Depending on whom you ask, Cecile Richards is a national "hero" or a "deeply evil woman" https://t.co/RdnzD3GPSX
— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) January 27, 2018
Bothsides is clearly a more potent drug than crack or fentanyl. If we acknowledge the vast majority of Americans who support the work of Planned Parenthood, we must also acknowledge the minority of assholes who spend their days picketing clinics with pictures of fetuses. The fact that the fetus fetishists would like to bomb the Times building immediately after blowing up every Planned Parenthood in the country doesn’t seem to faze these assholes.
EBT
Does anyone here still subscribe to The Vichy Times?
Baud
If they were talking about Hillary, they would have omitted the national hero part.
Rbandah
Cancelled last week. Fuck ’em.
Magda in Black
I note the twitter responses share my disgust.
Ruviana
Faze the staff…. Just sayin’.
dp
Every time I get close to subscribing, they publish something stupid again and I don’t.
Raven
@dp: did you, you know, read the article?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Faze the staff. Not “phase”.
JPL
@Rbandah: So did I, except for the crossword puzzle . Believe me, Will Shortz is not responsible for the mess the paper is in.
Cermet
I am lost by both the how and why democrats allow these right-wing anti-abortion liars to petal their shit. First, the bible does not say abortion is wrong; just the opposite. The strange and blood thirsty deity that christians, jews and muslims believe in is fine with killing woman who are pregnant (for any offense like adultery, wearing mixed color cloth, and what -ever of the many crazy religious laws.) It is time people point this fact out and make these liars admit that their deity supports abortion since the death of a fetus is A-OK since the bible does not give it either protected status or consider it human.
foucault swing voter mistermix
I fixed the phase/faze error. Thanks
matt
Some say hero, some say Commandante of the Vaginacaust.
Thoroughly Pizzled
They just keep getting worse! What’s next, “Ethnic cleansing: Unfairly denounced?”?
Baud
@Cermet:
Exactly what superpowers do you think we posses that we’re not using?
Brachiator
@EBT:
Used to. I think I may subscribe again.
About that quote.
Had this been the first line of the article, then the NYT piece would probably have been horrendous.
But it’s not the first line. It is lazy, but the larger context of the story is clearly pro Richards and pro Planned Parenthood.
“Cancel your subscription?” Might be good reasons for that, but this is not one of them.
Haroldo
Cancelled last week (finally). It felt good.
raven
@Brachiator: Come on, get on the train!
raven
@EBT: Yea and I like football too, so the fuck what?
JPL
@dp: Use your five free articles a month for Krugman. Like the next president of balloon juice says NYTimes is garbage.
japa21
@Brachiator: Yep. The tweet was just to draw people in, both the people who like and those who hate her. Plus it had the added advantage of pissing off all the libtards. The actual article was definitely pro both her and PP
JPL
@Haroldo: When I was asked why I was canceling, I said it was because Democracy Dies in Darkness.
Rbandah
@JPL: I don’t even enjoy that anymore. Too punny. Though I will miss the Science section.
Betty Cracker
If I hadn’t canceled my subscription before the election due to the horrible, biased coverage of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, I would have done so for that wretched Douthat column yesterday AND the vile framing noted above.
The Times is an important paper. It employs some of the best reporters in the country, and it breaks some incredibly consequential stories, including recent reports about the Trump-Russia investigation.
But thanks to horrendous editorial decisions (Baquet) and a refusal to engage in introspection that would allow it to fulfill its mission more responsibly, it is damn near as poisonous to our democracy as Fox News precisely BECAUSE of its importance. I can’t support that financially.
Kay
@Baud:
The 27 reporters who exclusively covered Hillary Clinton emails for 16 months have been re-assigned to cover Hillary Clinton’s “sexual harassment by proxy” crimes. Covering the entire Trump Administration? One. Maggie Haberman.
germy
Depending on whom you ask, the New York Times is a national “disgrace” or a “deeply evil propaganda tool of the GOP”
Brachiator
@raven:
Nah. I guess that some people enjoy being triggered by anything they can construe as negative and anti-Democrats in the NYT.
It is a sad obsession.
raven
@Brachiator: Tracking, I always come here to find out what I should eat, read and enjoy.
bystander
I cancelled the FNYT after decades, and then subscribed to WaPo. Today Tumulty’s WaPo column is a meditation on the possibility that twitler will surprise us all with a SOTU that brings us together blah blah blah. I don’t think she gets to the point when an inexplicable national amnesia takes hold and everyone forgets the past years. Had to stop reading or risk unswallowing breakfast.
frosty
@foucault swing voter mistermix: I was so pleased that I was going to congratulate you on “faze” not “phase”. Then I read the comments. Oh well, consider it a learning experience.
Now for the commenter who used “petal” instead of “peddle” …
Brachiator
@Cermet:
I didn’t think that the Bible mentioned abortion at all.
raven
Villago Delenda Est
Click whores.
The Villagers in DC have nothing on the Villagers of the Vichy Times.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Betty Cracker
For folks pointing out that the article itself is mostly positive, I’ll note that since the average American has the attention span of a fruit fly, the framing in headlines matters a great deal. Another example:
Which notification gives its readers context and leaves them more informed?
Raoul
I went off on the Times last night as my partner and I were headed to the grocery store. It’s an ongoing debate. I am past ready to cancel. He’s a former journalist – copy editor and reporter. We subscribe to the WaPo and the local daily where he used to work, so we wouldn’t be abandoning the news business.
