Should the Times have hired a climate denialist (among other problems) for the Op Ed page?

And this weekend the Times published an oped by Douthat making the case that Marine Le Pen isn't so bad because....she would make the trains run on time. The normalizing of extremists has passed the point of safety.

Oh and then the Times, desperate to coddle the orange ego, thought it would be fun if people would say something nice about Trump. They couldn't think of much themselves so they are soliciting ideas. You can email your niceties to somethingnice@nytimes.com FFS!

eliz said:

Oh and then the Times, desperate to coddle the orange ego, thought it would be fun if people would say something nice about Trump. They couldn't think of much themselves so they are soliciting ideas. You can email your niceties to somethingnice@nytimes.com FFS!

OK, here goes:  to the best of my knowledge, none of his children are psychopathic serial killers.

Gilgul said:

The golden years were the years of William Safire.

Seriously. Who was more reviled (justifiably) than Nixon. And, truth be told, I enjoyed the "On Language" column on Sundays.

eliz said:

And this weekend the Times published an oped by Douthat making the case that Marine Le Pen isn't so bad because....she would make the trains run on time. 

If that's the case then she should run for Governor of New Jersey  

Seriously, does ANYONE like the Times anymore?  

I overheard a fellow commuter recently saying something to the effect that she no longer reads the Times because it contains no real news anymore...just 'analysis', and because its bias's are so obvious. 

She was reading the WSJ, which even if you hate its editorial page, clearly carries more straightforward news than the Times ever did.

my favorite economist, Dean Baker, calls Mr. Stephens on his latest b.s.

And Ice, if WSJ employed Bret Stephens, they are as much FOS as the Times is. More actually, because their editorial board is still a bunch of whackadoos.

Bret Stephens: The Arithmetic Challenged Climate Denier

Stephens uses his most recent column to tout mistakes made by those pushing for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. He rightly seizes on biofuels, which are in fact a net loser from a global warming perspective.

While he is right that the effort to promote biofuels was a major mistake, it's not clear what the importance of this is. There were major mistakes in the development of every major technology in history. It would be hard tp imagine that the effort to develop clean or cleaner energy sources would not take some wrong turns.

Anyhow, Stephens goes badly astray when he tries to tell readers that we have seen nothing but wrong turns. He tells us:

"There’s also been some acknowledgment that Germany’s Energiewende — the uber-ambitious “energy turn” embarked upon by Angela Merkel in 2010 — has been less than a model for others. The country is producing record levels of energy from wind and solar power, but emissions are almost exactly what they were in 2009. Meanwhile, German households pay nearly the highest electricity bills in Europe, all for what amounts to an illusion of ecological virtue."

I managed to track down Mr. Arithmetic (he's been on a long vacation) to ask about this one. Mr. Arithmetic points out that Germany's economy has grown by more than 16 percent since 2009. This means if Stephens is right, that its emissions are lower today than they were in 2009, then Germany has managed a remarkable 16 percent reduction in emissions per unit of GDP in just eight years.

Contrary to what Stephens implies in his column, this would be an incredible success story, especially since Germany's emissions per unit of GDP were already relatively low. (It is harder to achieve a larger percentage reduction from a low level than a high level.) If Stephens is right about Germany, then it should be easy for the United States to achieve and beat the emissions reductions set in the Paris agreement.

It is also worth noting that everyone understood that the first movers were going to pay a higher price than followers. In other words, Germans understood that by taking the lead in reducing emissions it would pay a higher cost for reductions than laggards. They would be the cutting edge in developing and putting in place new technology, meaning that they would be stuck with paying the bill for some losers. The laggards would only pay for the winners.

This was a very socially minded position, where the whole world stood to gain from the fact that Germany was taking the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This wasn't a case of stupidity, as Stephens seems to think. It was a case of caring about the future of humanity and being willing to make some sacrifice to protect it.

drummerboy said:

Fox News has been a direct arm of the Republican party since it's inception.

tjohn said:

When I go to the gym at the Summit Y, I have occasion - the only occasion, actually - to see both Fox News and CNN.  The difference in coverage is stark.  While you can argue that CNN has a reporting bias, they do, in fact, cover news that a lot of CNN viewers would rather not see.  Fox News, on the other hand, is not even biased.  With the exception of an occasional dissenting reporter, you might as well rename Fox News to Trump News.  This is an example of the way in which people like Trump and Ailes are destroying any sort of middle ground and it makes it hard for responsible news sources to remain somewhat balanced.

For real news, Fox can be quite good. Watch Shepard Smith some time. He's appalled by Trump. But Fox viewers hate Shepard Smith and refuse to watch him. Instead, they flock to Hannity, O'Reilly Factor (heh), Fox & Friends, etc. They don't want to see real news. They just want to get worked up about far-left liberals and the MSM.

I thought you were joking but this is real.  I can't believe it.

Please barrage this email box with what you think of Trump.

eliz said:

Oh and then the Times, desperate to coddle the orange ego, thought it would be fun if people would say something nice about Trump. They couldn't think of much themselves so they are soliciting ideas. You can email your niceties to somethingnice@nytimes.com FFS!

