Journalists on here: We are the guardians of democracy. We alone hold the torch of truth to shine a light on the powerful.
Same journalists: I wish I could write about how Trump is bad but Democrats aren't emailing me any talking points I like.
— Bret "Gregor Samsa" Stephens (@agraybee) September 3, 2019
This piece is a good example of why I and most of the people I know in journalism believe — by a very wide margin — that the Washington Post has surpassed the New York Times in reporting on the president of the United States. https://t.co/jBo2uLNPgo
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) September 2, 2019
Many years ago, when I subscribed to a dead-tree Washington Post weekly, a friend who’d grown up in the area explained that Washington DC is a company town where the monopoly industry is national politics. Which means that the Post treats every President as a CEO analogue — someone responsible for keeping the local industry running on an even keel, so that government workers and the hundreds of thousands of people whose livelihoods depend on those workers prosper.
The NYTimes considers itself as the national financial capitol; what interests them about any President is how he’s perceived by global business interests. The current Oval Office Occupant, however disastrous for individual Americans and the larger world, has *so far* been satisfactory as a novelty performer whose directors have not, to date, interfered in the ever-burgeoning prosperity of the oligarchs who support the NYTimes…
How it happened is not easy to explain. A key factor is that Dean Baquet, compared to Marty Baron, is far more concerned with how the Times coverage is — key word coming up — perceived by the White House and Republicans who support Trump. I wrote about it: https://t.co/VrTcZDUM4W
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) September 2, 2019
Thing is… when the profit-taking fails, the performer’s zany antics no longer disguise the smash’n’grab, there’s nothing left to loot… what becomes of the NYTimes? Or at least its most public face?
It is certainly a striking fact: "Baquet, the first African-American executive editor of the Times, doesn’t see this moment in American history as particularly aberrant." https://t.co/kIrxc4uhrL
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) September 2, 2019
The piece could have gone further. I was limiting myself to the comparison: Post vs. Times.
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) September 2, 2019
And the Post is better at marketing, too:
How to subscribe to the Washington Post: https://t.co/9rICnGI8P9 https://t.co/Tmyg4i02gt
— Carlos Lozada (@CarlosLozadaWP) September 2, 2019
Respite Open Thread: Waffles and Hemingway Need a Home
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Someone on twitter, maybe Rosen, said last week that the Times wants market itself as part of the Resistance, but Baquet et al are terrified of being perceived that way. I thought the decision to get rid of the position of public editor (ombudsman) was telling, I don’t know if that was Baquet or the ruling family (Sultzburger? Pinch, Punch and Paunch?), and Baquet is probably just the sort of person the heirs want there, a good Broderist who’s proud to share a cafeteria with Ross Douthat and Jeremy Peters
Also, the Post doesn’t currently have such a position, though I think Erik Wemple will sometimes criticize his colleagues. And one of their last Ombuds was the infamous (in the blogosphere, at the time) Deb Howell.
Chetan Murthy
I’m a Post subscriber. Would be a FTFNYT “negative subscriber” (where my $$ offset one-for-one somebody else’s $$, maybe they both go to Oxfam or something?) Hardly ever read WaPo articles directly, but often via links from elsewhere. Except for Petri, and itinerantly Rubin. But esp. Petri.
Mike in NC
We just watched “Rocketman” on DVD. A musical/biopic based on the life and songs of Elton John. Very entertaining. If you were alive in the 1970s, Elton John was king of the universe.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also, because Open Thread, Pence’s trip to Ireland is going to be 48 hours of grift and embarrassment
the WH is also offering the fact that Pence is having an official lunch with the Taoiseach and his partner (is same-sex marriage not recognized in Ireland? I thought there was a referendum in favor a couple of years ago), as a pro-LGBTQ stance
Judd Deere is a deputy press secretary, and he thinks he has a point
Citizen Alan
I consider Dean Baquet to be the journalistic equivalent of Clarence Thomas: a self-loathing black man who would happily support the return of Jim Crow if it brought him acceptance by conservative white elites.
chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
SFAW
I don’t think Baquet was a “glimmer in anyone’s eye” in 1992, when the FTFTFNYT started their 25-plus-year hatefest for All Things Clinton. Which is not to say that Baquet adds value of any kind. But if I had a choice between him and Marty Baron, I’d go with Baron 12 times out of 10.
But it would be nice if the FTFTFNYT did their jobs, instead of trying to show us rubes how fucking smart and important they are.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Washington Post absolutely does have an ombud. The fabulous Margaret Sullivan. Formerly of the NY Times.
