Sulzberger’s oh-so-objective reaction to Slim’s generosity:
I recently had the great pleasure of meeting Carlos Slim. He had decided to invest in the New York Times Co. and thought it would be a good idea to get to know me and my senior colleagues. It was obvious from the moment we met that he was a true Times loyalist.
Presumably, Sulzberger felt obliged to write this to make up for the far more accurate profile of Slim written last winter by New York Times reporter Marc Lacey, who noted, “when the news media focus their spotlight on him, he sometimes gives the impression that he wants to be left alone to make more money in peace.”
However, this wasn’t nearly as offensive as Time’s decision to get the great Glenn Beck to celebrate his hero, Rush Limbaugh, in the same issue. “His consistency, insight and honesty have earned him a level of trust with his listeners that politicians can only dream of.”
If only Time could have gotten Mussolini to make a similar contribution to its Man of the Year cover story in 1938:
Could we have a moratorium on the silly and offensive comparison of people like Rush Limbaugh to Hitler? Comparisons of Hillary Clinton and Madame Defarge are more sophisticated than this stuff, without the subtlety. The objects of Limbaugh's attacks, when using this language, which is so old and discredited (even the users don't really believe it) that it had liver spots on it by the late 1960s, appear to be comparing themselves to the murdered children of Auschwitz with such nonsense, which is why it is offensive.
We laugh at silly phrases like 'liberal fascism' from people like Jonah Goldberg, and wild-eyed rhetorical overkill from the Left is similarly deserving of amused contempt. The net result is that calling people fascists and bigots and racists comes across as the last resort of writers who don't want to engage specific positions.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Mon 11 May 2009 at 01:10 PM
Elitist punks!
#2 Posted by Steve Hunt, CJR on Fri 15 May 2009 at 02:50 AM