even more quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a new rolling new york times thread

If there is an argument at all for the way the United States invaded Grenada, President Reagan has been clumsy in making it. The rescue of medical students was, almost by his own admission, only a pretext. Their evacuation, if necessary, could have been accomplished by lesser means. The legal justifications were a sham. Such breaches of treaties and sovereignty can only be rationalized by the aggressions of others.

Four days after the landings, Mr. Reagan finally pointed to a valid question, conceding his underlying concern: What were all those Cubans doing in Grenada? But whether or not the President is vindicated in his belatedly admitted suspicions about a Cuban threat, he has surely failed to reckon fully with the cost of his response.

If Cubans, on behalf of the Soviet Union, were subverting Grenada's Government and establishing a base ''to export terror and undermine democracy'' in Latin America, their expulsion is surely a proper American objective.

What is the evidence? The presence of a force of Cuban worker-soldiers larger than Washington anticipated, better trained and hoarding more weapons than anyone knew. Though Mr. Reagan voiced concern last March about the airfield the Cubans were building on Grenada, he either had inadequate intelligence about them before the invasion or is being served a much inflated picture of their operation now.

Plainly the President was predisposed to attack, to seize a moment of turmoil on the island to rid himself of the Grenada headache. If his worst suspicions are confirmed in the coming days, he will have denied the Russians and Cubans another Caribbean airfield, an auxiliary station for small- arms transfers and a modest source of new recruits for international mischief. Set this still uncertain gain against the price. It, too, cannot yet be fully reckoned, but it will be far more costly than the loss of a dozen soldiers. Simply put, the cost is loss of the moral high ground: a reverberating demonstration to the world that America has no more respect for laws and borders, for the codes of civilization, than the Soviet Union. To liberate Grenada from some local henchmen, and perhaps from Cubans, America has defined its duty and security in ways that make it look like a paranoid bully. To much of the world, the invasion appears no different than the Soviet suppression of Poland or the occupation of Afghanistan. Even friends in the hemisphere and in Europe are tempted to think of the superpowers as equally selfish, possessed by geopolitical games. In their private thoughts, they may even raise a cheer for the Davids who dare to stand up to either Goliath. A great many Americans, to be sure, feel better about their country this weekend than last. The carnage among passive marines in Lebanon struck them as one more sign of impotence, exposing a chronic failure of will to stand up to terrorists. Now, in tiny Grenada, Americans have shown that they can play hardball, too, that they can be just as tough at defending their turf as the Commies. Watch Out, Nicaragua. Beware, Syria. Keep Out, Russia. It's a seductive but immature reaction. When all is done, pacifying Grenada will prove only the obvious about American power. The enduring test for Americans is not whether we have the will to use that power but the skill to avoid having to. A President who felt he had no other choice last Monday night should not be celebrating a victory. He should be repairing the prior political failures and forestalling the bitter harvest to come.

(nyt editorial regarding invasion of grenada)

rogermex = classic centrist War Democrat? even a Tarantino fan

poverty takes one strange places

looool bret stephens

The edit history on his Wikipedia page is a real rollercoaster now.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EC84gQUVUAAECaO?format=jpg&name=small

I love the people saying this is an example of the Streisand effect, implication being he actually is a bedbug and doesn’t want people to know.

50% of columnists now are polished front row kids who played by all the rules, went to the right schools, learned how to properly couch their rightwing bile then twitter happed & random rose emojis told them to suck on a tailpipe and their columns are now just them melting down

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) August 27, 2019

50% seems low

love how the GW prof has apparently taken the day off to talk to every news outlet in the world

back to quiddities

“They should be put in jail,” said Doug Gansler, a former Maryland attorney general and an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate, while his King Charles spaniel, Jack, searched for a new dog to hump.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/no-excessive-barking-a-chevy-chase-dog-park-divides-the-rich-and-powerful/2019/08/27/0b9fd242-c4e5-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html?noredirect=on

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/date-labhis-charm-overcame-their-age-gap/2019/08/29/5f2b45ea-b49b-11e9-8f6c-7828e68cb15f_story.html?noredirect=on

this whole thing is gold

That could've gone a lot worse.

Brett looks like he’s 35. Why do conservatives, even the not-obviously-Nazis kind, age so quickly?

Fear of life?

wooooow: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/opinion/world-war-ii-anniversary.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

xp jfc

My jaw is on the floor pic.twitter.com/repnmcL2Ud

— David Klion🔥 (@DavidKlion) August 30, 2019

If you’re going to use a google books link, it’s generally a good idea to remember to clear the search.

