All the (Good) News That's Fit to Print
The Gray Lady is smiling, and the whole world smiles with her.
Like it or not the New York Times is the “newspaper of record” and much of our generation reads every day what the Times wants read. And now the Times wants all the good news to be read. I feel a sense of relief that suddenly not everything in the world is a problem and all to be roundly blamed on President Bush. A year ago crime, traffic jams, global warming, terrorism, unemployment, every possible disease, family disfunction, obesity and skin rash, were all bad and getting worse on a daily basis and all caused by President Bush. There it was – I read it in the Times.
Now, like “Yesterday”, all our troubles seem so far away. The news, of course has not changed at all, but the coverage is 180 degrees reversed. All is spin, spin, spin.
It is December, 2009. This month President Obama has given a muted call to arms at West Point to announce his Afganistan policy. The “surge”, loudly condemned in Iraq in 2007 is acceptable to the Times. The next week the President tells the Nobel Prize committee that “There is evil in the world”, paraphrasing Niebuhr (the President is a contrarian!! See http://contrariat.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html ) and proclaiming American exceptionalism to police the world. President Bush never went nearly so far, but all is well with The Gray Lady.
Within the past week She has declared the Copenhagen environmental summit to be a limited success and the recession to be over. Faithful reader, I am greatly relieved to see that progress is made on all fronts. It is only if I look elsewhere – not even as far as Fox but even going only to CNN to see that these are indeed impossible conclusions. It is all spin, spin and more spin, but if we are to be spun we might as well be happy about it.
Like it or not the New York Times is the “newspaper of record” and much of our generation reads every day what the Times wants read. And now the Times wants all the good news to be read. I feel a sense of relief that suddenly not everything in the world is a problem and all to be roundly blamed on President Bush. A year ago crime, traffic jams, global warming, terrorism, unemployment, every possible disease, family disfunction, obesity and skin rash, were all bad and getting worse on a daily basis and all caused by President Bush. There it was – I read it in the Times.
Now, like “Yesterday”, all our troubles seem so far away. The news, of course has not changed at all, but the coverage is 180 degrees reversed. All is spin, spin, spin.
It is December, 2009. This month President Obama has given a muted call to arms at West Point to announce his Afganistan policy. The “surge”, loudly condemned in Iraq in 2007 is acceptable to the Times. The next week the President tells the Nobel Prize committee that “There is evil in the world”, paraphrasing Niebuhr (the President is a contrarian!! See http://contrariat.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html ) and proclaiming American exceptionalism to police the world. President Bush never went nearly so far, but all is well with The Gray Lady.
Within the past week She has declared the Copenhagen environmental summit to be a limited success and the recession to be over. Faithful reader, I am greatly relieved to see that progress is made on all fronts. It is only if I look elsewhere – not even as far as Fox but even going only to CNN to see that these are indeed impossible conclusions. It is all spin, spin and more spin, but if we are to be spun we might as well be happy about it.
posted by Contraria | 6:03 PM
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