Beyond parody at the Times

The New Criterion ^ | 10/2005 | Roger Kimball

[finnman69]

It's rare to read such an eloquent and thorough verbal dismantling of the puffed up NY Slimes.

[roses of sharon]

True, but I would rather call them bathhouse boys and be done with it.

[Enchante]

I don't doubt that this statement (below) from the reviewer is accurate regarding the depraved self-destruction of "American liberalism" in the past 30+ years, but the following is hardly any sort of positive recommendation for any self-respecting piece of 'art' that pretends to be more than the latest foolish DNC talking points:

"But what is truly striking about the piece is that the politics Mr. Jones has in the past fought so fiercely to express sit squarely in the mainstream of American liberalism. “Blind Date” is in many ways the sort of composition that might have sprung from the forces of the Democratic National Committee were they inclined to think in pas de deux and counterpoint. Had Mr. Jones wanted a more literal title, he might have considered “Dancing for Howard Dean.”

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

When a great newspaper’s front page is indistinguishable from its editorial page, and its editorial page is indistinguishable from a transcript of a Democratic Party rally, journalistic decay is a certainty.

[Carry_Okie]

And who would deny the label “poststructuralist” to his reasoning: “‘Swan Lake,’ he enjoys pointing out, was conceived to delight the aristocracy.” Oh, we see: The aristocracy, i.e., the bad guys.

Ironic, isn't it, that the aristocracy in this country, those who views Mr. Jones' work, is uniformly of his own political bent?

[JAWs]

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar...

Sorry... couldn't resist the Python reference.

[ClearCase_guy]

I didn't catch the Dorothy Parker/Marie of Roumania reference, so I looked it up. It's a reference to those who willfully delude themselves:

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

[okie01]

It may well place him squarely in the mainstream of the Michael Moore, Howard Dean, Democracy Now crowd. That, thank heavens, is a far cry from the “the mainstream of American liberalism.” Surely there are editors left at the Times who know this?

No, Mr. Kimball, I'm afraid there aren't.

The New York Times is too deep into moonbatism to recognize, much less represent, the "mainstream of American liberalism".

[okie01]

Dorothy Parker had something to say.

Bill T. Jones is a liberal loon.

One is cultured, the other merely political.

[Cicero]

I had the pleasure of having dinner with Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball several times back in the early 90s.

Hilton Kramer was brilliant and I had the impression that although Roger Kimball was his assistant, and tended to act the role of Kramer's straight man, possibly he was even more brilliant. I don't mean to knock Kramer when I say so, simply to praise Kimball.

Kramer left the New York Times at the moment they started going overboard for pop art, and wisely so. What Kimball says here is dismally true: the New York Times's culture section is just as bad, if not worse, than its editorial pages or its front page. Pinch Sulzberger is not only a lunatic leftist; he's a small-minded leftist with very few ideas and a complete lack of artistic taste or moral seriousness. The newspaper he has taken down into the gutter reflects it.

[gcruse]

I thought my vocabulary was sufficient for this sort of thing. Wrong. There're words in there I've not seen before.

[StAnDeliver]

"It’s a mug’s game, laughable in one sense but also a sad, weary-making, and depressing portent."

Only if you're a Lib, Roger. Otherwise, it's time to open another vintage bottle of Schadenfraude!

[jocon307]

"Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar..."

Who could think you under the table....

(bump for a later read)

[Louis Foxwell]

Cultural demise is not an event. It is a process.

That today's egregious flatulence is smellier than the day before is certain to be true; and tomorrow will be worse.

There are no standards to decadence, only the breathless plummet into oblivion.

[Oberon]

ping for later.

[SAJ]

An arguable point about Parker, when one considers that her three most enduringly memorable quotes are:

'Men never make passes at girls who wear glasses'

'I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini' (she was an unfortunately extreme alcoholic)

'Oh, G-d, what fresh hell is this?' (remarked to friends present, when her doorbell rang).

It's worth noting, too, that her heyday in the famed (I prefer 'infamous', btw) Algonquin Club was marked by the bulk of the members being, generally, avowed Marxists.

[okie01]

You left off two of my favorites...

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

Still, I'll take Dorothy Parker over Mo Dowd. Every time.

[Illuminatas]

And Lichtenstein was a beery swine,
Who was very rarely stable.

Ohhhh, there's nothin Neitzche couldnt teach ya
bout the raisin of the wrist.

Socretes himself was permanently pissed.....

[Billthedrill]

There's nothing Nietszche couldn't teach ya 'bout the raisin' of the wrist,
Socrates himself was per-man-en-tly pissed...

God love 'em. If it weren't for pretentious Manhattanites the art world would have to exist on merit.

It'd starve.

[SAJ]

Yep, good ones!

Comparing Parker, no matter her personal shortcomings, to Dowd must be something along the lines of comparing Shakespeare to Lillian Hellmann. Parker did have an excellent command of the language, and was not infrequently very witty, and had a good ear for an aphorism. Dowd seems unable to push a noun against a verb except to express resentment about something, anything.