quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

in the guardian iphone app the icon for "life and style" is a stiletto heel, could have sworn it was the same in the times but actually there is no iphone style section at all!

well and also they are also placed in the style section on the assumption that women be shopping

xp

OK, i'm slow on the uptake but i just noticed laurel's channeling of Chuck D. re the "chosen frozen" (as did Dorian lol).

See, but those aren't "modern woman" articles. Those are articles about rape, stalking, domestic violence, same sex marriage. And when the NYT puts them in the freaking style section, it is saying a number of very troublesome things about the content:

1. Rape, stalking, domestic violence, sexual harassment, and same sex marriage (when it involves lesbians and children, anyway) are "women's issues" rather than only women should care about.
2. Women only read the Fashion and Style section, because the other sections are too complicated and make their ovaries hurt, and so see 1.

Oh??? I was going on an old church joke about how "Many are cold but few are frozen."

I kind of lost coherence at the end of 1. there, so let me try again:

are "women's issues" that only women would care about, rather than serious societal problems that involve and affect men and women.

god protect us from new york times articles about health reform!! srsly

yeah it'd be terrible to have more like these...

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/the-us-without-reform/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/business/economy/30leonhardt.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/health/23ucla.html?scp=9&sq=health%20insurance%20deaths&st=cse
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/health/policy/25bankruptcy.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/health/policy/11maine.html

i mean tracer i know it's important to you to pretend that this thread title is, like, actually the mission statement of the new york times. and have at it, there's plenty of dubious stuff in the paper every week. but for the past 7 years i've basically been paid to read the times every day, i read hundreds of articles a week, and your characterizations of the paper more broadly are just wrong. there's a lot of good reporting, a lot of good analysis, and even a lot of advocacy for things like health care reform (which apart from most of the op-ed columnists, david leonhardt has pretty much turned his weekly business-page column into a stump for), financial regulation, education funding, gay rights ... it is by no means a perfect or always good paper, but it does a lot of serious work on serious issues and largely from a liberal perspective. yeah there's articles about rich people, because frankly that's a key part of the demographic (the luxury watches and jewelry ads, or the ones that remain, are not aimed at you and me), and the style sections are often ridiculous -- plenty of people who write and edit there think the same thing. they're ripe for lampooning and deserve it. but, you know, babies and bathwater. it might be damning with faint praise to say that there are very few national media outlets that do a better job of seriously covering social and economic issues than the times, but it's also true.

xposts:

and ok while i was getting all save-a-sulzberger, max et al made the good points that these ridiculous stories get linked and read and emailed like crazy. which is not in itself a reason to do them ... but it's obviously not a reason not to.

i feel kind of like a tool posting in the "ha ha ny times" spirit of the thread after that, but laurel, i would not actually be too surprised to see your satirical working-mother-hiring-unauthorized-immigrant-nanny article published. either in the ny times or salon.

nah i don't mean to get pissy about the thread, i like this thread, i think it's funny. it's just, this place has been my job, and for all the obvious problems and totally justified criticisms, there's also a lot of good work done here. and not to get to righteous about it (because i'm a tiny cog at a desk job), but we've had reporters held hostage in iraq and afghanistan, another who got beat up by what was probably pakistani secret services, another writing some of the gutsiest stuff out of chechnya about kadyrov, an iranian reporter who reported from tehran for years before finally fleeing last fall after receiving credible death threats. and the paper does a lot of issues reporting that goes beyond political horse-race stuff (tho there's also plenty of that, and it's not my favorite thing). so. i get a little prickly at the idea that the whole thing is a puff pastry for hoity-toits.

anyway, i'm only here two more weeks, so my defensiveness will ebb soon enough. meantimes, on with the snark!

too righteous about it, gah. should not have typos in a post about my editing gig...

you're right of course that there is very interesting info that times reporters dig up. and some of them are a dab hand at personalizing what they see as the issues. they are among the best and brightest.

however the leonhardt piece you cite is a great example of what drives me absolutely insane about the times. it seems to suggest that the main - maybe the only - reason premiums are high is that hospitals and doctors offer superfluous care. this is untrue. the reason premiums are high is that the public is being systematically looted by insurance companies. but where in the articles that you link - any of them - is this mentioned? this is the issue. the main issue. if we were not being looted to the tune of double - sometimes triple - what other countries pay for their health care, there would not be a crisis and there would be enough money to subsidize those who can't afford their own coverage.

of course not EVERY article has to be about that. and the ones you cite are well researched and very good at the facets they cover. but each one covers, say, the elephant's knee, or one side of its tail.

i'll admit i have a hard time being fair with the times. this may sound melodramatic, but i just haven't trusted them since the iraq war. it's probably similar to how labour voters in the uk feel about tony blair and gordon brown. no matter how many great, well-researched proposals they come up with, they just cannot forget the lies.

