I was also surprised by their recent decision to hire John McWhorter as a columnist. If the question is "who will tell these people they don't want to hear?", he's your best candidate. He can take or leave the Times gig, so the length of his tenure there (to say nothing of what he produces for them) may yet surprise people.
He will definitely be not like most times columnists, who basically are indistinguishable from one another in terms of their outlook, and he has definitely never minced words to please the exact same audience your piece is talking about.
Whew, that piece was hotter than an August afternoon in Arizona. Believe me, I was just there a week ago.
Question for Freddie and anyone else who wants to chime in. Has this sneering, elitist, woke attitude turned you off of late night comedy too? It has for me. I can't watch John Oliver anymore because I feel like a lot of the humor has been leeched out of his show post- George Floyd.
God damn that was good writing. Oh I adore writing and that piece makes me positively giddy. Stream of consciousness, trippingly off the tongue, that was anguish poetry. Andrew Sullivan’s writing is also poetry, Matt T. as well. Glen G is too bare knuckles for such rhetorical grandiosity.
In a single piece with great sarcasm and castigating blame we have a synopsis of the zeitgeist. No more need to be said. Succinct but scintillating that is the big picture.
"You can understand a lot about media culture by understanding that most of the people within it feel like they’re barely hanging on."
I can't help but draw the parallel to teaching, where the best and brightest forsake the field for better paid jobs in industries like finance and tech. What's left are the mediocre and a handful of martyrs. Like it or not money and job security are factors that people in the real world care about. How can a brain drain not be the inevitable outcome?
I of course agree that the NYT is written to please elites (your sworn enemy Atrios has said for years that they are concerned with documenting the "difficulties of the rich but not quite rich enough"). But Freddie: saying that they are on a "leftward march" isn't really correct is it? Just because they are woke, does not mean they are left, and I would hope to see self identified leftists make that distinction. They weren't exactly friendly to either of Bernie Sanders' presidential runs were they? In fact guess who got to write a long hit piece about the problem of Bernie Bros in February of last year? It was your brave truth teller, the daughter of literal California oligarchs Nellie Bowles.
If Nellie Bowles and Bari Weiss are "diverse viewpoints" then you are constraining your entire political lens to the twitter fights among elites. They are right wing culture warriors, do you really give a shit about this? Bari's chief concern as a columnist was being accusing people like Jeremy Corbyn and Ilhan Omar of being soft on antisemitism and insufficiently Zionist, a job so important that the NYT has a second columnist also devoted to that beat that is still on staff. She didn't even get fired, she quit because playing the victim is central to her entire career of being persecuted for holding viewpoints that both political parties have strongly supported for my entire lifetime.
This feels like a piece that could have written by Nellie or Bari or one of those frauds man, it's disappointing. You know the reason that some people at NYT do woke politics and culture war is the same reason that Nellie and Bari do it, just from the other side: they don't want to talk about actual leftist things. It's not interesting to Nellie and Bari because they have both been incredibly rich for their entire lives and so are all of their friends. The same is true for most of the subscriber base, so it's all just theater. Who gives a shit?
Isn't the NYT way better now than it was last summer though? For a while it just read Salon.com and it seems to have pulled it self back from that. Also 7.8 million subscribers, isn't that too many people to be just the Park Slope crowd?
Michael Lind and David Shor have both written that the country is dividing into two camps: a multiracial blue collar camp that votes GOP and a multiracial urban professional camp for the Dems. Race is no longer the defining factor. Class is.
Look at that list of writers and ignore the fake diversity of skin color: which one of them doesn't have a college degree? Which one of them comes from a blue collar background? The days of blue collar scribes like Mike Royko or Jimmy Breslin are apparently over.
A while back I was defending Matt Taibbi on Twitter when the criticisms coming at him were: you did not attack Trump hard enough in the lead up to the election and so you were helping a fascist." But when I pointed out something that should be clear to anyone - that it's not the job of journalists to put candidates in power - it was met with confusion (aka personal insults). But it's true. Do people even remember what journalism is supposed to be? I don't think so. I can't read the Times anymore. When I look at the movies on offer of late they are all ideologically inclined. Again, not really the job of artists or good storytellers to be propaganda machines. The Times should have stood behind James Bennett. They should have had more representations from Trump World in their coverage.
