MUCH PRAISE FOR A MUST-READ
Today I’d like to steer you to an invaluable article on the front page of the yesterday’s New York Times. It’s a lengthy and thoughtful piece on the precarious state of our “Disunited States,” as well as a perfect background prep for next week’s impeachment trial (yes, another one) of Donald J. Trump.
Trump in his term’s early years liked to call it “the failing New York Times.” Not to be. It turned out that it was Trump who failed and the world’s greatest newspaper has survived to chronicle his brief and destructive days on the world’s stage.
Some of you might question my credentials in calling the “Gray Lady” the world’s best newspaper. In my defense, I would cite my whole adult life spent in the field of journalism, beginning as graduate student at UCLA where I took my M.A. in the subject; then I spent 18 years as a magazine editor, followed by six years as a freelance writer, then finally entering academia, where I taught the subject at the university level (CSUN, UCLA, CSULB) for 18 years.
While a student at UCLA I was told that The New York Times was “the newspaper of record.” That seemed like a tall order to me—to print daily “all the news that was fit to print,” the paper’s time-worn motto. Yes there are other fine newspapers…The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, The Kansas City Star, The Los Angeles Times (particularly when Otis Chandler was at the helm). But year in, year out, it is New York’s Gray Lady that comes closest to being a reliable “newspaper of record.”
But back to yesterday’s front-page, in-depth summation of our January 6 insurrection, the latest crisis that threatens to dissolve our union into several fractious culture blocs. Do try to read it if you want an insightful narrative into what has been happening out of sight, building up to and including January 6: “77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election.”