I think what makes me the most angry isn’t even the shit framing of some of their headlines or story tweets (tho in particular their twitter game is terrible – yeah, get the clicks! by writing incendiary tweets that don’t really reflect the content. That’s bad journalism. It’s dragging the Times down to clickbait).
It is the way they respond to criticism when they do shit like that. I get being a little defensive, no one likes being jumped on. But the contempt they show to their subscribers in basically saying “we’re the professionals, your view of our work is irrelevant or even wrong” is plain arrogance. And Baquet has plain arrogance in spades.
And in his case, as is often true I think, that arrogance is born of limited competence.
Anyway, I guess for now we keep on, hoping that on balance the Krugman columns, the long form journalism and deep reporting the Times also does makes it worth it. I hang on by a fingernail, and as much for my BF as anything else.
Cermet
@frosty: LOL; oops. Thanks for the correction ;)
Amir Khalid
I’ve never subscribed to The New York Times; for full online access, The NYT requires I buy a print subscription, which would be nuts given the cost of delivery to KL. I might have considered a reasonably priced online-only sub were there such an option, but there ain’t. So I go to the front page or section page, and from there I open the very few stories I want to read (fewer than five a month) in a private window. This is also how I open any NYT links I click on.
As for boycotting it, I commend to my fellow jackals’ attention the old hoodlum’s maxim: “Keep your friend close, but your enemies closer.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator: Numbers 5.
Cermet
@Brachiator: Since it doesn’t mention abortion that means a lot if one believes that the text is the word of god. So, that alone is significant. Next, it does allow execution of woman who carry a fetus – apparently, the fetus has no merit in the eyes of god. Hence both those points matter. Abortion was well know at the time people wrote those passages yet, they would tell you which insect was allowed but abortion, no significance.
Starfish
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Are you talking about the piece called “The Necessity of Stephen Miller” run on Holocaust Remembrance Day?
BruceFromOhio
@Kay: … and your expectation that that is wrong is asinine. Or something.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This’d twice. The fact that he Times has no ‘public editor’ or someone in a similar role is kicking them in the nuts twice a week. And then I think that if they hired one, it would probably be that anti-Clinton, anti-Gore “liberal” from the late 90s, whose name constantly escapes me and I can’t google cause I can’t remember his title, exactly what kind of “executive editor” or muckety-muck he was. The one who was MoDo’s work husband/mentor and wrote the infamous “where there’s this much smoke” about Whitewater, there must be a fire somewhere
ETA: Bill Keller! The ice broke
Kay
@Raoul:
We subscribe to the local paper (which everyone reads- they have amazing saturation- probably mostly because of high school sports coverage) and the larger “regional” paper, which here is the Toledo Blade. I often don’t read either paper but I’m glad they exist and “we” need them and I happily pay for that.
Cermet
@OzarkHillbilly: Interesting – a long time since I read that book; remember a few more funny parts that few christians would ever want to know (a human sacrifice, for instance, to god and the reference to gods) but I missed those examples.
BruceFromOhio
@Betty Cracker: Easy! The one that reinforces my tribal norms and messaging! Trick question is tricky.
El Caganer
Pol Pot: Mass Murderer or Man of the People? Re faze/phase, my first thought was Star Trek and the reference was to using a phaser on these people. Actually, that’s probably a bit too violent a thought for a quiet Sunday morning.
frosty
@Cermet: No sweat. I didn’t see the usual Grammar Pedants in the comments so I thought I’d take up the slack.
JR
@Cermet: in the premodern age, it was generally assumed that anything not baptized was damned. Since infant mortality was so high in those days, well, you can do the math.
Amir Khalid
@bystander:
I liked Karen Tumulty when she was writing about healthcare issues at TIME’s Swampland blog. But she’s been drifting to the right ever since she joined The Washington Post.
germy
Interesting comment over at LGM
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
The article is not “mostly positive,” it is positive.
Here is the headline for the Times article on Richards.
Exactly how is this negative framing. Here is the first paragraph of the story.
If I were a short attention span reader, I would come away with the idea that her opponents are vile hypocrites.
As for the other example you give.
One headline says the economy grew, the other that the economy slowed. Contradictory headlines. I would not know a damn thing without reading the story. Also, the first headline would tell me something about Trump’s lies, but would not tell me about the state of the economy.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cermet: Yeah, as an atheist I only know bits and pieces and those are mostly the contradictory parts showing the idiocy of Biblical Literalists. I should undertake a study of the book tho in the interests of ‘knowing thine enemy’ if nothing else but also for the many parts that do in fact contain some wisdom.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: When the NYTimes lost Margaret Sullivan to the Post, they searched for someone to the right of her to take the role of public editor. That worked out great!
Starfish
@Brachiator: Is everyone going to read every story, or will they assume things from the headlines and the Tweets? It’s dishonest to run tweets and headlines that have very little to do with the content.
Ruviana
@foucault swing voter mistermix: Thanks, mm! Not only do we deal in facts, we have better proofreading than the NYT..
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I just think their coverage of Clinton during the campaign was so bad that they don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt when they cover her now, because what changed? Nothing. They weren’t held accountable in any way.
I felt the same way about their Iraq coverage. They sold that war, which they all but admitted, and then we were ordered to forget all about that and trust them with coverage of it. I’m not in a position to judge their internal discussions and narrative changes. I don’t see any of that. All I see is what I read. I have A and then I have B. If they fuck up A I’m less likely to trust them on B. I think that’s entirely reasonable. They spun the Clinton coverage negative in ’16 so when I read their coverage of her now I’m wary.