Yeah, I remember Deborah Howell being a ridiculous choice. Somehow not a surprise she met her demise walking into traffic.
cokane
the company paper line never makes sense because WaPo doesn’t toe any President’s line, it’s a bad metaphor
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Willfully ignorant is no way to go through life, son
I’m still wondering if and when the Executive Office of the President is going to organizationally collapse. That moment has to be coming soon. Who the fuck would want to work as a White House aide under this fucking pig?
Gin & Tonic
Ismali Ajjawi, the Palestinian kid from Lebanon who had his visa denied at Logan Airport on his way to enroll at Harvard, has been admitted and will be in Cambridge tomorrow for the start of classes. Boy, this must have entailed some string-pulling.
Good for the kid.
dmsilev
@Gin & Tonic: One thing about Harvard is that the university has connections. Lots and lots and lots of connections. It’s really the main point of going there. The university administration would have many strings to pull.
cokane
It’d be a more apt metaphor for The Hill or Politico, which dedicate their coverage to government and politics. The Post’s front page isn’t even about Washington half the time… look at it right now, Dorian, Florida, Bahamas, two West Virginia stories, the California boat accident — it’s covering national stories. Sometimes those are politics, sometimes they’re not. It’s the print equivalent of the 630 news, not at all a company town paper. I doubt they even see their market base as being DC metro
dmsilev
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Not that there’s any real point in fact-checking a professional liar, but more accomplishments than FDR’s first term? More than Obama’s first two years, where the stimulus, financial reform, and the ACA alone top the tax cut that is Trump’s sole legislative accomplishment.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@SFAW:
What pisses me off the most is how “cliquish” and defensive journalists, especially NYT journalists, get when they’re criticized by outsiders. Like they can’t take any criticism at all
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
What was the NYT’s argument for getting rid of the public editor? That readers would act as a “collective public editor”? For all of Liz Spayd’s failings, I remember she tore into the Times towards the end, which is why I think they got rid of her position
J R in WV
@dmsilev:
Plus the poor person probably only has the vaguest idea who FDR was, what he faced upon beginning his presidency, the opposition he faced from right wing capitalists….
Just because we all know FDR saved the world from fascist horror doesn’t mean there’s anyone in the trump White House who knows that much about history!
Aleta
Last summer someone I know from a generations-of-wealth family that supports liberal candidates (and some lib causes) summed it up by telling me what her neighbors, who employ and depend on immigrants for the labor on their estates, say to her about T. ‘We don’t like him but the stock market is good.’ I believe that’s another big piece of the Times’ attitude. They’ve supported many liberal causes, but they never lose the perspective (and their wealthy readers’ perspective) of prioritizing what makes money. Make money first, then you can do some good. But also spend money on luxury— but call it art.
Maybe that’s why they gave a pass to the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld lies about invading Iraq; why they didn’t expose Bush Sr. and why they softened Little Bush; why they let Elliott Abrams praise Reagan’s support of murdering dictators in Latin and South America as pro-democracy… Well anyway. The stock market and investments and overseas profits come first with them. I hope their management chokes on itself.
SRW1
@dmsilev:
Please stop! Otherwise The Trumpster is gonna want his mettle showcased by invading Grenada or some such!
dmsilev
@J R in WV: Fine, let’s forget FDR, he’s just a class-traitor socialist pinko anyway. You’d think a Republican might remember that whole ‘party of Lincoln’ thing, and his first few years included minor things like mostly winning a Civil War.
SFAW
@dmsilev:
He’s had a shitload more accomplishments, using their metrics.
The problem is, destruction of: various parts of government, various protections and regulations, various safety nets, various cooperative relationships with our allies, and so on — they consider all of those things “accomplishments.” After all, it’s a hell of a lot easier to destroy than it is to build, and his entire business career has been about destruction, despite his claim that he’s a real estate “developer.”
SFAW
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Journalists? Or
moronspundits like Bedbug, Friedman, Bobo, and Chunky Bobo?Matt McIrvin
@Aleta: The stock market isn’t even that good. I mean, Trump had one good boom year, which was more or less a continuation of Obama’s recovery combined with the general willingness of the Republican Congress to do deficit-spending stimulus when a Republican is in office. Then he had a long period of high volatility and near-stagnation, with his delusions on trade fueling actions that have the markets actually worried.
A 1987- or 2008-sized market crash might shake these people out of their complacency… or they might be true believers and just refuse to believe it really happened.
