number and make other reforms (although it would help to have the president and Supreme Court also on board).

  42. 42.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Jerzy Russian:

    Shortly after the election I did a quick and dirty computation and found that California would have close to 100 electoral votes if we had truly proportional representation.

    Or one reason I get torqued when I hear conservatives from states like that complaining about how evil libruls dominate the country.

  46. 46.

    scav

    Well, they must be on a single-minded mission to demonstrate the the Orange Twit doesn’t lie 100% of the time: they are in point of fact the failing New York Times.

  47. 47.

    AxelFoley

    @James E. Powell:

    I always get pushback for saying this, but I really think we’d be better off without the New York Times as it currently functions in the press/media world. The supposedly good reporting can be published elsewhere by other people. What needs to die is the NYT as the official decider of what stories will be covered and how they will be covered.

    The NYT’s deliberate editorial and coverage decisions on Whitewater, the War on Gore, the promotion of George W. Bush as Our Young Churchill, the cheerleading of the Iraq invasion, the normalization of McConnell & the GOP’s obstruction, Benghazi, EMAILS!!!, Clinton Foundation, Shadows & Clouds! Shadows & Clouds!

    Those decisions gave us George W. Bush, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Alito, Shelby County, Citizens United, the cancellation of Medicaid expansion, and finally Trump in the White House. What the fuck good is the NYT’s other activities if they are going to give us all that horror in less than 25 years?

    Co-signeth to the Nth degree

  48. 48.

    Amir Khalid

    He is making the presidency more authentic or more autocratic, depending on the vantage point.

    I am mystified: to what, exactly, is Trump’s presidency more authentic than Obama’s?

  49. 49.

    Amir Khalid

    Swung by a bookstore today. The hardcover of What Happened was on display at RM124. I’ll wait for the paperback.

  52. 52.

    gVOR08

    My Gawd. I still subscribe online, despite being close to cancelling several times. I hadn’t read this article until I saw it here. It’s everything that’s wrong with the NYT in one article. I note in today’s Times that kid Sulzberger is now officially publisher. These events are presumably connected.

  56. 56.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Raymond Shaw Donald Drumpf is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life

  57. 57.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Drumpf just gave all those fat cat six-figure gossip columnists at Vichy Times a big tax cut. Why wouldn’t they be on bended knee

  58. 58.

    Sixstringfanatic

    @Jerzy Russian: I did some research on this topic after last year’s Electoral College disaster (in the immediate aftermath, the consensus view was “Abolish the EC!” This would require a constitutional amendment; much easier to just expand the membership of the damn House of Reps.) and the only real reason I could find for capping the House at 435 members was that the actual House chamber cannot physically hold more than that number. So we would need a new act of Congress and a new, larger chamber for the House of Reps. Good luck getting Republicans to agree to either of those.

  59. 59.

    TriassicSands

    @TS:

    Authentic Amurkin = stupid, ignorant, bigoted, selfish, and stupid. And did I mention stupid? Really, really stupid.

  60. 60.

    TriassicSands

    The Washington Post credits Trump with a mere 1,950 false or misleading statements in 347 days. That’s about 5.6 a day — every day. You can’t get more authentic than that.

  61. 61.

    Kay

    It’s just mindless power-wielding at this point. They just throw their weight around, almost randomly. Promoting the invasion of Iraq, launching that weird grudge against Hillary Clinton, normalizing Trump, doesn’t matter- just any which way.

    There’s a Chicago columnist who uses a phrase “clout-heavy”- I don’t know if he invented it but he uses it for Chicago pols and movers and shakers. That’s what the NYTimes is to me- not an observer but an actor. A clout-heavy private sector actor.

    I just want some ordinary oversight. They don’t have to crack the Russia interference mystery or define “populism”. They could just cover the corruption and self-dealing within the Trump Administration. If they can’t do extraordinary work just do good ordinary work- investigate some of the Trump actions within the context of previous standards for Presidents. Just hold him to the Bill Clinton standard.

  63. 63.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.

    A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: “You can’t expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them.”

    NY Times
    November 22, 1922.
    (link)

  65. 65.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Sixstringfanatic:

    So we would need a new act of Congress and a new, larger chamber for the House of Reps.

    Replace the desks with smaller versions whose tops are touchscreens but no external speakers (provide wireless headsets) so they can watch their favorite sporting event- that’s all most of the fuckers are good for anyway.

  66. 66.

    NorthLeft12

    @chopper: President Obama is being labelled as aloof? WTF?

    Can someone explain exactly what that refers to?
    I always thought he was regularly meeting people, especially ordinary Americans. This sounds to me that the NYT is whining over not getting [enough] interviews with President Obama.

  68. 68.

    Citizen_X

    He is making the presidency more authentic or more autocratic, depending on the vantage point.

    This sentence enrages me like nothing since Kellyanne’s “alternative facts.” There can be no objective standard of autocracy? That way lies madness.

  69. 69.

    NorthLeft12

    @Citizen_X: Also, what the hell does “more authentic” mean? I know there have been a few snarky responses above that refer to race, but come on, what does the author/editor/publisher really mean by this?

  70. 70.

    MikeS

    @Sister Golden Bear: If the Congressional Apportionment was actually approved by Connecticut’s upper legislative chamber in May 1790 then we should right now have one representative for every 50K citizens. Which would give us a congress of about 4,600 representatives and would proportionately boost the # of Electors in the EC. Although Eugene Martin LaVergne who is pushing this is either a crank or being stonewalled. I guess the big questions are: 1) Can a state (or one branch of its legislature) rescind a ratification vote at any point before the amendment is adpoted? and 2) Who has the say of when an amendment is adpoted; is it the US Archivist or congress or who?