OzarkHillbilly
@JR: I read somewhere (iirc) that ancient Jews did not name their children until their first birthday because until that day they weren’t considered likely to survive so not really born.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Trump is the one who pushes himself. It was he who opined that had it not been for the hurricanes, GDP would be 4%, 5%, maybe even 6% (to use his words). Who needs critics when you’re your own biggest troll?
lamh36
https://twitter.com/nadinevdvelde/status/957408954170003456
Brachiator
@OzarkHillbilly:
Interesting. Is this some ritual in which a priest induces abortion masquerading as a purity test?
But not clearly a mention of abortion. Still, I take your point. Presumably, a pure woman in this situation would not be pregnant. The whole test is fucked up, though, an ancient witch trial.
Marcopolo
All I can say is Cecile Richards has done wonderful work & is getting recognized more and more.
No, seriously, it is refreshing to see a person take a step back, decide they’ve done about all they can and it is time to let a new generation take over. I hope she finds a new gig where she is excited to do the work & the work is important. I’m pretty sure she’ll do a great job.
Also too, good morning folks & in a couple hours I’ll be off to my last MO Feb special election GOTV postcard writing session. I think we are closing in on 20K written. Here’s hoping all you jackals have whatever day you are looking forward to having: restful, productive, fun, whatevs.
debbie
@germy:
And they continued to apologize/clarify very sincerely, up until (up until) Judith Miller. Now, it’s just “differing opinions.”
germy
@Starfish:
That’s dishonest of the NYT. The editors know a good amount of people only skim headlines.
We all love to read here. Lots of writers among the commenters. But an alarming number of Americans don’t really like to read; see it as a chore. They’ll skim headlines when the NYT article is reprinted in their local media.
SiubhanDuinne
Many public libraries subscribe to the NYT, WSJ, WaPo, and a host of other newspapers and periodicals, both with and without paywalls. Just go to your local library, login to their website on your own device or one of their computers, and read away! You still get to see all you want of the good stuff without enriching them by a cent.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Oh, sorry — Twitter lede vs. headline. Whatever. The point stands — most people will read that summary — Richards — evil harpy or hero? — and nothing else. If you don’t think framing matters, I can’t help you. As for the description of the economy in the push notifications, since they are describing performance that can be expressed in numbers, it’s pretty easy to determine which is an accurate description of the state of the economy and which is spin. Hint: The NYT notification is spin.
Llelldorin
@Brachiator:
They’re not exactly contradictory, but the second is misleading. The WAPO is reporting that the second derivative is negative. The NYT is reporting that the first derivative is positive. The problem is that unless we’re in a serious crisis the first derivative is always positive, because the US population is growing. The interesting question is whether the rate of growth is accelerating or slowing. [[edited for typo]]
debbie
@lamh36:
Russ strikes again.
germy
Gelfling 545
@dp: I kept getting posts on my FB feed urging me to subscribe. Each time I wrote a comment detailing the reasons I would never. Not seeing it very often anymore.
chris
I was kinda on the fence about this for a long time. Then they fluffed the “telegenic warrior” Dana Loesch. Fuckem.
Blue Galangal
@Brachiator: If you go to the NYTPolitics page, there are two tweets about Cecile Richards. You chose to display the one that does not have the clickbait headline, not the one that has 217 likes and 1.1k replies with the incendiary headline. That’s somewhat disingenuous of you. Or was your attention span too short to keep scrolling? If so, the larger point has been made: no one will read past the clickbait headline; they’ll walk away, as intended, with the message that half the nation thinks Cecile Richards is an evil woman.
As for the example posted regarding the economy: the WaPo push gave context about the economic growth and information about the growth. The NYT push resembled, at best, a Fox “News” chyron.
Ivan X
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: we, the consumers, are going to have to accept responsibility for the media being low quality, because we basically want and have access to new news all the time, for free, and you don’t get good news that way. You get clickbait, hastily written he said she said, meaningless bothsidesism, lack of depth, and a host of other ills.
Meanwhile, everyone loves the Washington Post now, but that’s really only been since Bezos bought it, and appears to have given it the funding and direction it needed to counteract the default state of being a newspaper in 2018.
Plus, we all sound culty and mindless if we get out the torches every time the NYT does something stupid and we go rah rah cancel cancel without acknowledging that they’re one of about four newsrooms in the country left that actually report sometimes. Yes, they suck, and they disappoint me, but they don’t do those things 100% of the time. If they were to vanish tomorrow, we’d be less informed, full stop.
(And as I side comment, while I like WaPo, the extent to which things are framed to be agreeable to the way I see them is obvious.)
Brachiator
@Cermet:
What? Sorry, I don’t think you make a reasonable point here. And I don’t know what a believer would make out of the absence of a mention of abortion. In actual conversation, most believers fall back on the line about God knowing someone in the womb as an assertion of the unborn being sacred.
Yep. This argues against any special unconditional protective status for a fetus.
Yep, actual historical evidence, as opposed to simplistic Bible stories, suggests that abortion was practiced. It is even more likely that infanticide was discretely allowed.
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator: The first translation (forget which one, ASV? ESV?) I read was pretty clear that “a true born child will not be aborted where as one who is a product of adultery will”, tho others (KJV) are not so clear. Either way the passage makes clear that God needs a priest/rabbi to intervene on behalf of the husband to ensure that no adulterous fruit will issue from the woman’s loins. The whole point of the procedure is to reassure the husband that the children he is raising are his own by aborting all fetuses he suspects of not being his own with the ancillary benefit of punishing his wife for being raped/lust filled or just plain unwanted by the husband..
Brachiator
@Blue Galangal:
Jesus fucking Christ. I simply clicked on the link in the Twitter comment displayed in the thread here and went to the story and read it.
