Today I uninstalled the NYT app from my phone, and deleted it from my bookmarks tab on my work computer. I'm getting sick of it.

I try to get my news from a variety of sources. That's pretty much the only way to get the full picture, right? But nowadays I'm more interested in following specific writers. There's some great writers over at the NYT, but they make a real nasty front page over there.

The Editing TheGrayLady BlueSky account shows the editorial process over the course of a day.

Sometimes the edits are fine. Good, even.

Sometimes they're horrible.

I've written about how I believe there's value in engaging with the news. I'm not so sure about that any more. At least not with the NYT. Maybe I'm wrong about that. There's certainly value in the truth, obviously. There's value in the news. I'm not sure about the value in this news. It seems too tainted. It seems like its conservative values being given a liberal whitewash.

Which is probably not news to many people. I wanted to see for myself, though. The people telling me the NYT was a crypto-conservative rag were people who, well, didn't read any news. These were the people yelling at Jamelle Bouie because they thought he wrote the article that Lydia DePillis wrote. So, I thought if the crowd couldn't get its facts straight, I should look for myself.

So I did. Here's my report: they're basically right.

Michael Tae Sweeney is annoying but he basically sums it up here:

The New York Times seems to me like a vehicle to take conservative viewpoints and launder them until they are acceptable for a liberal audience.

I was hoping maybe I'd come to the conclusion that the NYT was a land of contrasts but really, I should just get my news from other places. Clears up my bookmarks tab. I think between Semafor, AP, Guardian, newsletters, KUOW, and whatever the hell else catches my interest, I'm getting a decent picture. I don't need Bret or Pamela to tell me what's what.

Anyways. The reason this is "from the drafts" is because the following has been in my drafts for a bit, rotting. You can see me figuring it out in real time that I'm sick of carrying water for the NYT.

the draft

David Leonhardt is a senior writer at The New York Times who runs their daily morning newsletter. In his words:

The Morning newsletter is available to everyone, even if you don’t have a Times subscription, and it’s intended to be a digital version of the print newspaper, albeit with many fewer words: A place where we tell you what you need to know each morning.

Yesterday's newsletter was entitled The Harris Campaign Begins: The Democratic Party’s biggest weaknesses — and how they offer Kamala Harris an opportunity

I would describe this edition of Leonhardt's newsletter as his marching orders for his liberal newspaper-reading readership. Kamala is the nominee; here's the hot-button issues to press. Some excerpts to highlight this point:

Democrats often describe Donald Trump and other Republicans as radical. And today’s Republican Party is indeed radical in important ways. Many Republicans still claim that Trump won the 2020 election. Their party favors unpopular abortion restrictions and deep tax cuts for the rich.

But many voters also see the Democratic Party as radical. In fact, the average American considers the Democratic Party to be further from the political mainstream than the Republican Party.

The stats he cites for that last claim are... unconvincing to me, personally. Asking people who still answer the phone how they rank their ideology is not very illuminating, in my opinion.

Anyways. The "five Democratic vulnerabilities" he cites are crime, immigration, inflation, gender issues, and free speech. There's a whole lot to be said about everything all the time but for today's post I'm focusing on gender issues. Per Leonhardt:

U.S. liberals have adopted some positions on gender issues that are out of the mainstream. Doctors in Europe, for example, believe the scientific evidence doesn’t support gender transition hormone treatment for many children. Most Americans agree — while also opposing discrimination against trans people. Many prominent Democrats are well to the public’s left on this subject. If Harris took a moderate position, she could undermine Republican claims that she is an elite cultural liberal.

Please note that in this excerpt, he links to Pamela Paul's Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works? I touched upon this article in one of my previous posts on social reproduction.

I find the whole argument here meaningless. "Mainstream America" is the voting public at large, which is of course a nice mix of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, unaffiliated voters, swing voters, whatever. When you take all the red and all the blue you get purple.

Red is always more red than purple. Blue is always more blue than purple. My point is that Democrats and Republicans will, by definition, always be "more radical" than the center. So I don't find the "more radical" label insightful.

When Leonhardt says "doctors in Europe" he's talking about the Cass Review. See the links to Pamela Paul's piece for more information on that. In short though: the doctors in the review say "we don't know." Need to do more research. Don't rush it. Again, not very insightful stuff but it fits great in your hands as a cudgel.

Finally, "if Harris took a moderate position, she could undermine Republican claims that she is an elite cultural liberal." What's there to even say here? I'm old enough to remember the Obama years, you probably are too. Just read the sentence he wrote here again and ask yourself if he's putting his all into this political strategy he's developed.

why does The New York Times keep pushing this issue?

Like I've mentioned in my previous posts on The New York Times and their anti-trans bias, there's internal division at the Times between staff and editors. Thousands of people work there. It's a big place with a lot of differing opinions. Similar to the country, or a city, or your group chat.

end of draft

Like I said, you can see exactly where I get tired of carrying water. I was proud of nudging someone at the paper into writing an article that, as my friend put it, started from the premise that trans people were humans with hopes and dreams.

So, immediately seeing the shit takes from Paul and Leonhardt took the wind out of my sails. Seeing the response directed towards Jamelle Bouie for an article he didn't even write also took the wind out of my sails. So no wind in either direction. The doldrums.

So, grabbing a paddle. I guess. I'm tired of this metaphor. Goodbye.