Internal dissent over internal dissent
The New York Times is racked with internal dissent over internal dissent — a development stemming from multiple open letters sent last week to newspaper management taking issue with the paper’s recent coverage of transgender youth. The uproar reflects the pressures of managing coverage of a sensitive topic at a time when media criticism is flourishing everywhere.
The thing is…the topic isn’t just “sensitive”; it’s also…bizarre. An outlier. More bluntly, childish.
I was thinking the same thing while reading that dopy piece in The New Republic. I was thinking about how weird it is seeing adult publications and outlets like TNR and the Post and the Times, and the Guardian and the BBC and NPR and on and on, take this childish game of let’s pretend so very seriously. It’s bizarre watching them report on it as if it were entirely real and normal and like the rest of their subject matter, instead of being about adults treating their fantasies about themselves as both truth and of public interest and importance. On the one hand Ukraine, climate change, authoritarian governments, extinctions, famines, pandemics, poverty, corruption – on the other hand Mai Jenndur Idenniny. How did we get here? How did we get nudged into taking this personal make-believe so very seriously?
H/t Mike Haubrich
Why are they so up in arms over this, when they just sort of shrug about gay rights, women’s rights, racial civil rights and everything else.
Why are trans rights the top priority?
My brows are furrosed while I scratch my head.
I meant furrowed. Some day, some day, I’ll manage a check on grammer and spelling before I hit “submit.”
I furrose my brow quite frequently; some might say continuously. There’s some risk they may stay permanently furrosed.
Have a care, Man. If you mock me overmuch I shall grow furrose with you henceforth. And forthwith.
I mock thee not; “furrosed” is perfectly cromulent. If I could but create such gold with my typos, I’d be a happy man.
It’s all so solipsistic. Or narcissistic. Or perhaps both. I get a lot of posts about space in my Facebook timeline. The other day there was one showing illustrations of just how small earth and the solar system and even the Milky Way are, and how unimportant we are. And of course the Christ botherers invaded the comments to talk about how important they are because god and Jesus. It’s the same attitude–forget all that, what matters is me. The world was put here to cater to me.
Oh well, in a few million years it won’t matter. Maybe less.
“furrosed” really is a good word.
According to my large Oxford dictionary, the first and only use of the verb ‘to furrose’ was in 1936 in connexion with the art of Meret Oppenheim, and then promptly forgotten. And now Mike has re-invented it! I suspect it is a word that we need in these times.
Verily, ’tis a late delivery from Avalon, to aid us while we yet await the return of the once and future king.