If there was another story with a different headline, I didn’t see it.
I’m not clear on what it was you wanted me to scroll and see or how that relates to the story.
germy
@debbie: What is Judith Miller up to nowadays? Is she employed by Fox?
I don’t know if she’s still with the NYT
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
It very briefly mentions a tiny fee charged to people who cause a miscarriage, like $30. That’s it. The rest is all made up by right wing nut pastors working with would-be fascists. Neither of which has ever read the whole Bible cover to cover seeking enlightenment, but just search for specific tracts they can use to manipulate their flock to better shear them.
Raoul
@Amir Khalid: Basic digital access is $3.75/wk (intro offer of $1.88/wk for a year), unless that is geographically restricted, as I believe you’re outside the US, Amir. “Basic” is a bit misleading, as it is full access to the web site, App, and is unlimited in visits/views.
“All access” includes things like the Times Insider, which I’ve not found useful.
In fact, in looking at this, I think I’m going to drop my Sunday physical paper since it mostly just gets recycled, and drop to online only. $25 every 4 weeks feels more tolerable than $43 (the 2018 Sunday + digital rate).
Cermet
@OzarkHillbilly: Like the glory of oral sex and a few other choice facts.
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator:
Infanticide was almost universally practiced by ancient cultures, especially of those not deemed viable and quite often of those not deemed desirable.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Kind of on-topic: It’s not just the NYT
I knew that preposterous little toady Cillizza was all in Harvey Rodham Weinstein, but I didn’t know about a fucking running clock. Seems like a lot of major “liberal” outlets need ombuds/public editors
burnspbesq
@Cermet:
Because unlike Republicans, who see them only as a weapon to be used against their enemies, Democrats actually believe in First Amendment values as a positive good. If you don’t get that …
Cermet
I claim no special knowledge having read it only once, and which translation, also matter. Like the passage (paraphrase here) “That one will not tolerate a witch to live” is an intentional mis-translation (the witch part was simply added by the writer of the king James version because the translator hated witches). The, again, been awhile, passage in a literal sense says one will not tolerate a pharmacologist to live. But one must use careful study of Hebrew to realize they meant pharmacologist that practiced making poisons for murder. Still, maybe people should be literal and stone pharmacologist (lol) – they do make a lot just to count pills.
J R in WV
@BruceFromOhio:
Bruce, from Ohio!! Wow, guy, how do YOU feel about pie? What’s your favorite kind? Chocolate creme? Fruit pies! What fruit? Sweet or sour? what about Pecan, lot of people have a problem with it being too sweet, I get around that with the use of maple syrup instead of corn syrup, which I hate and have never bought.
So, what’s your thing on pie? That’s important for us to knmow about up
J R in WV
@BruceFromOhio:
Bruce, from Ohio!! Wow, guy, how do YOU feel about pie? What’s your favorite kind? Chocolate creme? Fruit pies! What fruit? Sweet or sour? what about Pecan, lot of people have a problem with it being too sweet, I get around that with the use of maple syrup instead of corn syrup, which I hate and have never bought.
So, what’s your thing on pie? That’s important for us to know about you, many of us have shared favorite recipes!!! Tell us your feelings on this burning issue!!!! Do tell !!!!!
Cermet
@burnspbesq: Sorry but that in no way can be derived from what I said and your logic eludes me there – despite the laughable petal statement I made. To be clear, we need to use the bible to point out abortion is loved by god – certainly when it serves what ever purpose the high and mighty one desires – ok, a bit sarcastic there.
Brachiator
@OzarkHillbilly:
Again, what I find interesting here is the acknowledgement that this ancient people knew about abortion inducing drugs and that a priest was allowed to administer the drug. This pretty much ends the abortion and Bible debate as far as I am concerned. Thanks for the ammo.
I get the impression that if the wife passed the test, the husband has to keep her.
Also, the Bible contains a number of stories which indicate a male obsession with proving that a child is his. But this Biblical test in Numbers is stupid and defective. It is entirely possible that the woman did not commit adultery and be pregnant with her husband’s child. Or she could have committed adultery and not be pregnant. In this situation, everybody loses.
ETA. I once got into a heated argument coming out of the movies and encountering some people holding up signs with photos of fetuses and accosting people with religious mumbo jumbo. After quoting some scripture myself and asserting that the Bible does not prohibit abortion anywhere, one of the adherents said the devil gave me knowledge of scripture in his attempt to confuse the faithful. At this, I finally had enough.
Kay
Also, it’s nice that they cover the Russia investigation, but there’s a whole Trump Administration and they are operating NOW.
I’d trade coverage of the Russia investigation (which Mueller has anyway- he’ll find what he finds) for coverage of the Trump Administration that is comparable to that of prior Presidents. We saw a tiny bit of this- one of his secretaries was covered for a scandal and that person had to resign. This is baffling to me- I don’t know why there isn’t any investigatory reporting on the Trump Administration other than their ideological views or personalities.
Let’s use the Whitewater scandal standard on the Trump Family and see what shakes out. Why wouldn’t we? That’s the modern norm for reporting on Presidents. They get huge and granular scrutiny.
Except Donald Trump.
Kathleen
@raven: Tumulty was frequent subject (and not in a good way) at the much lamented MediaWhores.com.
