Democratic primary coverage is why WE cancelled OUR New York Times subscriptions.

Given the results on Super Tuesday, the following critique -- published almost a month ago -- obviously doesn't take the most recent Democratic primary evolution into consideration (read: it preceded the DNC's recent "Dim-pire Strikes Back" pro-Biden shenanigans).

However, as an explanation of why I recently severed our household's ties with the New York Times after more than a decade of subscribing, this essay does a fine job, indeed.

We're just one of many, and I really enjoy reading a tactile Sunday newspaper, but I could no longer in good conscience give money to a newspaper prone to running "hit pieces" (the author's term) against Bernie Sanders. One can only speculate about the newspaper's activities behind the scenes.

The author appears to have had a digital subscription. Our was Sunday delivery with digital access included. That's $12 a week, or a honking $624 a year. I can think of far better things to do with that kind of money than pay Thomas Friedman to write his dirtbag bilge.

For now, here's David Blass: Why I just cancelled my New York Times subscription: Democratic primary coverage as “fit” to print as Trump is to serve.

... Unfortunately, though some of the examples I’ve cited are particularly transparent, this type of reporting is the rule rather than the exception for Sanders in both the press and in cable news coverage. I used to think the New York Times was above the journalistic chicanery I saw elsewhere in the media, but the facts speak for themselves.

Coming to terms with this made me a more cynical person. Perhaps that’s a good thing; seeing grays between black and white can make us more tolerant and empathetic. But for now, my biggest unanswered question is for the Times’ board of directors: Is this your best attempt at self-preservation? ...

... I’ve subscribed to the New York Times since 2016. That might not sound like a long time, but it’s most of my adult life. As of today, I’ve lost my trust in the Times and have neither a use for its coverage nor a desire to support a thinly veiled purveyor of the propaganda Noam Chomsky described in Manufacturing Consent. In fact, in a 2010 interview, six years before the New York Times would all but write off Trump’s chances at the presidency, Chomsky offered the following:

If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? […] [That enemy] will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. […] I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.

Before abandoning all hope, our clairvoyant also had some thoughts about Senator Sanders:

Well, Bernie Sanders is an extremely interesting phenomenon. He’s a decent, honest person. That’s pretty unusual in the political system. Maybe there are two of them in the world, you know. But he’s considered radical and extremist, which is a pretty interesting characterization, because he’s basically a mainstream New Deal Democrat. His positions would not have surprised President Eisenhower.

And in the wake of the 2016 election, he offered an antidote:

[If] the Sanders movement offered an authentic, constructive program for real hope and change, it would win […] Trump supporters back.

Precinct by precinct: "An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2016 Presidential Election."

I'll just leave this here. In the context of our eternal city versus county division, we've compared the position of the Floyd County Democratic Party in forthcoming 2019 municipal elections to that of the last-ditch Alamo. The first map above illustrates this very clearly.

An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2016 Presidential Election

Do you live in a political bubble? Start exploring the map by searching for a place you know.

Right here in my own neighborhood ...

This is a Clinton precinct. The surrounding area is in the 72nd percentile for Clinton. The nearest Trump precinct is right next door.

How this precinct voted:

Candidate  Votes  Pct.
Clinton      206     52%
Trump       154     39%

How Donald Duncan's second obituary came to be written.

Photo credit: New York Times.

First there was an obituary.

Donald W. Duncan, 79, Ex-Green Beret and Early Critic of Vietnam War, Is Dead, by Robert D. McFadden (NYT)

Mr. Duncan, who died in obscurity in 2009, wrote in 1966 of witnessing atrocities by American troops and helped organize antiwar protests.

The, a week later came the explanation. It sheds light into the editorial process at a newspaper (just imagine if ours attempted any such), and suggests that it's still possible to disappear in plain sight in places like ...

An Obituary Runs Seven Years After the Subject’s Death. What Happened?, by William McDonald

Obituaries editor William McDonald explains why The Times decided to remember a once-famous activist who had slipped into obscurity, seven years after his death.


