I’ve always considered myself to be a fairly tolerant person; my name isn’t Karen and I don’t feel any particular need to speak to the manager. In this I take after the maternal grandmother; the one who never made scenes upon receiving bad or abusive customer service. The paternal grandmother would and did, although in Granny Dodie’s defense, she didn’t take umbrage over small and inadvertent offenses and usually got some kind of satisfaction or apology from indulging in recreational Karenism. Granny Jessie would gather up her dignity, depart the scene of the offense quietly … and then never, ever return. No threats, no other complaint, no talk with the manager. Granny Jessie was just gone and relentless in determination to never darken that door again.

So it is with me now, and the thrice-accursed New York Times, which for reasons unfathomable to me is a big media deal, nationwide. I can only conclude that it is a big freaking deal media-wise because it’s published in a major city, and the people who live there have an excellent conceit of themselves, since the city is a locus for fashion, media, entertainment, arts, culture, finance and all the rest of it. Big national presence, cachet for aspiring reporters, the glamour and prestige of working for a major national – even THE national newspaper. As such it was hard to avoid. When the New York Times deigned to cover an event, national or international, they were the Bigfoot. Their very presence made a story a big story, bigger by their presence. And now and again their reporters did stumble upon something interesting, amusing, insightful and linkworthy, so it was worth it to me now and again to read something from the Times website.

But no more. They were on very thin ice with me when it came to the disgraceful 1619 Project, and now with a final obscenity last weekend – Memorial Day weekend – with an editorial positing that the US military celebrates white supremacy through the names of a handful of Army bases – posts and forts which happened to be named for local military leaders who served the in the short-lived Confederacy. That’s it for the Times and I. Done, finished, not another link or a read. Never mind that the US military was desegregated in the Truman administration, never mind that such bases, posts and forts were named sometime during the century before the last, most always as a gesture of reconciliation after a blood-soaked civil war which tore the nation into two ragged parts, never mind that the US military generally tries for color-blindness in conferring promotion, never mind that it is, more than just about every other American establishment, an organization where black is the boss of white just about as often as white is the boss of black. I’m done with these historically ignorant, racist fools. It’s almost as if they want to see another civil war.
I had a kind of reader account with them until this week. I was notified every day by email of stories of potential interest. I tagged their email as spam.
Speaking of news orgs losing credibility, the MSNBC reporter doing a live standup in front of a building on fire in Minneapolis and insisting that the protests were “mostly peaceful” and some fires “had started,” must be another nail in the coffin of national news organization credibility. It’s as if the fire burning the building behind him had just sort of spontaneously generated, all by it’s little old self. For the second time this week, life imitates the movie Animal House. (The first time being when Joe Biden mixed up D-Day and Pearl Harbor.)
Oh, never mind – they’re on a roll. Discuss as you wish.