JPL
Good for Maggie Haberman for retweeting news that Chef Jose Andres was denied entry to Cafe Milano because he made Ivanka uncomfortable. The Hill has now picked up the article.
http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/371107-celebrity-chef-jose-andres-claims-ivanka-trump-barred-him-from
OzarkHillbilly
@Cermet: Hey now, my new DIL is a pharmacist who works at a compounding pharmacy so she does more than just count pills tho she does make a lot of money but I do like her for the most part (she’s still a smart ass so maybe on that count?…. Nah, I guess I’ll let her live anyway)
I prefer the King James but that is just because I find it poetic.
Kathleen
@bystander: Tumulty was frequent subject (and not in a good way) at the much lamented MediaWhores.com.
germy
@JPL: Has Kushner revealed the names of his business partners yet?
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
Where is this? I would like to add it to my arsenal of biblical text that approves of abortion.
WaterGirl
@JPL: Sad that she gets praise for occasionally and surprisingly doing something that should be part of her job. (poking at maggie h, not you JPL)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
ETA: Jose Andres has spent much of the last four months raising money for and delivering supplies to Puerto Rico. I wonder if Princess Tackycrap knows why he has been doing that.
Gelfling 545
@debbie: IOW if it had not been for reality, things would be completely different?
woodrowfan
Just delete your cookies from the FNYT and you can read more articles for free.
Gelfling 545
@woodrowfan: opening private browsing works for me. On the ipad you have to delete all cookies or none, which is a PitA.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks for that – I hadn’t made the connection because I knew about the chef in Puerto Rico but I didn’t retain his name. That makes it 1,000x worse. He’s done more good in 4 months than she has done in her entire lifetime, and he “makes her uncomfortable”. It makes my blood boil.
chris
My other thought on the FNYT.
Subscribe! And resist. Treat them as you do your congressvarmints, phone, write, email and fax every time they offend you. Comment a lot. Push them to do better, congratulate them when they do and excoriate them when they don’t. I don’t know if it would work but my guess is that they don’t care if you cancel because there will always be two or more low-info subscribers to take your place.
(Just a thought, hides under desk.)
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good for Ana. I didn’t link to Maggie, but instead searched to see if anyone else would mention it. The reviews on yelp are not kind, and they shouldn’t be.
Ivanka needs to spend months in Puerto Rico, preparing meals for the 1/2 million still without electricity.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
No. She left the Times in late 2005.
Cherry-picked from the Wikipedia article on her:
I don’t know if she’s still with Fox. Assume she probably is, since the Wiki article would likely have identified her as a “former” contributor if they had parted ways.
MurAllen
@germy: I am stealing this.
JPL
Here is more information about Chef Andres encounter
https://twitter.com/jorge_guajardo
FlyingToaster
@Cermet: You must have lousy pharmacologists. Mine intervened to make sure that the two meds I’m being prescribed didn’t actually kill me. A 4-way phone call with me, my MD, the insurer and the pharmacy to run through the literature on how they worked, how one scrip uses a substance that I’m allergic to in its manufacture, and that I can’t have the generic of that one because the formulation doesn’t insure sufficient safety from trace amounts. To be reviewed every two years by all involved.
It’s why I won’t use the mail-order option from BCBSMA/Express Scripts. I want a human being in my zip code monitoring this.
Another Scott
@Cermet: Ancient Egyptian contraceptives:
Probably worked several different ways. ;-)
Also, abortion is all about Republican politics – nothing more:
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Sorry, it is unfair to imply that a quote pulled out of the New York Times story and inserted into a Twitter message is a deliberate attempt by the Times do do wrong or that they must write every story so that nothing could ever be distorted.
Only if you read the actual story. Since headlines are generally not written by the reporter, anyone who depends on them is a dope. Headlines are a form of editorializing. They don’t simply convey information neutrally. Yeah, the ignorant masses may not realize this, but reading the newspaper requires the ability to do critical thinking.
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator:
Happy to help, The enemy is that way. ;-)
Well yes, because the test is so “designed” that only the purest in God’s eyes will survive. We both know however that these poisons were not so discriminatory and that what ever the results are it will be interpreed as “God’s will”, just like trial by combat.
On men’s obsessions you are right, on the test you are wrong. The test is neither stupid nor defective because whatever happens is God’s will. If the woman is pregnant with her husband’s child, the child will be born and she will remain a faithful wife. If she dies, obviously she was sinful, and the husband is now rightfully rid of her with God’s endorsement. I rather suspect that unless the woman found a way to bribe the priest/rabbi to withhold a few key ingredients, the result was the same and not to her benefit.
Once when I was walking past the abortion clinic in the Central West End I was similarly accosted. The woman got as far as “You know, Jesus once said…” before I cut her off with, “Jesus said a lot of things but he never said he was Christ.”** Shut her right up.
** i was told this by a guy I knew who was studying ancient Greek. Don’t know if it’s true, and Martin was certainly not a Biblical scholar, but he would not knowingly pass on an untruth. Either way, it worked.
debbie
@germy:
Google tells me she is at Fox and also working independently. (!)
J R in WV
Well, I started reading the article about Richards and stopped when I got to this somewhat undefined moment:
It wasn’t “an anti-abortion group” it was James O’Keefe’s ratfucker team, using concealed cameras and lying about their purpose and identity to get into discussions which proved, as always, to contain sliced and diced editing to misrepresent the words of the people being videoed. Which the FTFNYT didn’t see fit to mention. Fuck those bastards!
debbie
@JPL:
What, was Ivanka afraid he’d squirt her with tomato foam?
pacem appellant
Do you remember Judith Miller? I do. And I have a crap memory. NYT can’t die fast enough.
JPL
@J R in WV: Weren’t most of the videos from private facilities. I do know that there was a lot of doctoring of the films
FlyingToaster
@chris: The only problem with a “Subscribe! and Resist!” approach is that you’re not their customer.