... In sum, Mr. Duncan made an appreciable impact on the national discussion of the war; he had for a time been a newsmaker, and by The Times’s rule of thumb his death was thus newsworthy. The obituary ran online on May 6, and in the paper on May 8.

What was unusual about the obituary, however, was how belated it was. Mr. Duncan had died seven years earlier, on March 25, 2009. And therein lies a tale, about a life in which notoriety gave way to its flip side, obscurity, and about a journalistic decision in which one imperative of reporting — to be timely — deferred to a greater one: to simply get the story out.

 ... Madison, Indiana, where Donald Duncan's death notice appeared seven years ago.

Duncan's 2009 obituary in the Madison Courier.

NYT on "The Architecture of Segregation."

If you think the perpetual public housing conversation in places like New Albany only involve whether or not to improve the building we already have, where they already are, be advised that the terms of the discussion seem gradually to be changing.

And New Albany is notoriously slow to grasp change.

The Architecture of Segregation, and editorial in the New York Times

Fifty years after the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development — and nearly that long after the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 — the fight against the interlinked scourges of housing discrimination and racial segregation in America is far from finished. Economic isolation is actually growing worse across the country, as more and more minority families find themselves trapped in high-poverty neighborhoods without decent housing, schools or jobs, and with few avenues of escape.

This did not happen by accident. It is a direct consequence of federal, state and local housing policies that encourage — indeed, subsidize — racial and economic segregation. Fair housing advocates have recently been encouraged by a Supreme Court decision and new federal rules they see as favorable to their cause. Even so, there will be no fundamental change without the dismantling of policies that isolate the poor and that Paul Jargowsky, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University-Camden, and others call the “architecture of segregation.”

As things stand now, federally subsidized housing for low-income citizens, which seems on its face to be a good thing, is disproportionately built in poor areas offering no work, underperforming schools and limited opportunity. Zoning laws in newer suburbs that rest on and benefit from infrastructure built with public subsidies prevent poor, moderate-income and minority families from moving in. Discriminatory practices exclude even higher income minority citizens from some communities.

"Why the New York Times’s Amazon story is so controversial, explained."

I hear they have a branch at River Ridge.

Why the New York Times’s Amazon story is so controversial, explained, updated by Ezra Klein (Vox)

On Sunday, the New York Times published a massive exposé of Amazon's "punishing" work culture. The company, the Times alleged, "is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable."

It is here:

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace ... the company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions, by Jodi Kantor and Streitfeldaug (NYT)

SEATTLE — On Monday mornings, fresh recruits line up for an orientation intended to catapult them into Amazon’s singular way of working.

They are told to forget the “poor habits” they learned at previous jobs, one employee recalled. When they “hit the wall” from the unrelenting pace, there is only one solution: “Climb the wall,” others reported. To be the best Amazonians they can be, they should be guided by the leadership principles, 14 rules inscribed on handy laminated cards. When quizzed days later, those with perfect scores earn a virtual award proclaiming, “I’m Peculiar” — the company’s proud phrase for overturning workplace conventions.

At Vox, Klein finds the middle of the target.

... Behind both the Times article and the responses to it is a larger debate about the future of high-prestige, white-collar work in America and the toll it takes on family life. This article, like many before it, is fundamentally about whether some of the most privileged, productive, and highly compensated workers in the world can have both the job they want and the life they want.

But it's important not to lose sight of a more urgent reality: As bad as white-collar workers may have it at Amazon and elsewhere, their blue-collar brethren have it much, much worse, and have much less power to negotiate better conditions.

James Howard Kunstler: The New York Times, human population and techno-narcissism.

Sunday mornings are the ideal time to cultivate the life of the mind with coffee and good reading, the idea being to think globally even as one acts locally.

As here, with a writer unafraid of to deploy the art of the polemic.