(And maybe be a little wary if your only hit is an repurposed dissertation no one has bothered to review and that only equivocally supports your hypothesis.) pic.twitter.com/QC4hJ0KJfo

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 30, 2019

ha! I was wondering which Brett looked like he was 35 because Brett Stephens is 45 and I thought he was David Brooks' age. And how is Ross Douhat 39? These guys need to figure some shit out.

wow indeed

At the request of a senior editor, I deleted a previous tweet in which I implied that a prominent NYT opinion writer’s behavior were an embarrassment to NYT and it’s newsroom staff. 1/2

— Lil Uzi Hurt (@lostblackboy) August 31, 2019

he should've deleted it, removed the implication and explicitly stated it. And posted the senior editor's request if it was written.

But there are so many embarrassments at the NYT maybe someone felt overshadowed.

he should've deleted it, removed the implication and explicitly stated it. And posted the senior editor's request if it was written.

I suspect he may wish to continue enjoying their paychecks

oh ha, i totally skipped over he had a @nytimes there.

i seriously don't understand why the NYT has taken this route of constantly shooting themselves in the dick.

they must keep missing b/c surely it only takes one hit to take care of it for good

nevermind, i take that back. nyt's share price has done very well since Trump got elected so keep on shooting.

he should've deleted it, removed the implication and explicitly stated it. And posted the senior editor's request if it was written.
I suspect he may wish to continue enjoying their paychecks

― Simon H., Saturday, August 31, 2019 7:32 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Are NYT writers unionized, and if so, where the frick is their union on this?

Miami Herald but oh well:

Socialite waits for Hurricane Dorian

this should have been about you

good roundup

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/it-didnt-start-with-the-bedbugs.html

^ Bret Stephens wins that listicle through the sheer weight of appearing in it more times than all the other Times columnists added together. One senses a tendency.

https://www.thecut.com/2019/09/the-story-of-caroline-calloway-and-her-ghostwriter-natalie.html

^^^can someone do a clusterfuck summary on this for me

I thought it was a good, sympathetic piece -- it leaves a lot of questions open but how could it not, probably.

Summary: don’t believe everything you see on Instagram, don’t mix personal and professional relationships, and don’t fuck over your collaborators unless you have an ironclad NDA

Being young in the age of social media sounds like my worst nightmare.

It's a really well written piece, much more interesting for being so personal instead of journalistic, but... It is just me or does it seem like the really truly awful and horrendous thing Caroline does is... to get drunk and fall asleep and not answer her phone?

I think yr meant to bring some awareness of how completely non-hinged her later grifting became, and not require Natalie to fill that in or to keep explaining that Caroline is a monstrous narcissist, when she’s writing a piece about unsettling intimacy

The Cut is really into writing these in depth "scam" articles. Just watch that Ingrid Goes West doc. Both of the women in that article suck in the way that most young 20 somethings suck.

haha it's not a doc, it's a movie. I don't know why I wrote that. influencer culture is the most transparent scam ever.

I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but I feel very :/ about this piece (which is also v relevant to my interests as an NYC public school parent)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/when-the-culture-war-comes-for-the-kids/596668/

man I skimmed to the end of section 2 and was like "how many more words are you going to write to continue buttering yourself up for having the bravery to send your white children to public school"

oh I skimmed to the end and it's some PC gone mad bullshit by then cool

I mean my daughter is only in elementary school but so far at least in our school I have seen very little of the PC gone mad type stuff he claims pervades the system. I do think Carranza is a bit of a fraud fwiw and promotes a lot of new agey bullshit as wokeness, but, again, my daughter is not spending her day in sensitivity training, she learns math and reading and stuff.

My teacher wife occasionally has to attend a nonsensical workshop that I guess is part of the training being referred to in the article. She is generally pretty pro-PC and pro-wokeness but thinks a lot of the training is just ineffective and meaningless and doesn't accomplish what it sets out to do. That's just the nature of massive well-financed bureaucratic urban public school systems though -- lots of opportunities for grift and timewasting.

my daughter... learns math and reading and stuff.

What?! Math and reading, instead of cookery, household management, sewing and embroidery?? It's PC gone mad!

right now there's a lot of handwringing in my neighborhood over Carranza's plan to phase out G&T programs. I actually kind of lean toward phasing them out based on my experiences -- (1) mostly they are gamed by better off (and mostly white and asian) people to separate their kids out from the rabble (2) in my neighborhood, where all the public schools are already strong, it just arbitrarily shuffles some kids around because they got a 98 instead of a 96 on a test they literally took when they were four years old.

but it's def an example that some people read as "the end of meritocracy."

gifted and talented programs, and even attending a regional magnet high school, did relatively little to challenge me and relatively a lot to prevent me from learning any kind of resilience and social skills