Roger L. Simon: Reading the tea leaves at the New York Times

Not much more than a day after the military appropriations bill finally slogged through Congress without a troop withdrawal deadline, the NYT is locked and loaded with a new inside story on Iraq policy - White House Said to Debate '08 Cut in Iraq Troops by 50% "Said?" If that weasel-ish word right in the headline weren't enough, how about this sentence, which is run as a full paragraph in itself? "The officials declined to be quoted for attribution because they were discussing internal deliberations that they expected to evolve over several months."

In other words, you'll never be able to check the truth of this. By the time a decision is made this article will be irrelevant (and long forgotten) anyway - so don't blame us if it turns out to be hooey. We're all in the game of propaganda anyway... wink, wink.

It's a long way from the days of "All the News that's Fit to Print." Seems like a distant hieroglyph, doesn't it? These days the Times is in essence a convenient quasi-scandal sheet for disaffected administration officials, intelligence agents, lobbyists, insert your favorite leaker here, to dump their info/disinfo on an increasingly numb public. At least I know I'm feeling numb. And now it's getting to be a battle of the scandal sheets as the NYT complains about the WaPo in the race to expose the latest Hillary dish.

And how about those Hillary rumors? In this long election, it looks as if we're going to be subject to more lurid marital details than a shelf full of Judith Krantz novels. Hillary better win after all this - or she's going to be mighty angry.

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How to ward off atrophy and routine, you ask? Well, I can give you a small and perhaps ridiculous example. Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. "All the News That's Fit to Print," it says. It's been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine that most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there. Then I check to make sure that it still irritates me. If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what the hell is it supposed to mean unless it's as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse.

I am feeling a little numb myself. Politics is soap opera. I don't know if the internet helps or hinders at this point. I think we forget that while the NYT might be the paper or record or whatever and while Kos might get 600,000 hits a day or something and while Instapundit might get more than 100,000 hits a day or there abouts....American Idol got over 70 million votes in their last show. That tells you where people's heads are at.

In the late 60's, as a little kid, I got a trip and a sleepover at West Point. I remember how the Cadets received the New York Times everyday, and were required to read it. Back then it had few, if any, pictures and seemed a very serious paper.

Then there were the years I couldn't go a day without reading the Times, along with the Boston Globe, my local paper and the Wall Street Journal.

Now I find most national papers just lead me further from reality. They don't help, they make things worse, like some constant, low-level info buzz that a character from Orwell's 1984 might comment upon. I hardly buy a paper anymore. ( I�ve also noticed no one under 35 buys papers.)

And the big three TV news shows that I used to watch every night? Haven't in 7-10 years.

"or she's going to be mighty angry"...she's going to be mighty angry whatever happens; anger is her defining core.

May 25, 2007: Reading the tea leaves at the New York Times

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