and just an addendum, now that i've mentioned britain. i never noticed this until i moved here, but there is something - and this is very hard to describe - something just a little acquiescent about normal american newspaper writing (for which the times bears the standard). in britain i think people who work at newspapers see themselves as legitimate agents in the field of play - actors in public life whose stories can actually affect reality. in the u.s. there is instead an ideology of non-intrusion, of absolute neutrality, which of course leads to the familiar problem of "one one hand, on the other hand" false equivalences but also i think more insidiously leads to reporters and editors taking a more stenographic role. "here is what was said."

for this guy in the f/o, this thread is my nyt style section

however the leonhardt piece you cite is a great example of what drives me absolutely insane about the times. it seems to suggest that the main - maybe the only - reason premiums are high is that hospitals and doctors offer superfluous care. this is untrue. the reason premiums are high is that the public is being systematically looted by insurance companies. but where in the articles that you link - any of them - is this mentioned? this is the issue. the main issue. if we were not being looted to the tune of double - sometimes triple - what other countries pay for their health care, there would not be a crisis and there would be enough money to subsidize those who can't afford their own coverage.

i want to say that youre wrong but i cant even figure out what youre thinking here tracer! what do you mean by "looted"?

tracer, according to stuff i've seen, in dollar terms there is quite a bit more "wasted" money due to overpriced or unnecessary care than there is due to unnecessary administrative (insurance) expense. i understand the latter to be your "looting." i'll try to find the study.

youre talking about two different issues in that passage anyway--why premiums are high and why health care costs are high

fwiw-

http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/healthcare/slideshow/interactive.asp

i think i was looking at the information under the "cost discrepancies" tab. and you have to buy the premise of the analysis, which benchmarks health care costs as proportions of gnp.

heres yglesias reading of that-

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/10/excess-spending-in-us-health-care.php

it seems to suggest that the main - maybe the only - reason premiums are high is that hospitals and doctors offer superfluous care. this is untrue. the reason premiums are high is that the public is being systematically looted by insurance companies.

the article isnt abt premiums its abt the cost of health care itself - money actually spent by hospitals and doctors.

if we were not being looted to the tune of double - sometimes triple - what other countries pay for their health care, there would not be a crisis and there would be enough money to subsidize those who can't afford their own coverage.

arent a lot of countries w/socialized medicine struggling w/ballooning costs though? again you seem to be confusing what the u.s. pays for health care and what we spend on health care - this article is abt ways of controlling the latter. again this is just as much a concern for state-run insurers as it is in the u.s.

put another way--insurance companies, evil tho they are, arent the ones looting us to the tune of double - sometimes triple - what other countries pay for health care... doctors are

fuckin h8 doctors

and just an addendum, now that i've mentioned britain. i never noticed this until i moved here, but there is something - and this is very hard to describe - something just a little acquiescent about normal american newspaper writing (for which the times bears the standard). in britain i think people who work at newspapers see themselves as legitimate agents in the field of play - actors in public life whose stories can actually affect reality. in the u.s. there is instead an ideology of non-intrusion, of absolute neutrality, which of course leads to the familiar problem of "one one hand, on the other hand" false equivalences but also i think more insidiously leads to reporters and editors taking a more stenographic role. "here is what was said."

― Tracer Hand, Saturday, January 23, 2010 11:31 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

american journalese is not to my taste because i've been brought up on the somewhat spicier fare we get here, but the british press has its own problems. the hacks certainly *do* see themselves as actors on the field of play, but how legitimate that is -- how legitimate, in other words, is the influence of murdoch or lord rothermere in public life -- is open to question. (in britain the bbc has this problem of faux-neutrality, written into its charter.)

on the question whether US healthcare purchasers are being looted, and are paying two-three times more than other countries, the second point sounds very unlikely, but it is hard to say whether you're comparing like-for-like. in the UK taxpayers are certainly ripped off: the NHS is an ever-expanding, hugely wasteful bureaucracy, famously bad at negotiating deals and overpaying for drugs. (and in terms of like-for-like comparisons, there are all sorts of problems around which drugs the NHS is willing to pay for.) it grossly overpays GPs, and it certainly overpaid me, an 'umble bureaucrat, to do very little when i was there.

wouldn't want to be rid of it, and obviously it doesn't run death panels, but it's best to be honest. "looting" is a nice yellow-press term though.

do you think the two aren't related? leonhardt seems to think so. the next-to-last sentence of his article:

But the alternative to those decisions is the system we have now — one that features unacceptably spotty care, a Medicare program on the path to insolvency and insurance premiums high enough to eat up workers’ pay increases.

it seems pretty clear that he judges waste and inefficiency in the actual provisioning of care as the cause of high premiums.

anyway this is a massive derail and i don't want to be too hard on leonhardt who i think in general has done a great job on his assignments. but it's a sign of how utterly our newspapers have failed us that otherwise reasonable people are letting insurance companies off the hook for the high cost of premiums!

history mayne - so the NHS massively overpays, has a giant bureaucracy... and still costs about half (per person) that the u.s. "system" does

history mayne - so the NHS massively overpays, has a giant bureaucracy... and still costs about half (per person) that the u.s. "system" does

"it is hard to say whether you're comparing like-for-like"

think you get higher level of service, cooler drugs, clean and non-lethal hospitals, etc., in the US? could be wrong.

