- What is The American Dream?
- New York Times: biased on social issues (and dying?)
- 9-9-9.
- The Browser.
Do you really want the bar set this high? Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week? Is that your idea of the American Dream?
Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week? Do you think you can? Because, let me tell you, kid, that’s not going to be as easy when you’re 50 as it was when you were 20.
(Open Letter to that 53% Guy, The Daily Kos. HT The Browser) This is a heartfelt liberal response to a young ex-Marine who’s working 70 hours per week and going to college simultaneously, whose image has apparently gone viral with a sign ending “God bless the USA.”
There’s a great deal I could say about the open letter, some of it quite critical. But if I lit into the sheer wistfulness, I’d need to concede that the ex-Marine’s sign should end with “Welcome to the ruthless Global Economy” instead of “God bless the USA.”
The open letter is very much worth reading – critically.
The New York Times, having acknowledged in 2006 that it is liberal on social issues, apparently now had decided not even to try appearing fair on social issues.
Terry Mattingly at GetReligion.org talks about the utterances of Bill Keller at the Times, leading to this challenge:
Is the former Times editor essentially saying that his newspaper is committed to doing fair, accurate, critically balanced coverage of all kinds of issues — except for those that are touched by the uniquely dangerous, judgmental and irrational reality that is religious faith and practice? In other words, it is acceptable for Times journalists to produce advocacy journalism on a list of approved religious, moral, cultural and social issues.
In 2005, Keller stressed that that it was crucial for Times staff to make:
… a concerted effort … to stretch beyond our predominantly urban, culturally liberal orientation, to cover the full range of our national conversation. … This is important to us not because we want to appease believers or pander to conservatives, but because good journalism entails understanding more than just the neighborhood you grew up in.
Mattingly concludes:
Meanwhile, the newspaper’s new executive editor has offered her own point of view on this overarching subject. In a recent interview with Times public editor Arthur S. Brisbane, executive editor Jill Abramson noted:
I sometimes try not only to remind myself but my colleagues that the way we view an issue in New York is not necessarily the way it is viewed in the rest of America. And I am pretty scrupulous about when we apply our investigative firepower to politicians that we not do it in a way that favors one way of thinking or one party over the other. I think the mandate is to keep the paper straight. …
Once again, note the emphasis on balance and fairness when covering politicians. You know — real people who work in the real world. As opposed to, well, you know.
Stay tuned.
Rod Dreher springboards off GetReligion.org:
Leaving aside issues of journalistic professionalism, this makes no business sense to me. The Times is not going to survive as an institution if it doesn’t expand its audience of paid subscribers nationally, through its digital edition. This is what the Wall Street Journal is trying to do as well. The Journal has a natural advantage in holding on to its print subscribers, because it has long had a national audience among the business and financial class, who have long read it for its financial coverage. The Times doesn’t have this. I can’t find the article right now, but at some point in the past year or two, I read something in the journalism trade press analyzing circulation figures, and reporting that the Times’s print circulation in NYC is declining so rapidly that if it weren’t for the paper expanding its readership elsewhere, the paper’s losses would be even starker.
Plainly it is in the vital business interest of The New York Times to overcome its parochial, Manhattan-centered cultural biases, and report in a more balanced, thorough fashion on the national scene. Keller, and now Abramson, seem to understand that from a political point of view, but on social issues, religion, culture? Forget it.
For now, Dreher will continue his digital subscription to this infuriating newspaper, but he’s a journalist and commentator. But Dreher says the numbers are dwindling, and I can understand people deciding to forego aggravation.
9-9-9. I haven’t studied it much.
I like the simplicity, but I’m having trouble believing that the 9% sales tax isn’t regressive (taxing the poor more highly than the rich).
I’ll look harder if Cain’s surge continues.
(Remember: I acknowledge writing to figure out what I think.)
It requires a bit of intentionality to use the web to broaden perspective – to resist the temptation to seek only confirmation of one’s position. A couple of good aggregators can jumpstart the mind (as well as a blog).
I may have mentioned it a few days ago, but I’ve found a new web aggregator, The Browser.
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Bon appetit!
To save time on preparing this blog, which some days consumes way too much time, I’ve asked some guy named @RogerWmBennett (weird name) to Tweet a lot of links about which I have little or nothing to add. Check the “Latest Tweets” in the upper right pane or follow him on Twitter.
I also post some standing advice, which “goes without saying” – until I change my mind, at least:
- If it’s “too big to fail,” break it up into harmless little pieces.
- Petroleum is going away. Get used to it and adjust now.
- No nation ever got rich selling each other burgers, Girl Scout Cookies, and raffle tickets.
- Repent. Yes, you. And me. “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 