[Tweet thread.]
kleinbl00 I feel you've been saying this all along.
I've been saying something similar... but my opinion has been shaped heavily by watching the tame Republicans I follow for investment commentary. A New York Times Republican is a rich person who respects and understands mainstream liberal ideas, he just doesn't agree with them. He's wealthy and believes in economic policies that will keep him that way. For all of his life, "Republican" has meant a free-trade businessperson whose interests are about the creation and preservation of wealth, and he's understood that "his team" is the Family Values party which tends to be women at home, sons at private school, and a fundamental belief in the fecklessness of Democrats. New York Times Republicans are currently dealing with an existential crisis because they've become a splinter faction of holdouts in a world of rampant populism. Republicanism, for the non-New York Times Republicans, is border walls and deportations. It's t-shirt rallies and latent racism. It's style over substance, it's lip service to traditional talking points but a worship of cronyism over credo. And Trump has forced the New York Times Republicans to question how long it's been like this. Republicans who read New York Times Republican columnists are looking for someone to reinforce their views that they haven't actually supported the Nazis lo these many years. They want reminders that racism and antintellectualism doesn't go clear back to Harding. They need reinforcement of their fragile egos so that they aren't left adrift and facing the bankruptcy of their ideology. David Brooks et. al. exist to forestall the Nuremberg Trials. "There were good Nazis," they say. But in the end, they all agreed that Naziism is bad.
So why is the New York Times providing such cover its Republican readers? Is it dollars and cents?
I doubt the Sulzbergers consider themselves liberals. I also don't know that a disinterested party could argue the New York Times is a liberal or democratic newspaper. They came down on both sides on Vietnam; if it weren't for Judith Miller and her Cheney stenography we might not have invaded Iraq. I think they make an effort to provide a platform for thoughtful, non-insane commentary. I'm not a fan of Lindy West or Maureen Dowd just like I'm not a fan of David Brooks or Bret Stephens and I would argue they are mirror images of themselves. The problem is, when one party veers towards center and the other party skyrockets towards the land of insanity, a conscionable paper is going to show a lot less of the crazy POV. Thus, it looks like the New York Times is a "liberal" paper when they're actually trying to present an even bias.
I mean if whites don't get the privilege who's to say some fucking Polynesian won't get it? How do you fight back when your opponent wants to say anti fascists are a bad thing? There's an obvious answer but not one that doesn't demonize a shitload of Americans. Appropos of nothing I just tried to watch a YouTube video about Pizzagate thinking it was critical when it was actually a conspiracy video. It was about the stupidest thing I've ever subjected myself to. Orgy island is a thing people believe in and can say seriously
I'm not understanding your comment. The tweet thread is an observation that the NYTimes brings on conservative pundits because liberals love to self-flagellate (an interesting phenomenon alluded to in the thread but outside its scope). But those conservatives do not represent anything that comprises Trump's perennial 35% approval rating. Which calls into question their raison d'etre. This search for a sense of meaning amongst NYTimes conservatives explains the tenacity with which they cling to certain tired Op-ed subjects, like free speech on campus. I'm have trouble connecting your comment.
I've been of the opinion lately that opinionists on a lot of the online websites are either A) there to make strawman arguments that can easily be knocked down to make the reader feel smug or B) there to make outlandish statements to get pageviews. I'm not going to name any sites in particular, but there are a lot of them that are just outright crazy. I find the opinion pieces in my local papers much better for two reasons. One, the writers tend to acknowledge that there are nuances to issues and are willing to take a more moderate stance on things. Two, and more importantly, they tend to have at least some kind of background that is at least tangently related to the issue being discussed. Think teachers speaking about taxes that affect schools, city developers talking about zoning issues, etc. Online? Doesn't seem so much so. As a result, I tried to avoid sharing opinion pieces on Hubski, and I only do if I think it'll lead to an interesting discussion and I tend to tag them as #opinion when I do, so people know what they are.