For The New Emperors

National Review ^ | Kevin Williamson

[OddLane]

here’s an old joke about what the newspaper you read — remember reading newspapers? — said about you: The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country, the New York Times is read by the people who think they run the country, the Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country, the Boston Globe is read by people whose grandparents used to do a damned fine job of running the country, the San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure whether there is a country or if anybody’s running it, and the Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country. But running the country is a modest ambition — what do you read if you want to be one of the people who run the world?

The answer, for many years, was The Economist. It was what you read, and where you read it was the airport. Nobody has ever read a copy of The Economist cover-to-cover anywhere but an airport.