Chetan Murthy
@SFAW:
@??? I think Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: has it right. I mean, WaPo has Fred Hiatt [spit] and his idiot horde of op-ed writers. Remember that fuckwit Krauthammer? And I don’t even wanna go look to see who they have these days, but I’ll bet they have a few simpering imbeciles. The difference is that the straight news side actually does its job SOMETIMES. I mean, there’s Farenthold, Eichenwald, and a few others. Balko, I think. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few of the big names. And Baron seems like he gets what news is -for-.
Whereas, at FTFNYT, you have MAGAt Habs, Thrush, and … ugh, so many fuckwits. And they’re all on the news side. Led by that oaf Baquet.
PJ
@dmsilev: Larry, just be a dear and make a call to Muffy in the State Department, she’ll sort this thing out in a jiffy.
J R in WV
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
So… Judd Deere’s bio starts out:
“Deere was born in Benton, Arkansas and graduated from Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas.” Lyon College has under 700 students, total. My HS had 800 in my graduating class.
randy khan
@cokane:
There’s a big race on now to see which papers will survive (probably not much in actual paper form), and essentially none of the winners will be locally focused in the end (although, ironically, the New York Times may be able to get away with some of that, as the world cares much more about local New York news than about local anywhere else news). The Post always has wanted to be more national, so the shift fits with its ambitions, not to mention that what you see on the home page and what you might see in print likely are different. (And I wonder if papers aren’t using location information from originating IP addresses to tailor home pages differently for local and non-local people – it would be a good idea, actually.)
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@dmsilev:
I know, it’s so delusional it’s funny
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@SFAW:
@Chetan Murthy:
Haberman and Thrush are who came to mind as “journalists” who lash out at “partisans” when either they are their colleagues are ever called out
david
Remember when B-J’ers were telling everyone to subscribe to the NYT? Show your support for journalism? Like, just 2 years ago?
Good times. Good times, indeed.
joel hanes
@dmsilev:
Virtually all of Trump’s “accomplishments” are negative.
If you viewed increased bigotry and rightwing violence, increased open discrimination, increased corporate predation, increased atmospheric CO2 and methane, increased water pollution, and the gutting of the EPA and the FEC and the corruption of DoJ as accomplishments, The Donald would have quite a list.
Aleta
@Matt McIrvin: yeah, that’s based on what my friend said last year — I don’t have a clue how the shakiness is affecting these clowns now.
eta except that for some with wealth to play with, a recession can be seen as a money making opportunity.
Chetan Murthy
@david:
Wut? Uh, I don’t think so. I was here, and the FTFNYT rhetoric was just as fierce then. I think the mood was “subscribe to your local paper” and also “WaPo is doing a decent job, albeit not perfect by any stretch”.
trnc
@dmsilev:
How much of DT’s base believes Lincoln’s win was the correct outcome?
SFAW
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I’m not sure I consider MAGAt a journalist, but she’s not a pundit, so …
I guess I put her in the same category as Judith Miller — a gossip columnist passing for a journalist. Yeah, I realize that may not be very fair of me.
Chetan Murthy
So Newark just had an “active shooter” false alarm. Sheer chaos. Yeah, a few more of these, and I’m sure the NRA will get its legislative agenda thru.
rawstory.com/2019/09/watch-confusion-and-chaos-as-newark-airport-evacuated-on-labor-day-night/
ThresherK
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “(Maybe on Rosen’s twitter it was said) the Times wants market itself as part of the Resistance, but Baquet et al are terrified of being perceived that way”
What I read was sorta that but sideways. Baquet seemed to be saying “liberals want NYT to be the resistance and we just want to call balls and strikes”, which of course is bullshit. Any excuse in a storm.
Jay
Chetan Murthy
@SFAW:
She oughta be pleased. At least you didn’t call her a stenographer.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@J R in WV:
Mine had close to 300 something graduates. Honestly, 700 isn’t a lot at all. I must have had 2-3000 students in my HS alone. It helps when you’re HS is the only one in the district.
According to wiki:
That’s the entire wiki page btw
Doesn’t seem like much. Why is the WH hiring dorks like…Judd (you can’t make this shit up) from no-name private colleges like Lyon in bumfuck Arkansas? Scraping the bottom of the barrel or this the best conservatives from Real America can offer?
joel hanes
@Chetan Murthy:
I don’t even wanna go look to see who they have these days
Jen Rubin, Greg Sargent, and Eugene Robinson have been doing fine work. David Ignatius is OK. Tom Toles, their editorial cartoonist, has been savage about DJT. And the Editorial Board editorials have been better than anything in the FTFNYT, as nearly as I can tell.
OTOH, Hiatt is giving space to Hugh Hewitt, Gary Abernathy, and Henry Olsen, none of whom can even feign thought, and to George Fucking Will.