Twenty-Three Geniuses, by William Howard Kunstler at his Clusterfuck Nation blog

If there is a Pulitzer Booby Prize for stupidity, waste no time in awarding it to The New York Times’ Monday feature, The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion. The former “newspaper of record” wants us to assume now that the sky’s the limit for human activity on the planet earth. Problemo cancelled. The article and accompanying video was actually prepared by a staff of 23 journalists. Give the Times another award for rounding up so many credentialed idiots for one job.

Apart from just dumping on Stanford U. biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb (1968), this foolish “crisis report” strenuously overlooks virtually every blossoming fiasco around the world. This must be what comes of viewing the world through your cell phone.

Two perspectives on those foodstuffs entering your piehole.

They're slightly different perspectives on eating, but quite complementary. Both are from the New York Times. First, Mark Bittman:

A new column from Mark Bittman explores moderate, conscious eating: a diet higher in plants and lower in animal products and hyperprocessed foods.

The moderate, conscious eater — the flexitarian — knows where the goal lies: a diet that’s higher in plants and lower in both animal products and hyperprocessed foods, the stuff that makes up something like three-quarters of what’s sold in supermarkets. That’s the kind of cooking and eating I’ll be exploring in this monthly column.

Then, Frank Bruni:

Invasive species run roughshod over the rest of nature. That’s where our incisors and bicuspids come in.

For your personal health, you should probably eat more vegetables. But for the future of civilization as we know it?

More pork. Feral hogs, to be exact.

Boyd: ORBP a "1950s solution to a 21st Century problem."

The rest of the planet continues to understand what Kerry Stemler, Ed Clere, Greg Fischer and Bob Caesar cannot. Do you think a single one of them read the NY Times article prompting Boyd's comments, below? I would't bet on it. Just last week Mayor Fischer the ORBP proponent was prattling on about sustainability even as pots and kettles turned red with embarrassment.

NYTimes on Louisville: A city that can’t stop making historically bad choices, by Terry Boyd (Insider Louisville)

... the more interesting interviews are with downtown bridge opponents U of L Professor Hank Savitch and 8664 founder Tyler Allen.

Savitch sums up what’s coming with the new downtown bridge: “It will dissipate energy in the central city, where they should be concentrating investment, and instead draw capital to the outer metropolitan area.”

Allen makes the point that the forces for enhancing Lousiville’s riverfront instead of burying it in concrete ran “into the buzz saw of power.”

In fairness, that buzz saw of power was propelled by the fact our three (still functioning) bridges are so old and so neglected, they’re on the verge of being structurally unsound, overstressed and unsafe at any speed.

But instead of considering ingenious and forward-looking options, everyone from former Mayor Jerry Abramson to Southern Indiana power broker Kerry Stemler chose to apply a 1950s solution to a 21st Century problem.

"Does Louisville Need More Highways?"

A festival of ideas? Did Kerry Stemler attend?

The problem with encouraging thinking is that thinking produces thoughts and ideas, and the problem with both thought and ideas is that they do NOT lead to the Bridges Authority.

New York Times Calls Downtown Bridge Plan "Out of Step"

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Louisville's annual IdeaFestival draws top thinkers to the city. Ideally, it gets people talking about the city as well. This year's festival did just that, but the most recent chatter isn't entirely flattering.

A piece in today's New York Times examines Louisville in the wake of the IdeaFestival. There's a lot of praise in the article, especially for the waterfront and the city's post-war architecture. But the kind words vanish when the writer turns to the downtown portion of the Ohio River Bridges Project, which would add more lanes of highway to the city's urban core. 

1Si makes one small step to reduce CEO sexting, hires non-Wassmer female exec from Benton Harbor as kingpin.

Insiders say that Kerry Stemler's personal glee club has been struggling of late. Perhaps this explains why I just went to One Southern Indiana's website to read about the new CEO hire, and there's no coverage there at all, just the usual oligarch-fluffing propaganda.

Now THAT's a bottom line for you.

Chesser is new CEO of One Southern Indiana, by John R. Karman III (Business First)

Wendy Dant Chesser, who has led an economic development organization in Benton Harbor, Mich., since 2007, is the new president and CEO of One Southern Indiana.

