The Dish

The Onion, as always, is on the cutting edge.

I don’t know why today has become NYT day on the blog, but what the hell. Another reader writes:

"Bruce Bartlett has some rather strange concepts of marketing when it comes to the New York Times. He’s right about the blog thing, but nothing else. He thinks it’s strange that the New York Times would cut itself off from 40% of the population. Not at all, actually. There are only two national newspapers in the United States: The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. One is conservative, one is liberal, as it should be. It is wise for the Times to seek out a different market from the Wall Street Jounal, otherwise they would be out of business. If they simply produced a replica of the Wall Street Journal every day, I’d just buy the Journal.

He also says that the TimesSelect concept is wrong. He says they should use the Journal’s method. But that, too, is silly. You only try to sell what people are willing to buy. The Journal can sell its news because it has news that is only available from the Journal and that news has financial value to its readers. The editorials from the Journal are nothing but republican propanga. I can get that free from FOX news or my republican senator. So, they can’t really sell their editorials. The Times, on the other hand, rarely produces unique news features. On the rare occasion that the Times breaks a story, I can read it in my local paper, because they use the New York Times wire service. So, the only thing the Times can sell is their editorials.

Of course, I don’t actually buy TimesSelect, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea. I don’t buy it because I can always find a back door around it. I have not missed a single Krugman piece since he "went behind the wall." If I had to buy those pieces, I would. The only error the Times commits is their failure to close the back door access."

I should confess that I read the NYT every day on dead tree. I signed up for TimesSelect when I wanted to research the archives. But the NYT opedders have ceased to be part of the bloggy-conversation, which is increasingly the national – and international – conversation. That’s a shame. 

A loyal NYT reader emailed me his poetic response to TimesSelect. It comes in three forms. A Limerick:

There once was a paper of repute
Whose columnists none could refute.
But wanting more cash,
It hid them in a stash–
Essentially making them mute.

A Haiku:

Loyal readers balk.
Are blogs now our only hope?
Curse you, Times Select!

And a Sonnet:

My love, why art thou never where I seek?
In days of old, I met you ev’ry night,
And read your lavish prose as loyal geek.
But now I fear that this was false delight.

In place of lengthy expositions true,
Of flat earth, int’rest rates and refugees,
I find one paragraph, or maybe two,
Beyond which I must pay outrageous fees.

Is this the way our joy was bound to go?
My great devotion taken not as praise,
But opportunity for easy dough,
Without regard for imminent malaise?

You brashly call your heartless act "Select"–
And thus select yourselves for my neglect."

The malign movement to remove male body-hair seems to be gaining in some quarters. I’ll never forgive circuit queens for starting this trend, and gay men have actually moved on. Go, bears! Straight guys, alas, always a lagging indicator, may now be experiencing a crest in the back-waxing movement. For the love of God, stop.

Finally, someone in authority has taken full responsibility for the breach of the 17th St. Floodwall that was primarily responsible for the destruction of downtown New Orleans. Harry Shearer explains.

"He tends to come from behind," – RNC chair, Ed Gillespie, on Senator Rick Santorum. As Malcontent comments, doesn’t Santorum think that should be illegal?

It’s a quite wonderful experience. Like speaking in a very large and empty desert; or giving a book-reading to a couple of stray passers-by. Bruce Bartlett reminisces on his month of complete obscurity in an email:

"I just completed a month as a ‘guest columnist’ for the New York Times. In reality, this meant that I wrote a blog for a month. Someone new will take over for me next week. It was an interesting experience for several reasons: No one knows that the Times has a blog because it is only available for TimesSelect subscribers.  Moreover, very few people even at the Times know that this feature exists. Just today I spoke with a New York Times reporter who knew nothing about it.

The Times clearly has no feel for the nature of blogging. Everything I wrote was, in effect, an op-ed article that went through the same editorial process as something that would appear in the print edition. All comments are also edited.  Thus the immediacy and back-and-forth between bloggers and commentators is largely lost. And because of the subscription wall problem, it was impossible for outside bloggers to link to what I wrote. A couple simply reprinted almost all of a couple of my posts so that people could see what I was saying.

Not surprisingly, almost all the comments came from the left. The experience reinforced my observation that hardly any conservatives ever read the Times.  Why newspaper with national circulation would seemingly cut itself off from at least 40 percent of the population has long been a mystery to me as a simple business matter. It is also a mystery to me why the Times chose a business model that is the opposite of the Wall Street Journal‚Äôs, when the Journal is the only paper to make money from its Internet edition. The Journal charges for its news and gives away its opinion. The Times still gives away its news and charges only for its opinion."

Christine Gorman, fellow-vassal of my corporate overlords, investigates a flurry of new data. More analysis here.

My second Just-For-You-Mickey item of the day. It always seemed to me that Brokeback Mountain’s commercial success or failure should take into account DVD sales. There are a large number of people in this country who are what I’d call "closet-tolerants". They don’t want to make a big splash about being fine with gay people, they don’t want to upset socially conservative or Christianist friends, or they don’t want to appear gay by going to a gay movie in public. So they may not show up in a movie’s box office take until the DVD comes out. And sure enough:

"The film, which earned three Oscars, sold a hefty 1.4 million DVD copies its first day in all retail stores on Monday, according to Universal Studios Home Entertainment, part of the media division of General Electric Co."

It’s been Number One on Amazon for a while now, as well. "Narnia" is at Number 9. A reader comments:

"My local Wal-mart has had a large Brokeback Mountain ‘sandwich board’ sign right at the front door for a couple of weeks now advertising the DVD release. This is in a "conservative" central Pennsyvania suburban store."

Some Christianists tried to prevent Wal-Mart from promoting the DVD. But who’s going to argue with 1.4 million in one day?

Every now and again, a blogger outdoes himself. Go read Mickey Kaus’s multiple successive posts on the immigration Senate debate. There is not a debater’s nook that doesn’t also have a cranny that turns out to have a nook. I’m not saying the tangled knots of logic and free association, of questioning and double-questioning, are bad things. Au contraire. I think Mickey helped pioneer blogging as a genre precisely by showing readers how the pundit-sausage is made. Or, in more elevated terms, how a person thinks out loud. I just wish he wouldn’t give others such a hard time for following his example.