Did The New York Times Ruin Opinions?
Or have they just hired people whose opinions ain’t worth the paper The New York Times is printed on?
There are two types of New Yorkers. There are the New Yorkers that you see in every movie that is set in New York City. That movie always has a scene where the main character is out in public, on a crowded street or on the subway. They always run across New Yorkers who are that classic NewYorkian combination of loud, rude, friendly, helpful, and hilarious. The kind of New Yorkers who love a public argument with a best friend. The kind of people who actually say, “Fugettaboudit!” completely unironically. These are the types of New Yorkers symbolized in actor Tobey Maguire’s movie Spider-Man 2. A bunch of grizzled, anti-social New Yorkers of all races, backgrounds, creeds, and ethnicities (who are pissed that the subway is delayed by yet another superhero fighting a supervillain), but they come together to help Spider-Man in his moment of need.
I have no idea why that scene made me cry. And I don’t mean that it made me cry back in 2002 when I saw it. I mean it made me cry just now when I just watched it. I think it is because that group of diverse New Yorkers reminds me of what we all need to do right now; come together and help each other. Those New Yorkers on that train are the types of New Yorkers who came together to elect Zohran Mamdani. Spider-Man is Zohran Mamdani. The train is Republicans trying to sabotage his plans for equity and joy on his first day in office.
Then there are the other New Yorkers -- the ones who populate the worlds of Friends and Seinfeld. They’re the white people who generally only talk to white people about white people. Even when these New Yorkers think they are talking about other types of people, they are really still only talking about how white people feel about those people. They are centering whiteness even in their discussions of “others.” I say this as a fan of both of those shows. White people can be very entertaining.
Last Thursday’s Interesting Times podcast from The New York Times op-ed page featured that real life version of the second group of New Yorkers. But since this is real life, that means the writing and performances were way worse than an episode of Friends or Seinfeld. Even the name of the podcast sounds like a first draft, which is unsurprising because the host, Ross Douthat, comes off like the first draft of a person. The episode was called “Did Women Ruin The Workplace?” I used the past tense there because the episode is currently called, “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” People on social media went ham on that first title. And now they’re going hammier on the rewrite.
Not familiar with Ross Douthat? Good. You and I have a lot in common then. As far as I’m concerned, there’s a short list of bylines that will get me to click on a New York Times op-ed at this point in the paper’s spotty history. This list starts with Tressie McMillan Cottom. She is required reading. But for most of the op-ed page, the headlines tend to be more than enough for me. The headlines seem like The New York Times op-ed page caught terminal Buzzfeed headline disease in the 2010s, and now the NYT op-ed page is in the final stages of succumbing. Here’s a sampling of some recent Douthat op-ed headlines. Brace yourself.
Peter Thiel and the Antichrist
Musk’s Third Party Starts With a Good Idea
Is “Toxic Empathy” Pulling Christians to the Left?
Andrew Cuomo is Perfectly Positioned to be the Next Pope
What Conservatives Should Do About Nick Fuentes
And of course…
Mamdani’s Victory is Less Significant Than You Think
All of these headlines sound like conversations I would back out of at a party.
“I gotta take this phone call… It’s my dead grandmother… You understand.”
They all sound more like ChatGpt prompts than human thoughts. They are all just short of being interesting, compelling, or smart. I get what Ross is trying to do. If you are a right wing New York Times opinionator, you are are currently trying to get that Bari Weiss 150-million-dollar-payout-to-ruin-a-major-news-conglomerate deal. But Ross’ work gives off an air of It’s 3am. The column is due at 7am, and I haven’t even started writing it.
In other words…
Ross Douthat is the Ezra Klein of Ezra Kleins.
What the hell is “toxic empathy”? I would love to see what happens if the Christian Nationalists who run this country were suddenly struck by a plague of “toxic empathy.” Let’s give that a shot. We have certainly seen how badly things go because those so-called Christians are are all about “toxic toxicity.”
I think conservatives should tell Nick Fuentes that they all have cooties so he will run the other way and leave them alone.
We all know that Elon Musk forgot he wanted to start a “third party” the moment his next dose of ketamine kicked in.
And the only thing I want to know about Peter Thiel and The Antichrist is when their next gig is. You can’t tell me that’s not a punk band.
AND CAN’T MAMDANI AT LEAST SERVE ONE FLIPPIN’ DAY IN OFFICE BEFORE HE DISAPPOINTS YOU, ROSS?
Oh, I made up the Andrew Cuomo one. Could you tell? I actually think it was a little too interesting to be a Ross Douthat topic.
I’ve never seen someone try harder than Ross Douthat to dress up unserious thoughts in serious clothing. It is as if Ross Douthat is living inside a reboot of Big, the 1988 Tom Hanks classic. In the 1988 film, Hanks plays a boy who wakes up in a grown man’s body and has to figure out how to deal with the consequences. (As a side note, don’t watch it if you have not seen it. It does not age well.) In this updated reboot, Ross is actually a twelve year old boy who finds himself in the body of a middle-aged New York Times op-ed writer. Every day, on his way to work, he eavesdrops on people standing in line at food carts and turns those earhustles into op-eds. In the movie, his first headline goes mega-viral, much to his chagrin.
“Is California’s Proposition 50 JD Vance’s Best Chance to 6-7?”
In the podcast episode about women (or just liberal feminists?) ruining the workplace, Ross moderates a (sort of) debate. On one side of Ross is extreme right wing writer Helen Andrews, and on the other side of Ross is extreme right wing writer Leah Libresco Sargeant. Not a person of color to be seen anywhere in the proceedings, yet “wokeness” is the main subject of conversation. Any public discussion of wokeness that only involves white people is like a public discussion of an internal combustion engine that only involves one-celled organisms. If they want to talk about that to each other then fine, but it isn’t worth blasting it out to the world.