Hmm, Benton Harbor ... where have we heard that name before? There's a fine craft brewery there (The Livery), but you heard about Benton Harbor right here at NAC, back on December 26, 2011. The full text follows, proving that we can expect a 1Si golf course (with Chick-fil-A clubhouse) to be built where the nasty inner cities used to stand. Also, don't forget our paean to all things Kerry earlier this year: Kingpin of the week: There's only one, isn't there?

---

"Is there anything wrong with this economy that a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course can't fix?"

The New York Times offers fascinating reading about the trials and travails of Benton Harbor, Michigan, especially for those among us who've ever asked the question, rhetorically or otherwise: "Can golf revitalize New Albany?"

Now That the Factories Are Closed, It’s Tee Time in Benton Harbor, Mich., by Jonathan Mahler

 ... Watching carpenters hammer preweathered wood shingles onto homes that wouldn’t look out of place in East Hampton, Long Island, I felt almost as if I were at a resort in a third-world Caribbean country: beyond the boundaries of Harbor Shores is the poorest city in all of Michigan.

In the state of Michigan's view, Benton Harbor is so failed that democracy must no longer be permitted to exist there -- temporarily, of course. The appointment of an "emergency manager" overrides all election results, and that chortling you're hearing may or may not be Indiana's governor, Mitch Daniels, and his henchmen (see Bennett, Tony).

Benton Harbor: An Addendum by Chris Savage, by Jonathan Mahler

... I understand that Michigan cities like Benton Harbor are struggling and help is needed. The Snyder administration’s recent cuts in revenue sharing to cities and cuts to our public schools have only made matters much worse. My contention is that we must start from the baseline that democracy, even at the local level, must be preserved. Democracy isn’t always pretty and “the people” sometimes elect unqualified representatives. But that’s not an excuse to disenfranchise our citizens and democracy should be sacrosanct, the baseline from which we evaluate any potential solution. I reject the notion that this is the only answer.

Strictly speaking, the parallels between Benton Harbor and New Albany are few in number. The Whirlpool variable alone counsels caution when making comparisons. Still, I agree with Savage: It's a chilling development indeed when nixing democracy is deemed acceptable as the best American alternative to problems with many more sources than just civic corruption. Is robber baron capitalism the solution in Benton Harbor, or was it the problem? Where did the wonderful corporate citizen Whirlpool take all those jobs, anyway?

Would this make more sense to me if I played golf with the oligarchs? I certainly hope not.

"Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?"

Considering the identity of the author, I was prepared to be annoyed with this piece. In the end, I am annoyed, but at least he took a stab at balance in the end.

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?, by Ross Douthat (New York Times)

... Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase.

Ed Clere, Mitch Daniels, Gary Oldman and ...

Really, all I was doing was looking for movie reviews at the on-line New York Times, and suddenly, there was my state representative's face situated right above Gary Oldman's.

That's some serious Kismet. The link leads here: Stand Up for Hoosiers, which I'm sure is a front for some leftist pinko Obama-ist union group.

"Is there anything wrong with this economy that a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course can't fix?"

The New York Times offers fascinating reading about the trials and travails of Benton Harbor, Michigan, especially for those among us who've ever asked the question, rhetorically or otherwise: "Can golf revitalize New Albany?"

Now That the Factories Are Closed, It’s Tee Time in Benton Harbor, Mich., by Jonathan Mahler

 ... Watching carpenters hammer preweathered wood shingles onto homes that wouldn’t look out of place in East Hampton, Long Island, I felt almost as if I were at a resort in a third-world Caribbean country: beyond the boundaries of Harbor Shores is the poorest city in all of Michigan.

In the state of Michigan's view, Benton Harbor is so failed that democracy must no longer be permitted to exist there -- temporarily, of course. The appointment of an "emergency manager" overrides all election results, and that chortling you're hearing may or may not be Indiana's governor, Mitch Daniels, and his henchmen (see Bennett, Tony).

