This post is about the best and the worst of the New York Times. First the worst, and it is really bad.
MSNBC has Keith Olbermann; the New York Times has Frank Rich. At Power Line the usually soft spoken Hinderaker begins a scathing analysis with “As an op-ed columnist for the Times, his [Frank Rich’s] assignment, apparently, is to write in such a hysterical fashion that Paul Krugman seems rational by comparison”. Click the blue text and link yourself over to what else Hinderaker has to say about Rich’s latest bit of yellow journalism. You will never know how low the Times can go if you don’t read this analysis.
Next, the best. The New York Times was once the most respected Newspaper in the nation, if not the entire world. Thankfully, vestiges of its former greatness remain. The OP-ED piece Muslims Won’t Play Together by Efraim Karsh is a prime example. We have the Olympics. The Islamic world has come up with their version, called the Solidarity Games. Karsh reports that this year the games were canceled due to a lack of …solidarity.
The sports report is interesting and entertaining, however, what makes the Karsh piece a great journalistic work is not the commentary on the games, but his segway into fundamental Pan-Arabic and Israeli-Islamic issues. In the meager space available for an OP-ED piece Karsh covered ground that another could not have covered in less than a book. You will do well to read it.
Bob B