SFAW
@david:
Yeah, not quite. Chetan’s reply pretty much encapsulates what was happening here during that period.
But thanks for your extremely valuable contribution.
oatler.
Pull de strinks! Pull de strinks!
Jay
caravanmagazine.in/politics/american-sangh-affair-tulsi-gabbard
There’s lots of great journalism happening out there. Little of it is in the MSM.
joel hanes
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
This is the liberal, “mainline” branch of the Presbyterian Church in America, almost as liberal as the Congregationalists, who in turn are almost as liberal as the Episcopalians.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Chetan Murthy:
That’s how I remember it too. I think david is confusing BJ with the general liberal zeitgeist post-election and inauguration where everybody was stupidly subscribing to the NYT, even though the NYT covered the election like dogshit. Don’t forget buying the “Clinton Cash” gem or the October surprise FBI article declaring there were no Russian connections to the Trump campaign ?
Chetan Murthy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Reading that wikipedia page, it sure gives the impression that *learning* is really important at Lyon College. Really, really important. I especially liked the
Because what makes HBS work, is the *facilities*.[1]
[1] I don’t have a lot of respect for MBAs, but still, it’s not the buildings that give the cachet.
Chetan Murthy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I suspect either david woke up from a long/long/long nap, is really young and didn’t actually read any blogs in 2016, or is a troll. B/c if there’s one thing that really characterized the liberal blogosphere, it was incandescent rage at the NYT’s “Buttery Males” coverage. I mean, that one FTFNYT front-page with Hillary & Huma probably got more use as a header graphic, than any other FTFNYT front-page in history.
Incandescent rage. I’m sure it was the same here. Hell, that rage hasn’t subsided — there’s at least one commenter who’s nym is “Buttery Males”, IIRC.
Mike in NC
@joel hanes: Don’t forget Mark Thiessen, who cannot go a day without fellating Fat Bastard.
Mathguy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: They basically have a “Are you breathing? You’re admitted!” policy. A former friend taught there for a few years, art historian. His political views fit beautifully with the shitgibbon cultists.
TomatoQueen
WaPo online has a little button up top of page one for local or regional news, easily switched. There is also a facsimile of the day’s print edition online via a link below right of page one. The strong emphasis on local/regional was something Donnie Graham wanted for the paper, in addition to the national-is-local effect, which had worked so well during Watergate (the story stayed on the Metro desk the entire time, instead of going to National). In this town, there are certain inevitabilities. Disclosure: in the late 1970s, I worked at WaPo for 2 years, in the syndicated columns department, doing copy-edit and type/send, which was a nice combination of newsroom on the 5th floor and corporate on the 8th floor, where Mrs Graham had her mini-palace.
Mary G
@Chetan Murthy: Yes, to my recollection most of the jackals were furious with the famous October story about the FBI finding no link to Trump and Russia.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@joel hanes:
I just assumed it was a private wingnut school. In places like Arkansas, it’s a safe bet usually. Wonder why Judd turned out the way he did? Out of curiosity, where does the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), also a mainline denomination, fall on that spectrum?
Redshift
@joel hanes: And Michael Gerson, don’t forget.
Feh.
Ladyraxterinok
@dmsilev: I had the impression Republicans took pride in Teddy Roosevelt’s creation of the National Parks and the concept of preserving natural beauty for future generations.
They’re working on trampling that whole concept into the ground.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Damn. Trump does not miss an opportunity to profit from the presidency.
Mother won’t allow Pence to be in a room with another woman. A gay person, no problem.
James E Powell
Question, Mr Baquet, if you all had sat down and tried to come up with a headline that mollified Donald Trump, could you have done any better than the headline you ran?
What puts the lie to everything that a hole says is that none of those restrictions or limits ever applied to anyone named Clinton. And that certainly includes the entire 2016 election cycle.
Baquet is a liar. So are a number of the reporters, Haberman probably most prominent. They put Trump in the White House and they very much want to keep him there. Democrats need to just unload fury on the NYT, name them as the enemies they are.
Redshift
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
It is the best conservatives can offer. There was a time when there were conservative writers who could put together a cogent argument or thought-provoking essay. But now they all come up though wingnut welfare, where the only twirling m requirement for continued employment is the ability to work backward from a predetermined answer to make something that looks like an argument if you don’t think too hard, and never ever questioning right-wing dogma, even if, a la 1984, it is the exact opposite of what conservative dogma was yesterday.
These conditions do not produce anything but garbage “intellectuals.”
joel hanes
@Mike in NC:
Don’t forget Mark Thiessen
I’m sorry to ignore your advice, but I’m doing my level best to forget Mark Thiessen. Worse than any of the ones I named.