Benton Harbor: An Addendum by Chris Savage, by Jonathan Mahler

... I understand that Michigan cities like Benton Harbor are struggling and help is needed. The Snyder administration’s recent cuts in revenue sharing to cities and cuts to our public schools have only made matters much worse. My contention is that we must start from the baseline that democracy, even at the local level, must be preserved. Democracy isn’t always pretty and “the people” sometimes elect unqualified representatives. But that’s not an excuse to disenfranchise our citizens and democracy should be sacrosanct, the baseline from which we evaluate any potential solution. I reject the notion that this is the only answer.

Strictly speaking, the parallels between Benton Harbor and New Albany are few in number. The Whirlpool variable alone counsels caution when making comparisons. Still, I agree with Savage: It's a chilling development indeed when nixing democracy is deemed acceptable as the best American alternative to problems with many more sources than just civic corruption. Is robber baron capitalism the solution in Benton Harbor, or was it the problem? Where did the wonderful corporate citizen Whirlpool take all those jobs, anyway?

Would this make more sense to me if I played golf with the oligarchs? I certainly hope not.

"Punched Out: The Life and Death of a Hockey Enforcer," a series in the New York Times.

This is a sad, compelling New York Times series on the life and death of the hockey player Derek Boogaard. In today's NYT, sportwriter George Vecsey makes a pertinent observation, one not asked by John Branch's investigative piece:

Has there ever been such a dismal month in sports — a time to question why we are so enthusiastic about spectator sports, particularly as part of so-called education?

It's worth remembering, lest our attachment to the spectacle overwhelm considerations of fundamental humanity.

Punched Out

The Life and Death of a Hockey Enforcer

• PART ONELearning To Brawl
• PART TWOBlood on the Ice
• PART THREEA Brain 'Going Bad'

OWS: "Its roots are in the populist, suffragist, labor, civil rights, women’s, anti-war, environmental and even food movements."

Just the first and last paragraphs reprinted here; pick your way through the hypocritically and hyper-critically outraged neighborhood conservatives to read the remainder.

Finally Making Sense on Wall Street, by Mark Bittman (NY Times Opinionator blog)

Countercultures and alternative systems can be nurturing, educational, illuminating, inspiring — and these are not small things — but they do not bring about fundamental change. Food co-ops, for example, make a difference, but they won’t much alter the way Big Food operates. Historically, the route to fixing broken systems goes through struggle, confrontation and even revolution ...

... The occupation of Wall Street may end with the first extended cold rain. But the renewed understanding that collective struggle is a key component in meaningful change — inspired by things as diverse as the Tea Party and a Tunisian fruit vendor — could not be more important. A movement that questions everything — from food justice to economic justice — is a fine start, and if Occupy Wall Street can push the Democrats as the Tea Party has pushed the Republicans … well, hooray.

NYT readings from Rich, Friedman.

Required Sunday reading from the New York Times, and not only for Li'l Stevie and the Drifters before they embark on their Oblivious Rocks! concert tour of the 3rd council district.

First, Frank Rich:

Rich: Weddings, Divorce and ‘Glee’

... Domestic partnerships and equal economic benefits aren’t antidotes, (David) Boies explains, because as long as gay Americans are denied the same right to marry as everyone else, they are branded as sub-citizens, less equal and less deserving than everyone else. That government-sanctioned stigma inevitably leaves them vulnerable to other slights and discrimination, both subtle and explicit. The damage is particularly acute for children, who must not only wonder why their parents are regarded as defective by the law but must also bear this scarlet letter of inferiority when among their peers.

Next, Thomas L. Friedman on the "best reaction I’ve seen to the BP oil spill," in the form of a letter written by his friend Mark Mykleby to a newspaper in South Carolina.

Friedman: This Time Is Different

"I’d like to join in on the blame game that has come to define our national approach to the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

"This isn’t BP’s or Transocean’s fault. It’s not the government’s fault. It’s my fault. I’m the one to blame and I’m sorry. It’s my fault because I haven’t digested the world’s in-your-face hints that maybe I ought to think about the future and change the unsustainable way I live my life. If the geopolitical, economic, and technological shifts of the 1990s didn’t do it; if the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 didn’t do it; if the current economic crisis didn’t do it; perhaps this oil spill will be the catalyst for me, as a citizen, to wean myself off of my petroleum-based lifestyle.

