"The Times bent over so far backwards to show that it was not liberal, it fell over." https://t.co/wOD3S00c3t
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) October 30, 2019
Some people say that the suits in charge of the NYTimes were not hard to persuade, of course. Todd Gitlin’s is an excellent autopsy, regardless:
Readers of the New York Times’s op-ed page October 9 were accordingly drawn to an enticing headline: “What Hunter Biden Did Was Legal — And That’s the Problem.”
The author, Peter Schweizer, began promisingly by noting an asymmetry in American law. Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—a product of the reformist ’70s—the children of foreign officials are prohibited from holding positions in American-run companies. But no equivalent law bars foreign companies and governments from hiring family members of American officials.
There followed five paragraphs about father Joe and son Hunter Biden, centering on Hunter’s business arrangements in Ukraine and China. No evidence has surfaced of any intervention from Joe in those arrangements. But because of the family connection between the then-vice president and his feckless, business-unqualified son, the author, along with Fox News and virtually every Republican official, considered financial payments to Hunter corrupt…
Meanwhile, Ivanka and Jared Kushner between them reported 2018 income in the range of $29 million to $135 million. How much came from licensing and other financial arrangements abroad is not clear, but the New York Times’s Jesse Drucker and Agustin Armendariz noted that “Ms. Trump earned just under $4 million from the Trump International Hotel in Washington, which has become a magnet for visiting executives and foreign officials with interests before the federal government.” But Trump family hustles are dogs biting men—they’re not “a story” because there are so many.
So it was not altogether surprising that in Schweizer’s 1,186 words about corrupt family arrangements with foreign nations, the name “Trump” appeared exactly once: strictly to introduce the family of Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Transportation in Trump’s cabinet…
Schweizer was identified by the Times as “an investigative journalist” and “the author, most recently, of ‘Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.’” To those who follow the ins and outs of right-wing funding networks, he has other credentials. He is a senior contributor to Breitbart. He wrote speeches for George W. Bush and advised Sarah Palin. He presides over the Florida-based Governmental Accountability Institute (GAI), which is funded by the family foundation of hedge-fund tycoon and major Trump 2016 funder Robert Mercer. (As of 2017, the chairman of the GAI board was Mercer’s daughter Rebekah.)…The Times had previously aired Schweizer’s worldview in its news pages. In 2015, his Clinton Cash was offered for previews to The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Fox News. Times editor Matt Purdy later said that the Times declined an offer of exclusive rights to Schweizer’s material, but later asked his permission to use one of his story lines, which in turn built on Times reporting dating back to 2008. The Times investigated further, and took to Page 1 in a state of alarm: “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.” …
Now, thanks to a whistleblower and an avalanche of subsequent testimony from civil servants, Trump’s request for a “favor” from Ukrainian President Zelensky has soared to the top of the impeachability list. As Trump, under scrutiny, goes down and dirty, we can expect to hear plenty more insinuations from Trump’s defenders about the iniquity of the Bidens. These will play handsomely to the Hannitys and Dobbses, and through them to Trump’s base, which consists largely of Americans who not only hate today’s Democrats but hate the United States government in principle…
Times, if you’re listening, stop pretending. The truth is indeed hard. One of the hard, surrounding truths of our time is that you loom large in a world where, in the name of fairness, mightily funded, unscrupulous right-wing propagandists are looking to game you.
But then, Ivanka and Jared are part of the Timesmen’s social circles. Coda:
I have seen it all now, a nepotism chick quoting a slave owner in defense of her dad.
— I HONOR VETERANS/ #wtp2020 (@veterans_i) October 31, 2019
It's interesting Ivanka picked this example because the thing Jefferson's enemies were accusing him of — fathering a child with a slave — was absolutely something he did. 6 times as a matter of fact. Jefferson was bemoaning being called out for something he actually did. https://t.co/ZnvjPLrkjY
— Rachel Joy Larris (@RachelLarris) October 31, 2019
PeakVT
It’s been a while since I’ve had to think about Jar Jar and Iwanka, and I really preferred it that way.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
if I thought she were capable of self-awareness, or any other kind of awareness….
sdhays
The FTFNYT is not being “gamed”.
zhena gogolia
@PeakVT:
Go to Paul Rudnick’s twitter feed and read his Ivanka tweets. They’ll cheer you up.
dmsilev
This is actually charitable towards the Times. An alternate explanation is that they’re not an unknowing dupe but instead are fully aware of the implications of what they’re doing.