You’re their product. Not news, not editorials, you.
What you’re paying for, with a print subscription, is the paper it’s printed on. With an electronic subscription, you’re maintaining the servers and the backbone access. Where they make their money is by pitching the presence of your eyeballs to their customers, the ad placement folks. They only pay for reporters to make sure they can attract their product.
Every clickbait tweet is designed to get another pair of vetted eyeballs to go and see an ad or six embedded in their article.
So resistance is, well, futile, because they couldn’t care less about you, their product.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He also broke a deal to open a restaurant in one of their spaces after Trump’s condemnation of Hispanics.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JPL: love this
chris
@FlyingToaster: Point.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And the rest of the story is she did nothing.
Cermet
@FlyingToaster: Blame god, not me. They are “His” words. Still, mine let me down but frankly, stupidity (mine) played a bigger factor as well as poor warnings by the companies that make statins and lack of more research. Turns out, raising ones so-called ‘good’ cholesterol is a disaster and can quickly lead to serious issues and increased death (numerous recent studies.) Sticking with statins that just lower the bad stuff is fairly safe, at least from studies. I’d say live and learn but part of that option is now off the table for me.
WaterGirl
@debbie: My first guess was skin color, but he looks white. I look forward to finding out just what made her uncomfortable.
b
@OzarkHillbilly: I suggest this as a starter.
Cermet
@Another Scott: Forgot about that. Thanks for finding it and posting!
Betty Cracker
@BruceFromOhio: Tribal has fuck-all to do with it.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
From JPL’s link:
Ohio Mom
@OzarkHillbilly: I can’t remember anything about whether ancient Jews put off naming babies until their first birthday — could be true — but I do know for sure that the traditional approach was not to hold a funeral for infants less than a month old at death. Just burial in an unmarked grave because the infant was not yet considered a real person.
I have no idea what the ultra orthodox do but nowadays even stillborns are fully mourned, with all the proper ritual, and their bodies placed in marked graves.
That said, Jewish tradition continues to teach that the life of the (potential) mother is paramount. The relationships she has with her family — with her husband and children — her extended family and her community, take precedent over a fetus. If a pregnancy threatens to endanger, limit or diminish her life in any way, then abortion is permitted. Else her established relationships are imperiled.
germy
@MurAllen: But it’s true, isn’t it? Trump’s base says the NYT is a disgrace, and progressives/liberals say the NYT normalizes trump and led cheers for the Iraq war.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@raven: Gentlemen, surely you jest! Expecting people to actually read an entire article as opposed to responding to a tweeted line from it? I’m as big an an-fan of the Vichy Times as anyone, but the actual article reflects a different view from what the tweet might suggest.
Climbing on the train!
Ohio Mom
@Brachiator: Oh yes, especially any infant who looked at all disabled. That is a well-known fact of disability history.
OzarkHillbilly
@b: Deuteronomy 6:15
(For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.
raven
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: Nah, people are too stupid to be expected to read anything so all headline tweets should be submitted here for prior approval.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ohio Mom:
Wh wh whaaaaaat???? Say it ain’t so! Women are chattel!
FlyingToaster
@Cermet:
Several thousand years of oral history first written down 1,000 years ago and edited over the next 400 years to what is more or less its current form is the word of a deity? [Torah / Old Testament]
Especially since at that time the commentary (conveniently omitted by Christianity) that interpreted all of this was added. [Talmud]
Yeesh. Pick a better argument.
Now the statins thing, I understand. I flat-out refused (and will continue to do so) to take statins. The side effects my mom has experienced are worse than the benefits of reduction in cholestorol; if she hadn’t inherited a cardiac occlusion (note: I didn’t inherit it from her), she wouldn’t be on statins. This was an argument with my MD that lasted about 6 months until she and I had gone through the literature and realized that at this point, I was probably right. Lowering my blood pressure is absolutely correct, given my family history; but lowering my cholesterol won’t make a damn bit of difference as to whether or not I blow an aneurysm. If I ever show evidence of heart disease, we will revisit this, but until that happens, there’s no fucking point.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
I am partly a dope. I missed that the Twitter message was drafted by the Times. In designing click bait, they stepped on and undermined their own story.
I suspect that the Twitter operation is separate and has its own managing editor. This is bad. The Economist has a semi autonomous unit that crafts Instagram spots for some of its stories, but they try to maintain ideological consistency.
But here, with the Times, the publisher and the editor are idiots. The Twitter message likely has great appeal to anti abortion folks. The story clearly praises Richards.
So the issue isn’t just one of framing. The NYT is trying to pander to pro and anti abortion people, to get them to click on the story. But in doing so, they undermine their editorial point of view. And this kind of shit will kill the paper. Of course, then, everybody will be happy.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator:
Interesting use of the passive voice there. Who pulled the inflammatory quote and inserted it into the Twitter message? Why, a NYT employee, that’s who! And since it’s ostensibly their job to inform readers, if they pull a quote which implies that “Richards — human being or baby-killing monster” is an open question, they’re doing their job poorly. Hence the criticism.
Bingo — that’s the entire point about the Twitter ledes, headlines and push notification framing. Short attention spans and lack of critical thinking skills are huge problems, but they don’t excuse irresponsible and inaccurate editorializing on the part of the NYT.
ETA: Saw that you addressed this in the comment directly above. Regarding “everyone will be happy” — I won’t be. As I said upstairs, The Times is an important paper. We need it. I just want it to do better but see no sign that its leadership recognizes that the paper has a problem.
b
@OzarkHillbilly: I work with a lot of evangelists. They are completely speechless when I ask them why the OT God was all about smiting – men, women, babies, animals. I ask them what happened to that God.
