Two ways to leave our own children behind!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2011

The New York Times’ matching escapes: We’re pretty much struck by this thing every time.

This morning, on the New York Times’ op-ed page, Gail Collins stretches down the left side of the page. In a matching, equal-but-opposite column, Nicholas Kristof stretches down the right.

Again, we were struck by the equal-but-opposite way they left our own nation’s problems behind.

Collins wrote her usual silly shit about her usual silly shit. This morning, this was the fifth paragraph in her hard-copy column:
COLLINS (11/10/11): Really, the Republican voters aren’t asking for much. They just want a candidate who’s really conservative. Who has verbs in his sentences. Who isn’t an admitted serial adulterer or an accused sexual harasser. Who didn’t drive to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.
We've lost track, but that must be at least the twenty-fifth time this lady has mentioned that poor roof-strapped dog. Our view? She's not the best person to complain about other folks’ “serial” conduct.

Collins’ column was pointless, as always. Kristof was off on the other extreme. He was in Vietnam this time, where girls want to go to school.

Girls should get to go to school, of course. There is no earthly doubt about that. But what about life over here in this country? The New York Times is defiantly precious. Neither pundit seems willing to stoop to the point of discussing that.

Someone else seems annoyed by Kristof’s work: We’ll admit to feeling a bit insulted by Kristof’s body of work at the Times. Our own nation is coming apart. Neither he nor Collins seems to care or know about this.

Someone else seems a bit annoyed by his work. It’s Irin Carmon, at Salon.

8 comments:

  1. I don't know. Somehow, that dog on the car roof episode really does make me wonder about the guy's personality and judgment.

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  2. Had to hit post twice, then preview, then post again to get my car top comment posted. Waiting to see if it posts multiple times.

    Safari on MacBook, OSX 4.3.

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  3. Politifact says:

    It begins in 1983 with a 36-year-old Mitt Romney carefully packing up his five sons and luggage into the family station wagon for a 12-hour trip from Boston to Ontario, where his parents had a cottage on Lake Huron. At the time, Romney was a successful young consultant with Bain & Company, but he hadn't yet started buying and selling companies with Bain Capital in the private equity field.

    "As with most ventures in his life, he had left little to chance, mapping out the route and planning each stop. ... Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack. "

    Cruel? It's not presented that way in the story, which noted Romney built a special windshield for the carrier, "to make the ride more comfortable for the dog."


    Of course, Gail Collins doesn't mention the dog carrier, the fact that it was fastened to the roof or the special windshield or the fact that the dog liked riding on the roof. Not only is she obsessed with the story, her omissions make her version virtually a lie.

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  4. It's embarrassing that her editors let her make that reference in so many comments. It's bad enough that she's obsessed with the episode, but one would think an intervention would be staged.

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  5. I'm starting to think Collins makes Seamus references just to annoy Bob, at this point.

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  6. While I agree with everyone that the Romney-dog story is vapid (and most importantly a stretch of the truth), I'm really saddened by the state of journalism when I see titillation stories like Kristof's.

    He serves no one but the voyeur by detailing over and over again the foibles of the sex trade and then of course, throwing how he gets involved by "saving" girls only makes the story more appealing to arm-chair saviors across the country, who need someone to protect them from twinges of helpless white guilt (especially those getting off on the child prostitute stories).

    The NYT has apparently lost its way in struggle to meet market demand; whatever the gets the highest ratings. Stories of sex slaves or as Salon has as a search word "sexual abuse" always gets the copy sold.

    Outside of those who take the time to jump outside the fast moving stream of the regular news cycle to venture to calmer, quieter waters of deeper research, none will have to know or understand how complicit Americans are in enabling abuses such as human traffic, child soldiers or other symptoms of horrific economic oppression.

    Kristof swims in a cesspool of writers who work to give a leg tingle couched in an acceptably beige Martha Stewart confidential wrapping of good intentions and Puritan self flagellation.

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  7. Kristof = Mrs. Jellyby

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  8. "Kristof swims in a cesspool of writers who work to give a leg tingle couched in an acceptably beige Martha Stewart confidential wrapping of good intentions and Puritan self flagellation."

    Bulwer-Lytton material if there ever was :)

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