Villago Delenda Est
This is why Baquet needs to be flayed alive.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: All the self awareness of her loathsome sire, or her loathsome full siblings.
Dan B
I love that Ivanka got caught quoting an embattled Jefferson for complaining about something he did six times. And Jefferson fir the most part was an American hero.
Quite a contrast.
lumpkin
@dmsilev:
It’s well past time to acknowledge that. I know lots of people continue to pay for NYT subscriptions because a lot of their straight news reporting is good, but on balance I think they are a net negative. Arguably their coverage was a major reason we’re stuck with trump. Time for liberals to suck it up and cancel their subscriptions and tell the NYT why. Time to stop financing the opposition.
schrodingers_cat
Vichy Times is not naive they know fully well what they are doing. They are a sophisticated propaganda arm for the Rs, Fox News are the crude variety.
smintheus
The Times’ refusal to identify Schweizer’s partisan background – which is hardly the first time they’ve provided Republican operatives with cover in their editorial and news pages – would be reason enough to cancel your subscription. I’m intrigued by all the justifications that Times’ subscribers come up with for not doing the obvious thing and cancelling their support for that corrupt institution.
Baud
This appears to be false. It’s only prohibited if the position is offered to influence the foreign official.
Citizen Alan
@dmsilev:
Politically, nothing has changed at the NYT since 1938 when they were doing beautiful pictorial of Berchesgarden.
schrodingers_cat
@lumpkin: I gave up on them in 2016, when their constant refrain was but her emails.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Happy Halloween Baud!
smintheus
@lumpkin: The Times’ decision to quash their 2004 story on Bush’s warrantless wiretapping may have been responsible for his re-election.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Back at you. As you know, Halloween will be a federal holiday when I’m president.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: And pets will be covered under Baud!Care, Baud!2020!
Crosspalms
@Baud: /Will it be like Guy Fawkes day, and we’ll get to burn the Grand Old Pumpkin in effigy?
PeakVT
@Baud – Meh. I would go farther if I was elected: move Thanksgiving to the last Thursday in October and make the following Saturday Halloween so the kids aren’t out on a school night.
I am actually serious about this. Sadly, I may be a crank.
glory b
@Baud: Where have you been!?!? It’s waaaay past your curfew!
StringOnAStick
@Crosspalms: I’m down with burning something orange in effigy! Let’s see, what could that be….
Anne Laurie
@Villago Delenda Est: Don’t (only) blame Baquet; he’s following orders — doing exactly what he was hired to do, as he’s made clear since he took over instead of that rude harridan Jill Abramson.
The NYTimes has always had a history of dropping trou for the status quo, but in my opinion, Howell Raines’ burning hatred of his fellow Suthron expat, that appetite-plagued jumped-up hillbilly Bill Clinton, is underrated as the root of the modern Times inability to treat Democrats and the Democratic objectively.
Rand Careaga
FTFNYT has been one of my first online stops each morning for twenty years or more, and I followed them behind their original and subsequent paywalls. The site is an extraordinary resource for its archives alone, and it has done some remarkable and innovative multimedia features. I will continue to maintain my subscription. But my god, their political reporting sucks. The WaPo, to which I also subscribe (I send some coin each year to The Guardian as well), even though it maintains on its payroll moral monsters like Hewitt and Thiessen, who make Bret Stephens look like a mere pest—a bedbug, let us say, if this does not trespass against the norms of civil discourse—has left FTFNYT in the dust since 2015 at least.
That I find myself nodding in agreement with the average Jennifer Rubin column these days is, of course, a certain sign that the End Times are upon us.
Anne Laurie
@PeakVT:
Problem with your idea is, both human beings and the modern consumerist cycle ‘need’ a festival break every six weeks or so. Halloween and Thanksgiving have become important and distinct holidays because there has to be more than one celebration to work towards between Labor Day (end of summer) and Xmas (solstice). Similar reason behind Valentines Day promotions — it replaces Mardi Gras in the modern secular calendar — and the ‘repurposing’ of Memorial Day from a solemn day of grave-decorating to a beginning-of-summer long weekend.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
I’m going with they know exactly what they are doing. And why.
FTFNYT. May they forever wear that around their necks. Tightly. Or at least choke on it.
jl
All I can say is that any official in the Baud 2020! administration will self-impeach 20 times better than Trump, and will hand out documentation to prove up on their brags of abjectly incompetent and feckless corruption. Even the NYT won’t be able to sweep it under the rug, and if they try, they’ll get nasty letter calling them on it.