Redshift
@Ladyraxterinok: Nope. These days, they take pride in the fact that Teddy was a Republican, and that does not interfere at all with trashing everything he believed in.
Hell, they worship Reagan as a god, but don’t bat an eye when Trump and Bolton trash his nuclear arms control legacy for certifiably insane reasons.
Hitlesswonder
@Redshift:
Gerson is surprisingly anti-trump. Thiesssen is a full on syncophant that clearly would be cool promoting whatever authoritarian government you could name where he from the 1930s
Chetan Murthy
@Redshift:
Yeah, all these assholes on the WaPo op-ed page, is why I don’t count it as worth my spit. Just like FTFNYT’s op-ed page. Both have good columnists; both employ spineless imbeciles who make earthworms look righteous.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah, lol, that part stuck out to me too. That, and the “distinctive Scottish Heritage program”. Nothing with wrong the Scottish, but that’s funny to me for some reason
@Mathguy:
Interesting. So the school isn’t as liberal as the mainline Presbyterian church it’s affiliated with? Or at least the faculty/students?
TS (the original)
@Jay: When I got my first job on leaving college, the average CEO got 30 times the salary of the average worker. NO single person is worth what CEOs are paid today. They are not entrepreneurs – they are wage earners – same as all the other workers. Not one of them wants to call it as it should be called, when your’re on a good thing – and all that.
Timurid
It’s a very disappointing weekend on the Trump front, because he appears to have rallied from whatever health crisis appeared to be imminent in the last week to 10 days, with the unusually (even by his standards) unhinged comments in tweets and public appearances and the press conference this week where he struggled to speak and had to use the podium to support himself. Because he managed to play at least two full rounds of golf this weekend, and from the video that’s been released, appeared to playing and moving normally. Of course he had a dreadful weekend by every other measure, at least by the old standards of Presidential conduct. Openly malingering, skipping the foreign trip and then not even pretending to pay attention to the hurricane that was the supposed justification. Ordering his Vice President to engage in open corruption to his benefit while abroad. Repeated Twitter spasms. But elites and the media don’t care about any of that. A serious health crisis is the only thing that will make them lose faith in him. It may… probably… still will happen, but it’s been moved back to some indefinite future.
joel hanes
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
where does the Christian Church
Though my paternal grandparents once belonged to that denomination, I do not know. My family switched to Presbyterianism before I was born, for reasons I’ve never been told, and I’ve never investigated the CC/DoC.
If I remember, next time I see her I’ll ask my surviving aunt about it.
joel hanes
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
So the school isn’t as liberal
It’s in Arkansas.
Have you ever been in Arkansas ?
Chetan Murthy
@Hitlesswonder:
Not enough: The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it
He can burn in hell.
joel hanes
@Hitlesswonder:
Gerson is surprisingly anti-trump.
Gerson is a never-Trumper who wants to pretend that Trump is an aberration from a respectable and principled conservative party. He hopes to save the GOP after Trump’s done. He’s unwilling to understand that the Republicans have become a party in Trump’s image, and there’s no going back.
mrmoshpotato
@SFAW: You don’t remember the FTFNYT’s hard-hitting investigative reporting on how Dump’s been the Kremlin’s bitch since 1987?
Oh shit, I’m sorry. I’m trying not to drip sarcasm everywhere. I really am. Right back with a mop.
Ladyraxterinok
@Redshift: Teddy was known for his policy of ‘trustbustibg’ and his work against the ‘malefactors of great wealth’.
I was born in 40 . In school I got a very positive view of Teddy as the great ‘trustbuster’ and the father of our national parks.
Are these facts simply not taught to kids anymore?!
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Ladyraxterinok:
Well, they did as late as the 90s
I remember learning about the Trustbuster in high school (early 2010s), IIRC
James E Powell
@Ladyraxterinok:
I teach high school English in Los Angeles. I would be stunned and amazed if any of my students knew who Teddy Roosevelt was or could identify any of the many things associated with him. They are now all born after 9/11. Only a few can say who George W Bush was.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@joel hanes:
I’ll be interested to know the answer : )
@joel hanes:
Nope. But I can imagine. I do live in NE Ohio and even though my county is nominally Dem, they’re pretty much conservadems. In the bumfuck small towns outside the city/suburbs they fly the Confederate Battle Flag outside their homes, whereas 155+ years ago they would’ve been lynched for doing so in the same towns. Ohio honestly sucks
Brachiator
@James E Powell:
Teddy Roosevelt might be ancient history. Do they have any knowledge of events going back to, say, 1961?
mrmoshpotato
@joel hanes:
Exactly. They all are. Every single one of these bastards wants to act like the Republican party was an upstanding party that wanted to move the country forward in a more fiscally conservative way than the Democrats. And Dump moved in and turned the party into a racist shitpile that would ratfuck the Democratic party any way it could.