  71. 71.

    JR

    @Adam L Silverman: CRISPR (minor correction).

    We are going to be in for a long strange future with CRISPR, which honestly allows for genetic engineering as the popular imagination would have it.

  72. 72.

    SFAW

    @NorthLeft12:

    President Obama is being labelled as aloof? WTF?

    That was a meme during one or more of the campaigns — I seem to recall Rove pushing that one, but not sure. It also came up at times during the early years of his Presidency, when the Party of Traitors had started to try to delegitimize Obama as President.

    @NorthLeft12:

    Also, what the hell does “more authentic” mean?

    It means that Lying Littledick “speaks the language” of “real” people, i.e., racists and other assorted wingnuts who voted for him. I’ve read variations of that ridiculous comment more than a couple of times.

  73. 73.

    FlipYrWhig

    I abhor the word “authentic” in politics, and anyone who uses it unironically. As far as I can tell it means “proud asshole” and/or “funny-looking.” And you’ll notice that no woman in politics ever gets called “authentic.”

  74. 74.

    FlipYrWhig

    Also, I’m old enough to remember when Big Media was all worked up about the need to restore dignity to the Oval Office. Notice too that they never say that anymore.

  75. 75.

    sherparick1

    @James E. Powell: On Jay Rosen’s thread I came across this twit storm from Heidi Moore of the Guardian. https://twitter.com/moorehn/status/946600523498708992

    Jay Rosen himself, on his blog, Pressthink, wrote the following a months ago. The Times news room and management has been obsessed with getting credibility with its conservative critics since the Reagan administration. It simply does not understand that for these people, the strawman of media and in particular NY Times bias is far to useful to every give away.

    “…I keep coming back to these words: If our journalists are perceived as biased… that can undercut the credibility of the entire newsroom. Dean Baquet — who approved these words and made them law — doesn’t seem to realize that if the perception of critics can edit the actions of his staff then he has surrendered power to enemies of the Times, who will always perceive bias because it is basic to their interests to do so. This is part of a larger problem in mainstream journalism, which is unable to think politically because it is constantly accused of acting politically by hyper-partisan critics peddling fixed ideas…”

  76. 76.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    There is a grain of truth to that headline; there next Democrat president does something that puts them in a twist the reply can be “suck on it, Donald Trump”. Because you know the conservatives will find their patriotism and fiscal responsibility the next time their is a Democrat in office.

  79. 79.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: The media will probably say “the Trump presidency changed both sides, and now we’re anxious that Democrats will follow in a worrisome path of populism and partisanship instead of taking on the hard problems of a democracy, like entitlement reform.”

  80. 80.

    chopper

    @NorthLeft12:

    all throughout his presidency very special people in the press kept at him for being “aloof”, mostly because he wasn’t chummy with them like the likes of mccain.

  81. 81.

    Tenar Arha

    @Cheryl Rofer: Every time the Times pulls one of these stunts I remember that article from 1922, and remind myself that the Times has almost always been untrustworthy about the times they were writing about for almost 100 years.

  83. 83.

    Barney

    “A reality-show accessibility”? Most people debate whether reality shows debase TV entertainment (compared with the higher intellectual and moral standards of, say, sitcoms), and the NYT is claiming that bringing that style to governing the most powerful country in the world could be a good thing. They really are cheapening their own name.

  84. 84.

    Tenar Arha

    @Gin & Tonic: The one that came right to mind for me was the AIDS epidemic, especially at the beginning. If they’d properly covered it as what it was, a major new epidemic, maybe fewer would have died.

    It’s the combination of self-importance and fetal crouching that infuriates. (I’m sure the other newspapers have had similar moments, but because they haven’t cultivated some kind of pedestal I don’t feel the same need to point out their flaws).

  85. 85.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Tenar Arha: You know, I lived in NYC during the late 70’s and early 80’s, and my wife worked in some of the leading hospitals. I’m more willing to cut them slack on that one, as I think nearly every news outlet fell down on the job at the beginning.

  87. 87.

    Doug R

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The only good things would be if it forces a long overdue rebalancing of power away from the executive to the legislative – this of course requires members of Congress who actually want to do their jobs.

    The problem being that decent democratic presidents are held in check already, we gotta work on making the legislative branch express the will of the majority.

  88. 88.

    J R in WV

    @James E. Powell:

    Those decisions gave us George W. Bush, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Alito, Shelby County, Citizens United, the cancellation of Medicaid expansion, and finally Trump in the White House. What the fuck good is the NYT’s other activities if they are going to give us all that horror in less than 25 years?

    Holy cow, Powell, you left out torture, war crimes, hundreds of thousands of deaths, the disruption of the middle east that may not end in our lifetimes… The N Y Times is almost</del. personally responsible for enabling the most concentrated evil in this nation since the end of reconstruction in the deep south after the civil war. Or the genocide of Native Americans. One of those great evils, anyway.

    Anyway, good job, just wanted to add a few more details to your already good roundup. Also, back in the 1930s, they thought Chancellor Hitler was going to be the nuts for the resurrection of Europe, and his kind of leadership would be good for America after all the evil FDR had committed! Did NOT work out the way they said it would, did it!?

  89. 89.

    J R in WV

    @J R in WV:

    Dammit, always check the HTML tags!!!! My bad. Meant to strike thru just the word almost and missed closing the end delete tag by using a period instead of the upper case period, a right pointy bracket.

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