Instant classic Rosenthal!

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012

This is your New York Times: Good grief.

Andrew Rosenthal is the editorial page editor of the New York Times. This is his attempt to analyze “Santorum’s Woman Problem:”

ROSENTHAL (3/2/12): Santorum’s Woman Problem

Rick Santorum, the improbable presidential aspirant, opposes abortion, thinks birth control promotes immorality, objects to women serving in combat positions, and has criticized “radical feminists” for encouraging women to join the workforce. He doesn’t have much respect for modern women, and modern women don’t have much respect for him—a feeling they’re expressing by voting for his rival. Polling in Arizona showed that Mitt Romney carried female voters by 17 percentage points. It was closer in the Michigan primary, 5 percentage points, but everything was closer in Michigan.

There’s more, but that highlighted chunk captures the essence of the modern Times.

“Polling in Arizona showed that Mitt Romney carried female voters by 17 percentage points?” That’s true, but Rosenthal omits the corresponding fact: Romney carried men in Arizona by a much larger 26 points!

There was a gender gap in the state. But Santorum did substantially better among these "modern women" than among these modern men.

We're not saying Arizona Republicans should have voted that way. But Rosenthal's dogma to the side, that's the way they did vote. (To review the New York Times exit poll data, click here.)

On a journalistic basis, it’s hard to get more pathetic than that. But this really is the modern Times. The newspaper functions like that.