More Space Wasted in the Times

Even people who cling to the anachronistic absurdity that life's ultimate reward is the opportunity to spend an entire Sunday with the The New York Times must have ideas on which editorial staff members ought to be sacrificed when the layoffs at The New York Times Co. are announced. Two top candidates that many Times readers, at least in Manhattan, would like to see get the boot are nominal conservative op-ed columnist David Brooks (which would be fine by me, so long as burnout Hedda Dowd also goes) and sometime libertarian John Tierney. The latter is the best the impoverished opinion page has to offer, but really there's no chance of any of the opinion gang burning at the belt-tightening stake, no matter their high salaries.

(By the way, it'd be interesting to know if Herbert, the lone black op-ed columnist, earns as much as the others. I'm not pulling a Bill Bennett here-and yes, the gambler's black baby abortion comments last week were gleefully distorted by the liberal media-but if Herbert's compensated at a lower level than, say, Krugman, what does that say about race and the Times?)

Since it's unlikely that any of the most visible Times writers will be dispatched, unless through buyouts (Murray Chass, anyone?), I'm taking a different tack. No matter how pleasing it'd be to see Richard Berke, Elisabeth Bumiller, Nicholas Confessore, David Kirkpatrick, Adam Nagourney, Robin Toner, Jon Pareles, A.O. Scott or Adam Liptak sent scurrying to the help-wanted offices of other newspapers, that's not going to happen. It'll be the anonymous (to the public) who'll receive the farewell slices of cake and testimonials from the permanently anguished executive editor Bill Keller.

So here's a novel idea. What about the former English majors on the editorial page who contribute (at both the New York and Boston properties) the most inane musings on the changing of seasons and other such ephemera-and that's far too generous a word-who get the boot?

Here's a Times edit from Sept. 22: "On some fundamental level, the coming of autumn, which begins early this evening [thanks for the tip], Eastern time, signals a shift in mood that is almost too deep to explain. [Pardon me, but Northeasterners, who've experienced four seasons all their lives, don't really need these pretentious words from a man or woman who read the CliffsNotes on Bleak House many years ago.] ? There has always been a ritual lament for summer's passing, thanks to our ancestral memory of winter's harshness, that starving season. But in our own time we can afford a ritual celebration of autumn's coming. Fall may be an astronomical fact, a calendrical convention, but the beginning of a season as full of ripeness as this one also offers the possibility of renewal, even in a time of harvest. The air-conditioners all across the city can finally stop growling. There are cool nights and pleasant days ahead."

That's horrendous prose. Even-and I sincerely doubt it-if the "pleasant days ahead" was a not-so-oblique reference to President Bush's anticipated freefall in the months ahead, it's too air-headed to comprehend.

The preceding was followed on Oct. 1 at the company's Boston Globe, with an editorial called "Summer's fall," that contained this immortal passage, "[Summer and autumn are] like old friends taking a walk in the park. They sit and talk and nap together in the sun. They know where they're going and see no reason why they shouldn't enjoy an easy ramble toward winter. They move like leaves dropping lazily on the lawn."

Maybe when December arrives, the Globe's pals Summer and Autumn can still hang out, take in an indie film, chat about the latest debate on The Huffington Post, sup at some marvelous ethnic restaurant while feeling guilty about the indentured illegals working the kitchen, wonder why they didn't get any head in middle school or agree that football has become just too violent to even watch.

On Oct. 3, another Globe editorial, "Living dangerously," spells out the perils of living in areas of the country that are susceptible to natural disasters, as if such occurrences only started this year. While wondering why Americans choose to reside where they do, the writer says, "The extremes of nature can seem almost biblical now, as people flee the firestorms in the West and face the cleanup after hurricane floods in the South. The devastation on two coasts is horrific, and most Americans can empathize with the fear and despair of human beings forced to evacuate their homes, not knowing what they will find when they return? The blindness is evident on the East Coast too, where eroding cliffs foretell the inevitability of Cape Cod mansions being washed into the Atlantic. But danger seems to be part of the romance of living near the sea."

I thought CNN's Anderson Cooper already covered this subject.

Look, I find it a bit strange that people in Malibu, for example, continue to build houses there when fires, earthquakes and mudslides, with predictable frequency, cause all sorts of destruction. Driving along the Pacific Coast Highway you can still see the scorched hills from the flames that paralyzed the region more than a decade ago. But, just as New Yorkers remain in the face of terrorism, Floridians cope with violent hurricanes and Midwesterners chance tornadoes, Americans make their own decisions on where to live, and I doubt that the "romance" of possible danger is part of the calculus. It's about family roots, tradition, ocean or mountain views or simply where one finds employment.

Not that the sports departments at both the Times and Globe couldn't use a tummy tuck. The Times' William Rhoden, for instance, wrote a fairly intelligent column on Sept. 28 about the plight of the Baltimore Orioles, a once-proud franchise that's been laid low by its greedy owner Peter Angelos, a blowhard who made his fortune as a trial lawyer.

Rhoden correctly pointed out that the O's Camden Yards became, in the last weeks of the season, a de facto home park for both the Yanks and Red Sox. I was at a Sept. 25 Boston drubbing of the Orioles and though the stadium was sold out, the vast majority fans were rooting for the visiting team. The cheering grew so loud for David Ortiz and co. that after the fifth inning an understandably pissed-off O's employee replayed on the video scoreboard Bucky Dent's legendary homer at Fenway Park back in '78.

But Rhoden, like many Times writers (particularly on the "culture" pages), felt compelled to gratuitously interject local politics in a story ostensibly about baseball. He pointed out that Angelos, a staunch Democrat, was nonetheless "using his ballpark as a launching pad for Maryland's gubernatorial race."

This is misleading, even if most Times readers have no interest in next year's elections in Maryland. Rhoden suggested that Angelos would cross party lines because the incumbent governor, Republican Bob Ehrlich, helped him fight (barely) the Expos relocating to Washington, while Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, Ehrlich's chief competitor, wasn't so willing to stand tall for the O's.

Yet when the election rolls around, you can be sure that Angelos, as surely as he'll refuse to field a competitive team in '06, will back the Democrat. That's the way politics works in Maryland, and most states, and Rhoden marred an otherwise decent piece by straying beyond the foul lines.

-October 3