My daughter works at a park in NYC where old timers come to read newspapers. Yes, actual newspapers. I didn't tell her anything about which ones to read but she naturally gravitated to the Wall Street Journal because, she said, it was the only one that reported news -- actual news she wanted to know. The Times have been swallowed up by their op-ed section. They do have good reporters there, you are right. But Twitter ruined everything.
Besides the who, there are telling gaps in the listed topics. Politics, economics, "culture," media are multiply represented. What about a dedicated science writer (not even "climate" appears)? Art and music? International news? (Non-woke) culture -- there are vast swaths of U.S. culture that have nothing to do with the culture wars and that the NYT could find good writers to comment on. One day someone with influence is going to realize the potential in simply sidestepping culture war and giving people a window onto the vast array of interesting and important phenomena in the world around them.
As a former subscriber to periodicals like the NYTs, New Republic, (and now) even The Economist, I find that to glean the "elite" opinion on any given topic, I need read only one article, and any random writer will do.
Being interchangeable, I find I have saved much on subscriptions, and many hours of re-reading the same things. It leaves more time for far more productive activities.
Reading The Real Estate's section "The Hunt" is another good indicator who the paper is written for. "This young couple took their $4,000 budget to Williamsburg" or "a one-bedroom for less than $1 million". Granted, they do have more moderate "hunts" in there but the vast majority are definitely top 10% material.
I think this is good in one sense: Powerful positions in government and academia have been brokered by this process for decades (if not forever). Its not merit, its a popularity contest, its fitting in with the in-crowd. How embarrassing that the gears of our most prized institutions have been laid bare by the socially un-adept younger members that think this is a well-respected way to act.
This is the one of most insightful pieces of media criticism I've read all year. Well done, Freddie.
I was also surprised by their recent decision to hire John McWhorter as a columnist. If the question is "who will tell these people they don't want to hear?", he's your best candidate. He can take or leave the Times gig, so the length of his tenure there (to say nothing of what he produces for them) may yet surprise people.
He will definitely be not like most times columnists, who basically are indistinguishable from one another in terms of their outlook, and he has definitely never minced words to please the exact same audience your piece is talking about.
Whew, that piece was hotter than an August afternoon in Arizona. Believe me, I was just there a week ago.
Question for Freddie and anyone else who wants to chime in. Has this sneering, elitist, woke attitude turned you off of late night comedy too? It has for me. I can't watch John Oliver anymore because I feel like a lot of the humor has been leeched out of his show post- George Floyd.
Freddie, another piece reminding me why I love your work! Bravo!
God damn that was good writing. Oh I adore writing and that piece makes me positively giddy. Stream of consciousness, trippingly off the tongue, that was anguish poetry. Andrew Sullivan’s writing is also poetry, Matt T. as well. Glen G is too bare knuckles for such rhetorical grandiosity.
In a single piece with great sarcasm and castigating blame we have a synopsis of the zeitgeist. No more need to be said. Succinct but scintillating that is the big picture.
"You can understand a lot about media culture by understanding that most of the people within it feel like they’re barely hanging on."
I can't help but draw the parallel to teaching, where the best and brightest forsake the field for better paid jobs in industries like finance and tech. What's left are the mediocre and a handful of martyrs. Like it or not money and job security are factors that people in the real world care about. How can a brain drain not be the inevitable outcome?
I of course agree that the NYT is written to please elites (your sworn enemy Atrios has said for years that they are concerned with documenting the "difficulties of the rich but not quite rich enough"). But Freddie: saying that they are on a "leftward march" isn't really correct is it? Just because they are woke, does not mean they are left, and I would hope to see self identified leftists make that distinction. They weren't exactly friendly to either of Bernie Sanders' presidential runs were they? In fact guess who got to write a long hit piece about the problem of Bernie Bros in February of last year? It was your brave truth teller, the daughter of literal California oligarchs Nellie Bowles.