Martin
From the Nobody Could Have Predicted files:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PeakVT:
I would like to subscribe to you newsletter, and contribute to your ActBlue page
the older she gets, the nuttier my mother gets about holidays, and not all of my siblings are responsive. She (and I) grew up with the huge extended clan relatively close together geographically, and time and other factors have thinned and spread the herd. She can’t adjust to it. I used to love the extended holidays, get sad when the decorations came down. Now the season drags, and the end is a relief.
Ruckus
@Anne Laurie:
The chairman of the board, Sulzberger, of the FTFNYT is the person who is responsible for what gets printed. The publisher works for the board and the chairman has the most say there.
@Villago Delenda Est:
He is not the ultimate end of the line. He certainly has a certain amount of say and probably most of the day to day say, but the direction the stuff that makes it the paper that it is, is the chairman of the board.
divF
@Baud: Welcome back ! Are you tanned, rested and ready ?
divF
(deleted)
Librarian
@PeakVT: Halloween can’t be moved; it has always been on October 31, All Hallows Eve, as All Hallows Day is on November 1. To move it would take away all historical meaning from it.
Rand Careaga
@Librarian:
Pish! That’s never stopped us before. Aren’t we Americans? We can move Hallowe’en to Shrove Tuesdays on alternate leap years if we feel like it! Who’s with me?
(posted from my Oakland residence of twenty years. We have had precisely three urchins apply for candy here on two occasions, the last fifteen years ago. The coils of razorwire, and the Claymores out front have really done the trick!)
Obvious Russian Troll
@Anne Laurie: As an American living in Toronto, I gotta say the Canadians (at least in this province) do the holidays a wee bit better for the most part. We have three-day weekends that almost line up with those in the states (i.e., Victoria Day is generally the week before Memorial Day), and a few additional ones (the civic holiday or whatever the hell it’s called in the beginning of August). They do come about every 4-6 weeks with one exception.
Where they screw up is after Canadian Thanksgiving. This falls in mid-October, and then you got nothing until Christmas!
American Thanksgiving is good, but it’s too damn too close to Christmas. I’d move it earlier in November.
Anne Laurie
@Obvious Russian Troll:
Yeah, that would actually be a sensible shift — move it to the second Thursday instead of the third, for instance. Retailers would approve, which is important to both public sentiment & legislation (more selling days between the start-of-holiday-season and its culmination). And Thanksgiving’s only been ‘fixed’ on its current date since the 1940s, IIRC, unlike Halloween (or Xmas).
joel hanes
@Ruckus:
Sulzberger, of the FTFNYT is the person who is responsible for what gets printed.
Editors choose stories, reporters, treatments, narratives, layouts.
Publishers choose editors, and listen to the advertisers, who are the customers.
Boards of directors of large corporations choose publishers.
Other large corporations pay for most of it by purchasing advertising, which is the actual product that produces money.
Our news is nothing more than the packaging that advertising comes in, just marketing; and thus our news displays all the regard for truth, or any other ethical precept, for which marketing is so justly famous.
This is not news.
joel hanes
About fifty trick or treaters and about five pounds of candy distributed so far — the doorbell just rang again.
We carved pumpkins last night, lit the foyer with candles, strewed some prop bones about — I did my shift at door-answering shift, and in my Orc voice, openly speculated about which of the little children would be most tender for my dinner …
and then admonished them to be careful, because “there are a lot of strange people about on Hallowe’en”.
Maniacal laughter as they walk away.
When there’s a lull, I go out in the back yard and practice my full-throated wolf howl.
That draws the late ones.
J R in WV
@Baud:
Late on Halloween night, he appears !!! Hi Baud!
joel hanes
Can it be a coincidence that baud has shown back up on Hallowe’en ?
How do we know it’s really baud, and not some kid in a baud costume?
Or a synth replacement?
Or a bug alien in a baud suit?
Ohio Mom
Halloween is when it is because it is the midpoint of fall, halfway between the equinox and the soltisce.
Groundhog Day is the midpoint of winter, and May Day tne midpoint of spring.
I don’t know why there is no holiday for the midpoint of summer. Anyone have an explanation for that?
jl
@Anne Laurie: I think Canada does their Thanksgiving in mid October. How does that sound?