"letting insurance companies off the hook"!

tracer youre taking leonhardt to task for not indicting a part of the system that isnt even within the scope of his article!

but it's a sign of how utterly our newspapers have failed us that otherwise reasonable people are letting insurance companies off the hook for the high cost of premiums!

dude! hes not really letting them off the hook - the article isn't abt premiums - saying that ballooning costs willl increase premiums =! saying the only reason premiums are high is because of costs!

max - i'm taking the NEW YORK TIMES to task for not indicting the main villain of runaway insurance costs in ANY of its articles

yeah i think the point is that insurance companies are NOT the "main villain" of runaway insurance costs!

"runaway health care costs" are the "main villain" of "runaway insurance costs"

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/rr222/Chass3ur/Runaways1976.jpg

Insurance companies sure have a bad reputation.

if we could tie insurance premiums to greenpoint hipsters we might have something

well i just linked 5 recent things i found on two-minute search. point is that the times has written a lot about health care, from a lot of different angles. but if you want indictment of insurance companies, there is that, too.

and i agree about the differences between american and u.k. journalistic style, and yeah i think there are pluses and minuses both ways. i prefer a somewhat more pointed, freewheeling approach myself, which is one reason i'm returning to the ever-dwindling field of alt-weeklies. when i first started writing for an alt-weekly after leaving a daily paper, it was liberating in a lot of ways. but the discipline of the daily just-the-facts writing and reporting was good for me too.

and on the iraq war, there was lots of bad stuff done, with judy miller as the most egregious but not only culprit. (btw her copy always needed such heavy revision that it looked like a sea of edit trace by the time it got anywhere close to publication.) the one thing i do try to point out is that the editorial page (headed at the time by gail collins, fwiw) was always against it, which i think made it the highest-profile anti-war platform in the country.

that's true. and I guess that means we have collins to thank for krugman.

Evan, you bring up my other huge beef with the NYT, which their habit of publishing just about any story they deem as being related to "women's issues" in the style section, regardless of the actual content.

― she is writing about love (Jenny), Saturday, January 23, 2010 1:05 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

wow - there was a pretty interesting article about working wives and its effect on divorce rates, and I was scratching my head as to why it was in the style section, then I remembered this post.

This is not from the Times... but it feels at home here.

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/

The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you.

rong

it's certainly rite for some people I know

and I mean I guess their personalities/upbringings are to blame for most of it, but going to certain 4 year institutions def doesn't help

i remember some discussion of that article when it came out, either on ilx or elsewhere. anyway, i'm sure there's truth to what he's saying, but he's also tarring an awful lot of other people with his own brush. i know ivy league grads who are perfectly comfortable talking to plumbers or waitresses or whatever. but if his central point is that elite institutions help foster elitism, well NO KIDDING.

but i mean, my dad went to stanford and i guarantee you he'd rather talk to a plumber than another standford grad.

enh there are probably like a dozen things wrong with that essay including as tipsy points out lots of ivey grads can talk to plumbers but it kinda feels generally true 2 me like:

Because students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed.

the school i went to for undergrad wasnt an ivey but its probably comparable and this was and kinda is still a big problem for me and a lot of the things he says abt the interior life of a student at yale rung v true to my xp

I think the article doesn't spend enough time talking about the social background of the kids at these schools...I mean my gf went to Columbia but grew up in a middle class FL suburb. most of her classmates were prep school kids + rich NYers who went to the same high schools - even if they overlap, there is a difference between the academic 'elite' and the social 'elite'.

these people would have trouble talking to plumbers not because they took too many great college classes, but because they honestly think they're better than plumbers (which can be a side-effect of going to some of these schools, but which a lot of these people would have thought regardless.)

i have trouble talking to plumbers because i am mute

I have trouble talking to plumbers because it means I'm about to have to write a big check.

i have trouble talking to plumbers because i am from the future where all of our plumbers are robots

I have trouble talking to plumbers because I am an elitist prick.

Most people who have trouble talking to plumbers really only have trouble talking about plumbing.

Best friend was raised by nonconformists and now finds herself in the middle of an entitled upper middle class life, having to manage relationships with people who are working for her in the home. The reason she has difficulty is because she can't make up her mind to treat them like friends or like employees; when she was at work she did not have problems with how things ran.

http://herobuilders.com/images/1%20Joe%20The%20Plumber%20web%20(1).jpg

won't anyone talk to me?
http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/famecrawler/2008/10/08-15/joe-the-plumber.jpg