Ummm…no. We’d have the same shit if JEB! (please clap) had beat Hillary in 2016. Except they’d be much quieter about trying to destroy the ACA, passing the GOP tax scam, atrocities against brown people and women, etc.
@Hitlesswonder: You on Twitter? Wanna get blocked by Matthew Dowd or Rick Wilson? Ask them about the Iraq clusterfuck they were cheering on when W was President.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James E Powell: I was gonna mention Night at the Museum, but they may be too young for that, too
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@James E Powell:
Damn. What grade do you teach, if you don’t mind my asking? I still remember watching the news coverage of the towers, of them being on fire. I was only 6 and didn’t fully understand what was going on at the time
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Eh, the last Night at the Museum movie was in 2014, so maybe not. Though I don’t remember hearing about it then ?♂️
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Redshift:
I’ve heard William F. Buckley held up as one of these
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
This is the year many of those born after what you remember turn 18 – old enough to be sent off to fight in Afghanistan, a war begun before any whose 2001 date of birth comes after October 7 were born.
Jay
?BillinGlendaleCA
@James E Powell:
I wish I didn’t know who George W. Bush was.
Jay
James E Powell
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Children born in September 2001 are about to turn 18.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay:
Seventy-nine dog night! ? Jeremiah was a bullfrog! And brought a bunch of friends of his!?
Jay
Chetan Murthy
@James E Powell: I think Goku might have been wondering which grade, b/c he was surprised at the lack of knowledge of the kids. I was surprised also. I was in HS in the late 70s, and we knew who Herbert Hoover was. Wilson, too. Eisenhower. etc.
James E Powell
@Redshift:
That was a long time ago, when their criticisms of American government seemed to be in good faith, before all their proposals were tried, failed, then tried and failed again. Tax cuts for the rich, corporate welfare, eliminating unions, reducing wages, reducing or eliminating general welfare. None of these things produced the promised jobs & middle class prosperity. It’s all bullshit and it appears that they all knew it was lies the whole time.
Origuy
My family went to a Disciples church when I was a kid. I was baptized into it. I gave up the whole god thing later on, but I have a soft spot for the D of C. They were pretty liberal back in the seventies, and still are at the national level. They leave a lot up to local congregations, though.
Presbyterians in the US are to the Church of Scotland as Episcopalians are to the Church of England. There are several conservative splinter churches in Scotland and Northern Ireland, just as there are here.
Chetan Murthy
@James E Powell:
Well, it also turned out, that these well-turned arguments didn’t convince their target voters, where dog-whistling “ni-CLANG” and “jooooo” and “moose-limb!” worked a treat. Next thing you know, nobody bothers to learn how to actually craft decent arguments, b/c hey, why bother when you can just subtly signal that the Dems are all jooooooos and moose-limb-lovers. And then, of course, came along Hair Furore, and they realized that even the subtlety was both unnecessary, and counterproductive to their cause.
And here we are, all of us.
Jay
James E Powell
@Chetan Murthy:
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
9th and 11th, but I’ve taught every grade in high school at one time or another in the last thirteen years. I have never had more than two or three students out of 120 or so who know much about US history, geography, politics, etc. Very few have ever shown any interest in such things. I don’t want to go all old guy talking about kids today, but I feel like something is wrong and I don’t know how to fix it.
I can’t be too hard on these students. There are adults with college degrees who are just as ignorant. Some of them are powerful elected officials.
mrmoshpotato
@James E Powell: Serious question – are states and capitals still tested on?
Brachiator
@James E Powell:
Hell, I didn’t have much interest in history in high school, and some stuff got through only because it was required. Sometimes you have to be a magician and trick kids into paying attention.
ETA. Looking back, some history that I was taught in grade school and junior high school was wrong or incomplete.
Jay
Sebastian
Kay’s insight regarding ammosexuals’ sunk costs with dead kids applies here as well.
These people missed the biggest story of all times. Russia installed a puppet and took over The United States of America. They HAVE TO deny any of this is true.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato: I don’t remember them being tested when I was in school, I knew them anyway cause I’m a freak.
