Posted on 08/12/2002 3:53:02 PM PDT by Davis
In all the years since its purchase by the adventurous Adolph Ochs right down to the present day under the superfluous Pinch Sulzberger, the New York Times has never been noted for levity. Quite the contrary, its rise to preeminence as the Newspaper of Record, the Gray Lady of West 43rd Street, was fueled by gravity. Austere, somber, exhibiting, in the Master's phrase, "a dearth of mirth," nary a jape or jest sullied her grim visage. Even the sports columns are overwhelmingly solemn. (I exempt from the annals of gloom Al Hirschfeld's brilliant theater caricatures abounding in wit and charming us with hidden Ninas.)
Occasionally, though, unintended humor cracked the crust and engendered gales of laughter. I call to mind Walter Duranty's dispatches from Stalin's Soviet Union poopooing rumors of famine in Ukraine; Sidney Schanberg's reports of the Tet offensive illuminated by his expectation that a time of peace and prosperity would be ushered in by an avuncular Pol Pot heading up the kindly Khmer Rouge; and all of Anna Quindlen's columns. ...More
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