JPL
@debbie: Ivanka will probably issue a statement apologizing that happened to such a great humanitarian and write a six figure check for his charity. https://www.worldcentralkitchen.org/what-we-do
Of course, I jest. It’s just fake news
FlyingToaster
@OzarkHillbilly: The KC JCC, when I was a kid in the 60s, used to have Sunday afternoon MD clinics with amnio for pregnant couples to make sure that Tay-Sachs wasn’t present. And a travel agent to book trips to New York.
They also did Tay-Sachs screenings for engaged couples, and had a vietnamese adoption service.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
10K with the amount officially unspecified so that her peeps can say “five figure check”. And that’s the most I’d expect. Or a trumpian “pledge”
I hope she and Jared are dumb enough to make a show of going to one of his restaurants. I suspect the chef won’t want to play that game
germy
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:
Why is that? Why doesn’t the NYT tweet reflect the same view as the NYT article?
WaterGirl
@FlyingToaster:
Speak english, please. :-)
Geeno
I think the Bible’s attitude toward the unborn and abortion is summed up by the fact that killing a person could result in your execution; causing a woman to miscarry (essentially an abortion by force) was punished by a fine paid to the would-be father.
Since fine ≠ execution, fetus ≠ person.
germy
@b:
He got real mellow after his kid was born.
Brachiator
@Ohio Mom:
But it was not just disability. It may have been a harsh economic calculation and absence of reliable abortion. If the family could not feed and sustain the newborn, infanticide would be an option. This may also be why the Bible tried to counter this with prohibitions of infanticide.
I may try to find it online, but I once ran across a print story about an archaeological investigation of an ancient Roman brothel that found the remains of hundreds of infants buried nearby. These were likely the offspring of the sex workers. That the women would have gone through a complete pregnancy suggests that abortion aids were incredibly unreliable.
Also, the majority of discarded infants were male. Females we’re kept as future sex workers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m one to make allowances for Dems in tough states, but jesus jumping christ this isn’t just stupid it’s a gross betrayal of his duties as a member of a co-eqaul branch of government
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
I can’t remember and Google isn’t blessing me with the desired results. I’ll post it if it comes to me in any manner.
OK, here it is in an article in Huff Post:
Reading the text from exodus, who knows what it intended to say? Typical confused translations of original texts that were intentionally unclear so that a priest could make any decision he pleased…
Steve in the ATL
@germy:
Well played
Brachiator
@germy:
Editorial incompetence or a calculated attempt to pull in conservative readers.
FlyingToaster
@WaterGirl: KC=Kansas City; JCC=Jewish Community Center, the 60’s = the decade from 1960-1969. I took classes at the JCC at 83rd & Holmes on the Missouri side, which has since moved to Johnson County, KS.
Ozark Hillbilly is from MO; he probably understood most of the shorthand.
Cermet
@FlyingToaster: Not disagreeing but I am JOKING about the fact that we should follow the bible and kill pharmasit; yes, what I am quoting is from the original text as best understood. Those are found in the Dead Sea scrolls as I understand it. High blood pressure is a deadly killer and good you have yours down,. Yes, statins can (for 5% of people taking them) lead to kidney or liver failure. That is why they require blood tests. Unfortunately, blood test do not always show that the statin is killing you. Hopefully, that is a tiny percentage. Still, Tylenol directly and indirectly causes thousands of liver failures (requiring transplants) every year but it is both over the counter and taken with little regard to its dangers. sigh
germy
@Brachiator:
I don’t think it’s incompetence. They know exactly what they’re doing.
tobie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m so tired of seeing Manchin’s mug on television. A turncoat Dem seems to be the only Dem that the likes of Chuck Todd want to interview. Quelle surprise.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Cripes, Manchin and his family are fucking open sores on the ass of humanity.
Villago Delenda Est
@tobie: Hence, Chuckles the Toddler’s very single digit listing on the tumbrel manifest.
Cermet
@Brachiator: No it does not imply that at all. Numerous other issues arise that make that topic and reading of such limited data not something that follows your logic. Also, without knowing how many times they used one vs. success and failure, your statement is not based on sound thinking. Besides, the side effects were not always good and multiple uses might have been dangerous (often requiring further treatments which added to the cost and more health issues.) As such, one can’t draw such a conclusion – possible but not a conclusion.
Brachiator
@J R in WV: Thanks for this. I think I knew of this example, but thought that there might be reference to a case in which a woman seeks to induce a miscarriage.
BTW,
The eye for an eye thing is less primitive than modern readers understand. This rule says that justice must be proportionate.
It bans going after an entire family, or allowing the rich to seek greater punishment because of their wealth or status.
And note that there are still societies in which a crime is a stain on family honor. A recent BBC news story was about some teen in an Eastern European country who had to hide out because he was still held responsible for a crime committed by a relative generations before he was born.
WaterGirl
@FlyingToaster: hahahaha on the explanation of the sixties! Thanks for the rest.
FlyingToaster
@WaterGirl: I’m one of the oddities that tried to use my AARP card to look for discounts on preschools and babysitting (my daughter is now 10 years old). This isn’t the first time I’ve had to explain that I’m not in my 60’s, but that I was born during the 1960s.
Brachiator
@germy:
Could be. But it will bite them in the ass.
BruceFromOhio
@FlyingToaster: I’m sorry you have to deal with this, but the four-way discussion is what should be sop, and I’m glad you had the option.
