Category Archives: Social Commentary

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Eighth Avenue High

February 9, 2014 Rand Simberg 1 Comment

High school is an apt metaphor for the shenanigans inside the Times’ $850 million skyscraper at the corner of Fortieth Street and Eighth Avenue. The Times portrayed in Kurson’s article is not the established, serious, and competent institution of the liberal imagination. It is the Beverly Hills High School in Clueless, a cliquey and catty war of all against all, where the self-importance of the occupants masks deep insecurities. The next time our reporters and producers and anchors and bloggers affect an air of moral or social superiority, the next time they pretend to know the answers to every political and economic and cultural question, remember this: They are basically teenagers.

And yet as I read the story I could not help feeling, despite my better instincts, a twinge of sympathy for Rosenthal and his editorial staff. The “tyranny and pettiness” ascribed to the op-ed editor seems to me to apply equally to the behavior of a gossipy newsroom reeking of self-importance and snarky jibes. Nor are the specific complaints lodged against him any more compelling: Bad bosses are part of the human condition, and as a longtime subscriber I find it less than surprising that it can be difficult to get along with the people who produce the New York Times.

The rest of the case against Rosenthal is unintentionally revealing. “The growing dissatisfaction,” Kurson says, “stems from a commitment to excellence that has lifted the rest of the Times, which is viewed by every staffer The Observer spoke to as rapidly and dramatically improving.” But “commitment to excellence” are not the words I would choose to describe a paper whose coverage is increasingly liberal and silly, devoted to sniffing out racism and sexism and to identifying trends significant only to a select few, a paper that in the last month devoted not one but two articles to the subject of female pubic hair, that loads its news copy with opinion through mealy-mouthed phrases like “some say” and “has long been viewed,” that uses its pages as a Democratic fundraising apparatus, that thinks a $1,700 dollar suit is a sign of mayoral populism, that specializes in publishing articles detrimental to national security, that treats the president as a courtier treats a king, that is so eager to disqualify a potential challenger to Hillary Clinton that it initially misrepresented its latest “scoop.” One source tells Kurson the problem with Rosenthal “really isn’t about politics, because I land more to the left than I do the right.” You don’t say.

No kidding.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, War Commentary

“Yes, We Can Say That”

February 8, 2014 Rand Simberg 27 Comments

Mark Steyn continues his free-speech crusade (and I use that word deliberately):

I don’t care for all this beyond-the-pale stuff, because the pale is already way too shrunk. And, aside from anything else, once you get into the habit of banning and proscribing, your critical thinking goes all to hell. Many of us have seen one or two of those ill-advised shows on al-Arabiya or al-Jazeera in which some fire-breathing imam invites on a despised, Westernized, apostate woman in order to crush her like a bug, only to have her run rings round him. The Syrian émigré Wafa Sultan famously did it to Faisal al-Qassem and Ibrahim al-Khouli. It’s hardly surprising that a culture that puts so much of life beyond discussion renders its inmates literally speechless — to the point where, faced with, say, a school teddy bear innocently named Mohammed, the default opening gambit at the local debating society is to shriek “Allahu Akbar!” and start killing.

We’re not at that point yet. But, raised in the cocoon of conformity that is American academe, the Left is increasingly showing all the critical-thinking skills of your average dimestore mullah. The other day, in between its ongoing complaints about Michael Douglas’s “homophobic” awards acceptance speeches, Salon ran a story by one of its many pajama boys headlined “Ted Nugent Writes Insanely Racist Op-Ed.” Apparently, Ted had written a “vile rant” at “the batshit insane right-wing fever swamp of a site known as WorldNetDaily.” “Even for Ted Nugent,” cautioned Elias Isquith in his opening sentence, “this is bad.” Alas, poor old Ted couldn’t quite live up to his batshit-insane billing: There followed a few unexceptional observations about black crime and broken families maybe a smidgeonette more heated than one might hear from, say, Bill Cosby or Juan Williams. More to the point, the hapless pajama boy didn’t even attempt to explain what was so objectionable about Nugent’s “rant.” As the Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle put it, “Salon calls out Ted Nugent’s ‘racist’ MLK Day column — without refuting his points. Must be Friday.” All Mr. Isquith can do is reprise Ted Nugent’s words and then shriek “Batshit insane!” and “Insanely batshit!” over and over, like Lady Bracknell with Tourette’s.

Which brings us to Michael Mann, the fake Nobel laureate currently suing NATIONAL REVIEW for mocking his global-warming “hockey stick.” Of the recent congressional hearings, Dr. Mann tweeted that it was “#Science” — i.e., the guy who agrees with him — vs. “#AntiScience” — i.e., Dr. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. That’s to say, she is by profession a scientist, but because she has the impertinence to dissent from Dr. Mann’s view she is “#AntiScience.” Mann is the climatological equivalent of those bozo imams on al-Arabiya raging about infidel whores: He can’t refute Dr. Curry, he can only label her.

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