James E Powell
@Sebastian:
Definitely think you’re on to something. Nobody and no thing that did as much to put Trump in the White House as the New York Times. Its 20+ year campaign against all things Clinton coupled with what can only be a deliberate decision not to reveal things about Trump that are probably common knowledge among its reporters outweighed all other actors. Even Bernie Sanders’s ravings about corruption wouldn’t have had much traction if the New York Times hadn’t been making the same unsupported claims for years.
Jay
@Brachiator:
The pushback against the 1619 Project is an example of how few in America want to know how the sausage was made.
Actual history is shall we say, inconvenient.
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I don’t teach history and I don’t know what works. I do know that whatever it is they do, it doesn’t result in students who know things about the nation, its history, or its political institutions. Maybe it never did. I don’t know. Like BillinGlendaleCA, I was a freak, my whole family were freaks. I learned all the basics before they were brought up in school.
Jay
amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/30/ijeoma-oluo-essay-swatting-hoax-white-supremacists?CMP=…
Powerful essay.
Jay
@James E Powell:
They teach from the textbooks, which are dumbed down and censored to avoid offending the deplorables.
206inKY
This post is a fantastic reading of the lay of the land. Does this mean the “company paper in a company town whose monopoly industry in national politics” line, which made sense in the 2000s, is finally being retired? It was so cutting before 2016, but started to seem like an artifact from a different era, especially with Fahrentold’s relentless work that summer relentlessly untangling the web of lies behind the Trump Foundation.
JAFD
@James E Powell: Was at this summer’s convention of ‘grown-ups who still play with toy soldiers’. Bit suprised at amount of WWII stuf there, then did math and realized that, for today’s young uns, FDR is as far in the past as Grover Cleveland was to my generation.
Brachiator
@Jay:
Actually, I think the inconvenience can be a selling point when you are teaching kids. They love the taboo, and stuff that makes their parents nervous.
@James E Powell:
Even though history is not your subject, I didn’t know whether you had talked about this issue with any history teachers. In any event I understand how frustrating this must be.
I am practically a lifetime away from my school days, but I remember pushing back and giving my teachers a moderately hard time if I thought the subject was boring. But there were also subjects I liked and teachers I appreciated. I recognize that it’s gotta be a tough job.
jl
I think the kindest interpretation of Baquet’s attitude is that he is completely clueless and complacent. Sure we got through the Civil War, Great Depression, McCarthyism, Vietnam, Cuban Missile Crisis. So, as the head of one the nation’s leading newspapers, I can phone this one in. Because, we get through all crises OK.
The other interpretations are deep corruption or cynicism.
Sloane Ranger
Here in the UK, when I was at school, we were taught History as a kind of rolling narrative beginning with the Stone Age and moving forward. It was broken down into reigns to create digestible chunks. On one wall of the classroom we even had a time line with significant dates.
The way it was taught was pretty Engerland Yeah! but it did give an overview of what was happening and when, allowing you to see how events impacted on each other or built up.
I was talking to a much younger work colleague several years ago and, apparently, it’s now taught in Project format. She had studied the development of medicine in the 19th century and could talk intelligently about improvements in the understanding of how diseases are spread or in surgical techniques but was totally unaware of the Crimean War. She had heard of Florence Nightingale but only in regard to ideas about cleanliness and sanitation presented in a vacuum.
LosGatosCA
@cokane:
over the long term the Washington Post only looks good by comparison to the Times.
The Fred Hiatt shop is just as atrocious as The NY Times Op Ed always ready to cut the safety net at any opportunity. They were all in on the Iraq War, etc.
Farentold bought them a ton of credibility on investigating Trump.
Otherwise, meh.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
You give the Vichy Times too much credit.
They’ve hated the Clintons for 30 years and the love Dump because denied them another term in the White House.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@jl:
That’s a fraudulent excuse on his part because he sure wasn’t complacent when it came to Clinton’s emails. He can’t have it both ways.
hervevillechaizelounge
I notice no one has mentioned Wapo’s hiring of Megan Mcardle, the act that caused me to cancel my subscription. Was I the only one unhinged by that?
If even one tenth of one penny of my money was going to that (gendered insult deleted) I would die of shame.
I know nobody likes a scold, but that’s why everyone should cancel their NYT subscription—are folks really comfortable sending money to #bretbug?
J R in WV
@jl:
On the gripping hand, perhaps he is a stupid as the job he is doing shows that he is. Why not all of these things… deep corruption of a strangely stupid person + ownership by the Russian state of a drone?
Sound familiar? Thought so! [He may not even understand why what they are doing is so bad…]
cain
@James E Powell:
I can find any random person in Europe and they would know more about the U.S. than our fellow citizens. We definitely need to up our game on basic education.
cain
@James E Powell:
History can be a fascinating subject if approached correctly. You could literally map events today to the past. After all, history repeats itself often. It’s why historians are always smug assholes .. ??