This conversation came off like me talking to my friends about Taylor Swift.
“Today we are talking about Taylor Swift’s new album. Having the discussion are people who have never once listened to an entire Taylor Swift album, not even the new one that we are talking about today.”
In a conversation full of nonsense about women ruining the workplace, the most damning part was that no one mentioned the fact that 300,000 Black women lost jobs this year. What would have happened if they brought that fact into the conversation? Does having 300,000 fewer Black women in the workplace make it better? Or wait . . . bigger question! Since Black women didn’t appear in any way shape or form in this conversation, does that mean that white women are the only women? Sojourner Truth would like to have a word.
Here are some of my favorite excerpts.
Ross Douthat: So for both of you, what is toxic femininity? If there are distinctive masculine vices — I think we can concede that there are. There’s a lot of talk about toxic masculinity. It’s a regular subject of discussion. What are the feminine vices in that story?
Helen Andrews: Gossiping. Inability to deal with conflict directly and kind of suppressing conflict. An aversion to directness, which, naturally, in a workplace, is a big problem because you need to be able to give direct feedback to people, including negative feedback.
Suuuuuuuure. Men never talk behind each others’ backs. Men always, always, ALWAYS resolve conflict in healthy and productive ways. We never take conflict too far. When I think of the ‘90s phrase “going postal” I am thinking of a woman showing up at her workplace and shooting up everyone. Literally, our current president Donald Trump is destroying the entire country because in 2011 he couldn’t call then-President Barack Obama and say, “Hey man! You really, really hurt my feelings last night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Can we talk about that?”
This next line from the podcast is a true head-scratcher. By that I mean it will make you scratch your head until, as the late Bernie Mac would say, you get to the white meat.
Helen Andrews: I would not expect to see a catastrophic effect from feminization in veterinary medicine.
Well, that’s a relief, Helen.
The word “feminization” is used over and over by Helen Andrews as a slur. The way it comes out of her mouth so frequently as a put down is disturbing. If I had been there I would have felt compelled to stop the recording and ask, “Hey Helen… you alright? It seems like you are going through something. Sorry if this comes off as toxically empathetic, Ross.”
The whole podcast is absolute doggrel. It’s like a Facebook thread brought to life by A.I. It isn’t worth the zeros and ones being used to save it on a server somewhere.
I can assuredly say that women did not ruin the workplace whether they were liberal feminists or not. But I can say that these three white people are ruining discourse. This is a conversation they should have had over dinner at a chic upper east side restaurant, and if I had happened to have been at a nearby table I would ask to be reseated or to get my bananas flambé to go.
As the podcast episode begins to come to its end, there is a new smell in the air. It is the smell of defeat. Intellectual exchange of ideas has been killed by rage bait.
Leah Libresco Sargeant to Helen Andrews: I never got a sense from your piece whether there were female virtues at all — genuinely.
There’s some back and forth while Andrews hems and haws. Finally, Ross re-asks the question in a more pointed way.
Ross Douthat: What do you like about women, Helen?
Helen Andrews, weirdly taken aback: Well, just to finish that particular thought before I answer that question: It’s a little bit feminine, honestly, to focus on my likes and dislikes.
OH. MY. BLACK JESUS. I actually had to stop the podcast for a moment when I heard that. If I was her friend or family member, I would consider this a cry for help. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
For the record, Andrews NEVER ANSWERS THE QUESTION. After spending the bulk of the podcast talking up men, she is incapable or at the very least strangely unwilling to list anything she likes about women. The other two people on the podcast let it go. Meanwhile, I was struck by the thought that the big issue is not that Helen Andrews doesn’t like women. It’s that Helen Andrews doesn’t like herself. This was paaaaaaaaaianfuuuuuuuul to watch. I’m stupider for it.
But before it was over, Sargeant tried to wrap it all up in a nice bow.
Leah Libresco Sargeant: I want to make a pitch, especially as we’ve talked a lot about women — good, bad, medium. I wanted to make a pitch for what’s good about men here, in particular, and where the goodness of men is particularly neglected and how that could help men and women come back together.
Me: Waiter… CHECK PLEASE!.. Just pour the flaming bananas down my throat. I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!
My Favorite Oakland Barber is opening a Barbershop with a bunch of other Awesome People
If you have every seen me with my goatee looking crispy on TV or online then it is more than likely that it was due to my barber Dez (in the lower, middle of the photo with the sunglasses). I don’t really trust many people touching the hair on my face or my head, but Dez is the best. And Dez is opening a barbershop with some other barbers who all previously worked together at a different barbershop that recently and abruptly closed.
The shop is open now, but it needs a little money get everything just how they want it. But don’t just take it from me. Hear it in their own words.
SF is SOLD OUT! Tickets still available for Rochester, NY on December 6.
December 6, Saturday Rochester, NY at 7:30pm
Who’s With Me? Merch
Check out the Who’s With Me? merch selection. Another great way to support the work here AND YOU GET MERCH! Perfect holiday gifts!
The New Video Project Will Hopefully Land Later Today
Stay tuned. Good things take time. If you are a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a like where you can watch it first!
That line about the op-ed page catching “terminal Buzzfeed headline disease” is perfect. You nailed it.
Ross asking what’s good about women felt like a parody of self-awareness. The man could drown in a puddle of nuance.
You’re right about rage bait too. The real debate’s been replaced by clickbait theater.
Your writing will help me get through this, I swear!! Thank you!!