BruceFromOhio
@J R in WV: lol dude I was being a facetious asshole in honor of yesterday’s troll marathon. And you noticed (snif)!
FlyingToaster
@BruceFromOhio: It only happened because of the pharmacist, who works .7 miles from my house. If I were dealing with a mail-order drone at Express Scripts, I’d probably have blown an aneurysm already.
Ohio Mom
@OzarkHillbilly: There are surprisingly enlightened bits sprinkled throughout Jewish writings, stuff like a husband is not to force himself sexually on his wife, and that he is obligated to make sure his wife enjoys their sexual encounters.
I’m not saying this stuff was necessarily followed, I’m saying that someone thought it, wrote it down, and other people continued to study it and consider it worthy of reiterating.
We never had a central authority — nothing like a pope or hierarchy — and we were widely dispersed. Add to this that literacy — among the menfolk — was relatively widespread for the times, and you have a lot of people writing about lot of different things — a thousand flowers blooming, if you will.
StringOnAStick
Drug costs are the single biggest driver of increasing health care costs in the US, and so where do we see costs being cut? Pharmacists, because that’s labor. The real bucks are in manufacturing, so that’s where the most lobbying money comes from. I swear, every issue we are struggling against comes down to how much money is sloshing around political campaigning.
BruceFromOhio
@FlyingToaster: MrsFromOhio does the xpress scriptomania, and while it is cost effective, I do worry it may be a risk without the personal attention. Also, direct convo is so much better. “Wait, you’re taking what?”
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
That tweet makes the Times complicit.
different-church-lady
@FlyingToaster:
Actually, traditional print operated on the same model, except the only metric they had back in those analog days was circulation numbers.
Today it’s real time, sophisticated, creepy, and “clicks” have replaced “eyeballs”, but in the end it’s just a very advanced version of the same thing. And the bad stuff moves faster than ever.
matt
@Brachiator: that tweet tho – turns out some people read twitter
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Comment of the Year is usually goes to the most impressive snark, but I’d nominate this one nonetheless. You should front-page it.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
And that’s why nobody in this country knows a damn thing anymore.
different-church-lady
@Cermet: If God is omnipotent, how can he write a book that doesn’t cover everything?
dp
@Raven: I did not, but if it’s not this one, it’s something else it seems. My comment was general; I’ve been about to resubscribe for about three years now, and they keep on keeping me from pulling the trigger.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
See my comment 133.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
Good for her.
Another Scott
Probably dead thread, but…
@Ivan X:
It’s not at all hard to find decent news sites that aren’t horrible click-bait messes.
Reuters is my go-to general news site these days.
CalculatedRiskBlog continues to be my go-to place for in-the-weeds news and analysis of the state of the US economy.
We don’t have to accept click-bait and trashy, distorted news. And as long as those things make money for FTFNYT and other MSM, they’ll keep doing it.
(Effectively) The only things these huge companies understand is money. Vote with your dollars.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator: Seen, but long after I posted — hazard of commenting before reading the entire thread.
zhena gogolia
@FlyingToaster:
I sort of (didn’t) learn to swim at the KC JCC!
SgrAstar
@FlyingToaster: the observation that we are the NYT’s product may be true, but it isn’t useful. In your framing we’re the product for every form of mass media. So what? You’re just as much ‘the product’ for the WaPo or SFGate. Bottom line is- we need serious, committed media, more than ever. Without it, we’re toast. The Guardian and WaPo are my personal faves, but…I also subscribe to the NYT. Their political desk sucks, but there’s still a lot of great stuff there. Kill me now…. :)
Another Scott
@Geeno: Bingo.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gretchen
@WaterGirl: Kansas City Jewish Community Center.
JAFD
Greetings from New Jersey!
The high temp at EWR was 55F today, and yours truly rouses from hibernation, thinks “Maybe I oughta find more reasons to get outta the house sometime…”
Now I got a trial sub to the _New Yorker_ last year, and IMAO it’s done some fantastic long-form jurnalism this past year. Now must consider renewing – $119, no ‘senior discount’, but you can send a free gift sub (earmarked for friend poorer than I). But the agate type at the front ain’t nearly as comprehensive as Back When I Was Young In The Good Old Days.
The _Village Voice_ stopped their print edition, and the _Star-Ledger_ is an unreasonable facsimile of a newspaper. So am thinking of a trial sub to ye FTNYT to see how comprehensive their ‘Upconming Events List’
Suggestions ?
Citizen Alan
@Cermet:
I don’t think we even need to argue that God loves abortion. I think our position is that God just doesn’t give a crap about it because the Bible is abundantly clear that life begins with the first breath. No one in biblical times would have believed for one second that an unborn child had some sort of nebulous right to life that was equal to little loan superior to the rights of the woman carrying it
Felanius Kootea
@JAFD: Probably dead thread but in case you come back – I subscribe to the New York Times in spite of their many flaws (see comments above). I find their international and other news to be great, their political news and some of their op-eds to be sub-par. I say go for it and be ready to complain directly to them when they miss the mark. Since TV news in the US is largely for entertainment purposes, newspapers are invaluable. I don’t want them to die out. I also subscribe to the Washington Post and read the BBC’s website. The only TV news I watch semi-regularly is BBC News (international, not BBC America, which is unfortunately dumbed down). I loved Al-Jazeera America but that was not meant to be.
Scamp Dog
@Citizen Alan: Where things get interesting is that evangelicals have changed translations of the bible to make it fit their abortion politics: Fred Clark, at his Slacktivist blog, writes it up here. So much for the inerrant, unchanging Word of God…