"‘Citizen’ is the key word. It’s what we do as individuals that count. For those on the left, government regulation will not solve this problem. Government’s role should be to create an environment of opportunity that taps into the innovation and entrepreneurialism that define us as Americans. For those on the right, if you want less government and taxes, then decide what you’ll give up and what you’ll contribute.

"Here’s the bottom line: If we want to end our oil addiction, we, as citizens, need to pony up: bike to work, plant a garden, do something. So again, the oil spill is my fault. I’m sorry. I haven’t done my part. Now I have to convince my wife to give up her S.U.V."

New York Times: "Why Orwell Endures."

A collection of George Orwell’s essays proved to be the surprise reading hit of my Christmas vacation. I picked it up at the library book sale in December, and tossed in the carry-on bag as an afterthought. It's a good thing I did, seeing as the remainder of my magazines and books were stowed in delayed luggage.

Essay topics in the ancient paperback, which became shredded into unbound pages soon after opening, ranged from memories of shooting a rampaging elephant while posted as a policeman in Burma to researching the origins of bawdy English postcards. Orwell wrote not only of lofty topics such as his service for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, but also described in excruciating detail his recollections of boyhood boarding school days, experiences so quintessentially English that they might be lampooned by the likes of Monty Python without we Americans never really imagining the real-life sources.

As a piece in today’s New York Times makes clear, Orwell may not have been right 100% of the time, but his pursuit of truth and unwavering intellectual honesty remains noteworthy by comparison to many of his ideologically compromised peers. As fairy tale life in Sarah Palin’s Amerika reminds us, they are qualities worth cherishing.

They'll be too busy popping Bud Light tops to listen, anyway.

My guess is that the Tribune's reporter-turned-columnist Daniel Suddeath doesn't share my views on abortion, which are stridently pro-choice, but I agree with his assessment of the Tebow non-controversy in today's newspaper: SUDDEATH: Cover your kid’s ears, it’s Tim Tebow.

Not unexpectedly, today's New York Times says it better than I can:

The would-be censors are on the wrong track. Instead of trying to silence an opponent, advocates for allowing women to make their own decisions about whether to have a child should be using the Super Bowl spotlight to convey what their movement is all about: protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices.

Krugman: "Europe’s economic success should be obvious even without statistics."

I'm in the process of developing a new, recurring character for my Thursday Tribune column. His name is Oakengruber. He's a doctor, reads a publication called the Wall Beck Journal, opposes the ungodly curse of Obamunism, patronizes certain downtown antique stores, and ... well, just stay tuned to see what happens when the Publican has his gout toe examined.

In the interim, as American fights for the right to be dim, here's a welcomed corrective to the teabagging blather. As for me, I'm going for a bicycle ride.

Learning From Europe, by Paul Krugman (New York Times).

As health care reform nears the finish line, there is much wailing and rending of garments among conservatives. And I’m not just talking about the tea partiers. Even calmer conservatives have been issuing dire warnings that Obamacare will turn America into a European-style social democracy. And everyone knows that Europe has lost all its economic dynamism.

Strange to say, however, what everyone knows isn’t true.

Seborgan prince dead at 73.

There's a lesson here, because somewhere on Shelby, "King" Larry is thinking, hmm, wish I'd thought of establishing undiplomatic relations with him ...

Giorgio Carbone, Elected Prince of Seborga, Dies at 73, by Douglas Martin (New York Times)

After convincing his Seborgan neighbors of their true significance, Giorgio Carbone was elected prince in 1963. He gracefully accepted the informal title of His Tremendousness, and was elected prince for life in 1995 by a vote of 304 to 4. Voters then ratified Seborga’s independence, which, by the prince’s interpretation, it already had.