I understand that there are a lot of parallels with Trump and Hitler. Neither worked very hard.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: I was in high school in the 80s, and most of my classmates knew nothing about any of those people. In history class the teacher struggled to convey that Hitler was not a Communist.
BibleBeltBlue
@Chetan Murthy:
Wapo has an astounding essay on Conservative writing during the Civil War. It may explain some NYT writers.
might be paywalled. Here’s a bit:
Proslavery rhetoricians talked little of slavery itself. Instead, they anointed themselves the defenders of “reason,” free speech and “civility.” The prevalent line of argument in the antebellum South rested on the supposition that Southerners were simultaneously the keepers of an ancient faith and renegades — made martyrs by their dedication to facts, reason and civil discourse.
It might sound strange that America’s proslavery faction styled itself the guardian of freedom and minority rights. And yet it did.
ET
As someone who has subscribed to the WaPo for 25 years, I did almost unscribed a number of years ago because I was unimpressed with the quality – This was before the Bezos era. The paper in its not too distant past had its own problems, at some point the paper stepped up its game.
As for the Times I can’t say much but maybe Baquet because he is African American has a perspective that blinds him?
BibleBeltBlue
@hervevillechaizelounge: Yeah, McCardle Bargle hire was weird. Jen Rubin is consistently good. I wouldn’t have thought that possible 4 years ago.
RAM
Dean Baquet is a cancer on American journalism.
cliosfanboy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: it sounds like my undergrad in Unduana, Presbyterian college, a but less than 1000bstudenra, rural area. But remember, Pence and Woody Harrelson attended the same school at the same time. You can’t always tell a person’s political leanings by where they went to school unless it’s Oberlin, Liberty, etc. Even then there are exceptions
Gvg
@david: No. In fact, all I recall is in 2016, we were cancelling the NYT and subscribing to WaPo. This has been repeated several times in the years since. Also I don’t think this blog has ever been pro NYT. We have attacked it since the invasion of Iraq poor coverage.
joel hanes
@J R in WV:
The continuity between the Republican and anti-Clinton slant to FTFNYT national political coverage before and after Baquet leads me to believe that he is but a willing tool for policy set higher up.
Dev Null
@Mike in NC: @joel hanes: @Hitlesswonder: @LosGatosCA:
When Hiatt hired Thiessen, the snark was: “the Washington Post: proudly hiring torturers since 2010”
I have this vague notion that was Brad DeLong, but couldn’t find a reference on a quick search.
@ET:
I’ve wondered that too … perhaps many African-Americans see American history as, hmm, monochromatic oppression. A person with that sorta view might not see Trump as a qualitatively different threat.
OTOH, what’s with the hating on HRC? The FTFVT vendetta against all things Clinton goes back 30 years, give or take a few. I’ve never heard an explanation for it.
Dev Null
Curious why my comment on Thiessen, Hiatt, and Baquet went into moderation …
Artificial intelligence aint what it useta be.
Then again, it never was.
jl
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: That is a very good point. I think part of the explanation is in the first tweet at the head of the post:
” Same journalists: I wish I could write about how Trump is bad but Democrats aren’t emailing me any talking points I like. ”
The Tim Russert school of investigative journalism: wait by the phone for political hacks and operatives to shovel you good infotainment material. And they act like they are Cronkites, Murrows, Tarbells and Stephens. The corporate media’s national affairs coverage has become a massive corporate con game
Dev Null
@Dev Null: Updating to correct the garbling of the snark. It was:
2010 being the year Thiessen was hired.
Dev Null
BoJo just lost his majority.
E2A: Already noted in comments upstairs, I see.
Steeplejack
@Dev Null:
Too many links (“reply to” links count). I don’t know what the current limit is—maybe four?
Dev Null
@Steeplejack: Thanks, I thought that might be it – that was the only unusual part of my comment – but I didn’t know.
Procopius
@Ladyraxterinok: I hadn’t really followed their transformation, but I suspect their change to preferring mountain-top-removal to conservation is because Franklin, like his cousin Theodore, was an ardent conservationist. I read somewhere that he had two pictures of a valley in China. One from the Ming dynasty (i.e. before 1644, when the Manchus seized the throne) and one from the early 20th century, after 400 years of mining. The recent photograph might be called “The Valley of the Shadow of Death.” The Ming dynasty painting shows a paradise. He kept the two to remember the contrast and why he wanted to preserve as much as he could.