If Nellie Bowles and Bari Weiss are "diverse viewpoints" then you are constraining your entire political lens to the twitter fights among elites. They are right wing culture warriors, do you really give a shit about this? Bari's chief concern as a columnist was being accusing people like Jeremy Corbyn and Ilhan Omar of being soft on antisemitism and insufficiently Zionist, a job so important that the NYT has a second columnist also devoted to that beat that is still on staff. She didn't even get fired, she quit because playing the victim is central to her entire career of being persecuted for holding viewpoints that both political parties have strongly supported for my entire lifetime.
This feels like a piece that could have written by Nellie or Bari or one of those frauds man, it's disappointing. You know the reason that some people at NYT do woke politics and culture war is the same reason that Nellie and Bari do it, just from the other side: they don't want to talk about actual leftist things. It's not interesting to Nellie and Bari because they have both been incredibly rich for their entire lives and so are all of their friends. The same is true for most of the subscriber base, so it's all just theater. Who gives a shit?
Isn't the NYT way better now than it was last summer though? For a while it just read Salon.com and it seems to have pulled it self back from that. Also 7.8 million subscribers, isn't that too many people to be just the Park Slope crowd?
If McWhorter keeps doing what he has been doing the past couple years he won’t last 6 months at the Times. He has been an absolute hero.
Michael Lind and David Shor have both written that the country is dividing into two camps: a multiracial blue collar camp that votes GOP and a multiracial urban professional camp for the Dems. Race is no longer the defining factor. Class is.
Look at that list of writers and ignore the fake diversity of skin color: which one of them doesn't have a college degree? Which one of them comes from a blue collar background? The days of blue collar scribes like Mike Royko or Jimmy Breslin are apparently over.
A while back I was defending Matt Taibbi on Twitter when the criticisms coming at him were: you did not attack Trump hard enough in the lead up to the election and so you were helping a fascist." But when I pointed out something that should be clear to anyone - that it's not the job of journalists to put candidates in power - it was met with confusion (aka personal insults). But it's true. Do people even remember what journalism is supposed to be? I don't think so. I can't read the Times anymore. When I look at the movies on offer of late they are all ideologically inclined. Again, not really the job of artists or good storytellers to be propaganda machines. The Times should have stood behind James Bennett. They should have had more representations from Trump World in their coverage.
My daughter works at a park in NYC where old timers come to read newspapers. Yes, actual newspapers. I didn't tell her anything about which ones to read but she naturally gravitated to the Wall Street Journal because, she said, it was the only one that reported news -- actual news she wanted to know. The Times have been swallowed up by their op-ed section. They do have good reporters there, you are right. But Twitter ruined everything.
Besides the who, there are telling gaps in the listed topics. Politics, economics, "culture," media are multiply represented. What about a dedicated science writer (not even "climate" appears)? Art and music? International news? (Non-woke) culture -- there are vast swaths of U.S. culture that have nothing to do with the culture wars and that the NYT could find good writers to comment on. One day someone with influence is going to realize the potential in simply sidestepping culture war and giving people a window onto the vast array of interesting and important phenomena in the world around them.
King shit. Spot on. Freddie at his best.
As a former subscriber to periodicals like the NYTs, New Republic, (and now) even The Economist, I find that to glean the "elite" opinion on any given topic, I need read only one article, and any random writer will do.
Being interchangeable, I find I have saved much on subscriptions, and many hours of re-reading the same things. It leaves more time for far more productive activities.
Reading The Real Estate's section "The Hunt" is another good indicator who the paper is written for. "This young couple took their $4,000 budget to Williamsburg" or "a one-bedroom for less than $1 million". Granted, they do have more moderate "hunts" in there but the vast majority are definitely top 10% material.
I think this is good in one sense: Powerful positions in government and academia have been brokered by this process for decades (if not forever). Its not merit, its a popularity contest, its fitting in with the in-crowd. How embarrassing that the gears of our most prized institutions have been laid bare by the socially un-adept younger members that think this is a well-respected way to act.