Certain times of the year are scarce of Holidays, at least holidays for everyone, with official common agenda, day off, etc.
April-June, August, October through late November. So, move Thanksgiving earlier.
Make Arbor Day, April 10, a federal holiday, which will take care of April, and it can be a stealth earth day / climate change awareness day celebration.
PeakVT
@ Anne Laurie: I don’t care much for the ‘needs’ of the consumerist cycle, obviously. Besides, your six week cycle isn’t exactly clear in America’s current holiday schedule. And every two months is arguably a more natural cycle.
@ Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, that’s one of three motivations for moving Thanksgiving – the “Holiday Season” is obviously a chore for many. The other two are school schedule chaos, and the misery of everyone who has to work retail or distribution during “peak”.
@ Librarian: At the risk of sounding rude, almost nobody in America gives a fuck about the traditional meaning of Halloween (and many Christianists actively hate it, FWIW). It’s now just an excuse for some fun.
Another Scott
@Baud: Don’t be confusing us with facts. RWNJs don’t trifle with facts.
Welcome back, Émile. You’ve been missed. You’re just in time to rally the troops in Virginia!
Cheers,
Scott.
Librarian
@PeakVT: @PeakVT: @PeakVT: Halloween is when it is because of history, starting with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. It can’t just be moved like it’s a piece of furniture.
James E Powell
@sdhays:
Totally agree. It’s been going on for a long time and has continued despite pointed and well supported criticism, some of which came from people who write for the NYT. They know exactly what they are doing and they will continue to do it.
Anne Laurie
@Ohio Mom:
The holiday you’re looking for is Lughnasadh (aka Lammas), on August 1st. It’s still celebrated in parts of Europe, and by pagans / witches. Americans, IMO, shifted the ‘high summer festival’ to July 4th, for reasons; it’s bracketed by start-of-summer Memorial Day and end-of-summer Labor Day, which only make sense as national three-day weekend parties / salesfests if they’re unconscious folk-markers to divide the year into manageable chunks.
Joy in FL
@Baud: You’re back : )
Anne Laurie
@jl:
That’s when ‘we’ celebrate three-day-weekend-for-some Columbus, aka Indigenous Peoples, Day. The Italian-American community will give up that weekend over *your* cold dead body, paisano. And the people who currently get paid time off for it — union workers, including federal & (some) state workers — have every incentive to ignore your proposal.
The spacing between holidays will always remain imperfect, like anything else planned by humans. But there’s a reason Halloween, Memorial Day, and our out-of-sequence Labor Day are “major” holidays, while Columbus Day and Veterans Day are not. Even Presidents’ Day is still treated mostly as a ‘fake’ marketing-driven holiday, because Valentines Day took up the available communal ‘memory space’.
JaySinWA
@Baud: My Baud-friend’s back and there’s going to be trouble. Hey now, Hey now my Baud-friend’s back.
FlipYrWhig
@Ohio Mom:
Swedes love Midsommar!
SFAW
@Anne Laurie:
Perhaps, but I think it was Pinch (and now Pinche) who had more to do with it. Pinch took over from his father in 1992, Raines didn’t become editorial page editor until 1993. I think the full-on Clinton (incl. Hillary) hatred started in 1992. I mean, there’s more than enough disgust to go around for all things FTFTFNYT, but I look to the publisher as being the head from which the fish rots. [Note: Assumes a publisher who is not a totally hands-off person.]
Chief Oshkosh
@lumpkin: I canceled my NYT subscription during the Clinton years. It was pretty obvious what was going on even back then. I would’ve never guessed how much worse they’d become…
Chief Oshkosh
@smintheus: I have never understood why anyone took that argument seriously (and people still do!). It makes no sense to withhold real, actual news that would inform the electorate just because you discover the malfeasance on the eve of the election. But people just stare blankly and nod their heads as though that’s an excuse, much less a reason.
Uncle Cosmo
@Anne Laurie:
Um, just FYI, per Google:
This is something I learned as a schoolkid ~60 years ago. Murcan Thanksgiving is never celebrated earlier than November 22 (when the first Thursday in November is the 1st) and never later than the 28th (when the first Thursday in November is the 7th, as it is this year). Maybe I remember it because my birthday falls in that interval – in the appropriate years we used to kid about “putting candles on the turkey.”
So now that you are aware of the actual determination, would you propose moving it back one week, or two?
Uncle Cosmo
@JaySinWA: Well shee-yit, if we’re gonna do 60s girl groups –