BREAKING: Karlie Kloss is six foot two!

MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2018

Maureen Dowd is powerful: Maureen Dowd is powerful. So is the idiocracy.

We say this after reading the reimagined page A3 in today's New York Times (print editions only). On that page, the Times, to its credit, chose to publish its latest attack on its readers:

The Conversation
FOUR OF THE MOST READ, SHARED AND DISCUSSED POSTS FROM ACROSS NYTIMES.COM

1) Javanka vs. the Klossy Posse
Sunday's most read article was this Op-Ed comparing Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump with Mr. Kushner's brother, Josh Kushner, and his girl friend, the model Karlie Kloss. On nytimes.com, commenters were disillusioned by both couples.

It's long been clear that someone's unemployable cousin composes page A3 of the Times. That said, we assume the basic factual statement in that passage is accurate:

Maureen Dowd's column, in which she compared the two couples, was the most read article in the whole Sunday Times!

How silly was yesterday's most read piece? We're not sure! How much Silly do you have time for?

Dowd composed the silly headline: "Javanka vs. the Klossy Posse." Here's a hint of the hard-hitting work to which Times readers were drawn:

DOWD (4/1/18): Josh and Karlie, both about 6-foot-2, ambitious and private, also showed up at the gun-control march last weekend. Josh posted a picture on Instagram of Karlie holding a sign that read “Load Minds, Not Guns” and donated $50,000 to the cause.

(Tiffany Trump, for her part, liked a post on Instagram showing a guy holding a sign that said “Next massacre will be the GOP in the midterm elections.”)

While many have become disillusioned with Ivanka’s status as an advocate for women and children, Karlie’s status has been growing. She landed on the 30-under-30 cover of Forbes in December; the magazine noted that her off-duty uniform was a Planned Parenthood T-shirt with jeans. After taking coding classes herself, she founded Kode with Klossy, a coding summer camp for girls.

Like Ivanka before her, Karlie has had some rough patches in her romance because of the severe pressure she faces from Seryl and Charles Kushner, the parents of Josh and Jared, to convert to Orthodox Judaism...

Karlie’s friends describe her as “insanely nice,” as one put it, and often showing up with homemade baked goods.

Who except an idiocrat has time for piddle like this? Who except the originator of "Creeping Dowdism" would produce such throwback work at this point?

OK, you're right—Gail Collins! For all its ridiculous pretensions, the New York Times, like Morning Joe, has long been a fullblown throwback org in terms of gender politics.

Via some sort of Wayback Machine, yesterday's column seems to have emerged from the "women's pages" of some 50's era newspaper. And sure enough! Across the whole of nytimes.com, it was the day's most read piece!

That was Sunday's most read piece. Meanwhile, on yesterday's page A3, we were assailed by this:

The Conversation
FOUR OF THE MOST READ, SHARED AND DISCUSSED POSTS FROM ACROSS NYTIMES.COM LAST WEEK

1) I Tried to Befriend Nikolas Cruz. He Still Killed My Friends.
Last week's most read item was an Op-Ed column by Isabelle Roninson, a students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglass High School...

There was nothing "wrong" with Robinson's piece, except for the fact that it may have countered a bit of a straw man. (Quite correctly, Robinson said people shouldn't blame the students of Douglass High for Cruz's killings.)

For ourselves, we were struck by the bogus headline some editor put on the piece. In her well-written column, Robinson doesn't say that she tried to befriend Cruz; she describes a quite different situation, even suggesting it may have been dangerous. Again and again, we wonder if editors at the Times are actually able to read.

Beyond that, we ask a question. Why on earth would that perfectly decent column have been the most read piece of the entire week at this nation's most important newspaper? Is this surprising fact a comment on the paper's readership, or on the rest of the work the famously foppish upper-class paper produces? Perhaps the eternally simpering Dowd can ask the 6-foot-2 Kloss!

In the wake of Harvey Weinsten's depredations, Dowd and her editors chose to turn Uma Thurman into the "goddess" hero of the piece.

Thurman is powerful in the business; she chose never to speak or take action about Weinstein's ongoing crimes. But at the Times, she's both famous and good-looking, and she has a high pedigree. That made her a "goddess" who deserved the entire front page of the Sunday Outlook section just a few weeks ago.

Our "liberal" culture is idiocratic. Haven't we possibly reached the point where we need to say this?