Bret Stephens has, unfortunately, fulfilled our worst predictions by sowing disinformation and dishonesty on a regular basis. His most recent effort on healthcare is particularly egregious, but I'll outsource the specific criticism to these more knowledgeable folks.

Bret Stephens Doesn't Understand Inflation or Is a Liar

Very Serious Health Care Analysis From Bret Stephens, Man of Seriousity

Medical Care Bargain Hunting With Bret Stephens

ice said:


I overheard a fellow commuter recently saying something to the effect that she no longer reads the Times because it contains no real news anymore...just 'analysis', and because its bias's are so obvious. 

That's because "news" is broken on the internet and on 24-hour cable news. The Times had to change its focus.

News is broken regularly on the internet by The Times, The Washington Post and others. It's what they do.

shoshannah said:

ice said:


I overheard a fellow commuter recently saying something to the effect that she no longer reads the Times because it contains no real news anymore...just 'analysis', and because its bias's are so obvious. 

That's because "news" is broken on the internet and on 24-hour cable news. The Times had to change its focus.

no, it's because "fellow commuter" is a moron.

j_r said:

News is broken regularly on the internet by The Times, The Washington Post and others. It's what they do.

Of course. Ice was talking about the print edition. At least that was my impression.

In case anyone missed it, Stephens has been hired by MSNBC, another shift to the right by the former "liberal" channel.

paulsurovell said:

In case anyone missed it, Stephens has been hired by MSNBC, another shift to the right by the former "liberal" channel.

Good luck with that. He'll be as successful as Greta van Susteren.

shoshannah said:

paulsurovell said:

In case anyone missed it, Stephens has been hired by MSNBC, another shift to the right by the former "liberal" channel.

Good luck with that. He'll be as successful as Greta van Susteren.

He was hired as a talking head, not as a host, but sometimes the heads host.

How do I get a job just talking? I come on MOL and post comments, which are far more sensible IMHO than 90% of what I hear on TV and I don't get a cent. Where are those jobs posted?

In 2015 Bret Stephens wrote: "The right to offend is the most precious right. Without it, free speech is meaningless. That's what Charlie Hebdo was all about." Then the below happened. Then Bret suspended his own Twitter account.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/27/bret-stephens-bedbug-david-karpf-twitter/

The tweet seemed harmless enough to David Karpf. The associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University took a story that bedbugs had infested the New York Times newsroom as an occasion to dig at his least favorite Times writer, the conservative columnist Bret Stephens.

“The bedbugs are a metaphor,” Karpf wrote on Monday. “The bedbugs are Bret Stephens."

The tweet got nine total likes and zero retweets, Karpf said. So the professor was surprised when an email from Stephens himself popped in a few hours later.

Then, he noticed his provost at GWU was copied on the email. And Stephens was furious.

“I’m often amazed about the things supposedly decent people are prepared to say about other people — people they’ve never met — on Twitter. I think you’ve set a new standard,” Stephens wrote. “I would welcome the opportunity for you to come to my home, meet my wife and kids, talk to us for a few minutes, and then call me a ‘bedbug’ to my face. That would take some genuine courage and intellectual integrity on your part.”

Stephens is such a tool.

He deactivated his account on the Twitter. 

nohero said:

He deactivated his account on the Twitter. 

 #conservativesnowflakes

ridski said:

In 2015 Bret Stephens wrote: "The right to offend is the most precious right. Without it, free speech is meaningless. That's what Charlie Hebdo was all about." Then the below happened. Then Bret suspended his own Twitter account.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/27/bret-stephens-bedbug-david-karpf-twitter/

The tweet seemed harmless enough to David Karpf. The associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University took a story that bedbugs had infested the New York Times newsroom as an occasion to dig at his least favorite Times writer, the conservative columnist Bret Stephens.

“The bedbugs are a metaphor,” Karpf wrote on Monday. “The bedbugs are Bret Stephens."

The tweet got nine total likes and zero retweets, Karpf said. So the professor was surprised when an email from Stephens himself popped in a few hours later.

Then, he noticed his provost at GWU was copied on the email. And Stephens was furious.

“I’m often amazed about the things supposedly decent people are prepared to say about other people — people they’ve never met — on Twitter. I think you’ve set a new standard,” Stephens wrote. “I would welcome the opportunity for you to come to my home, meet my wife and kids, talk to us for a few minutes, and then call me a ‘bedbug’ to my face. That would take some genuine courage and intellectual integrity on your part.”

Apparently the line of people waiting to call Bret Stephens a bedbug is like the final shot of Field of Dreams.

 you'd think a writer would understanding what the word "metaphor" means. 

What a wimp. He'd last like two posts on MOL.

You'd think he would understand "freedom of speech."

eliz said:

And this weekend the Times published an oped by Douthat making the case that Marine Le Pen isn't so bad because....she would make the trains run on time. The normalizing of extremists has passed the point of safety.

I hear Hitler also made the trains to Auschwitz run on time