1115.org

(1)
You don’t know it yet, but you’re witnessing the birth of what will grow into a hallowed 1115 tradition. (I bring it up only so that you can jot down somewhere the exact time you started to read this post, where you were and what you were wearing. Maybe even what you were doing, and to whom. Or, in reverse, who was doing what to you. Unless it was George Bush or the NYT, it which case there’s no point bothering. After all, you’re not going to put down “I was breathing” either, are you?)

It’s funny how The New York Times gets away with publishing something like the Michael Gordon Iran-in-Iraq piece — on the front page, no less — with no real lasting consequences.

They attract some snarky comments for a few days. Then everyone packs up and goes home. And goes back to taking the stuff they publish seriously again.

As if it were only a one-time aberration, easily forgiven and forgotten. As if they aren’t deeply culpable for doggedly selling America on the Bush regime’s entirely fabricated arguments for invading Iraq.

How can we have forgotten, let alone forgiven them for, their betrayal of the public trust that is reposed in the media in general, and allegedly venerable media institutions, in particular? After the very public soul-searching the NYT editors indulged in about their abdication of a meaningful oversight role with respect to media whores like Judith Miller, how dare the NYT now pull exactly the same stunt again on the American public?

And the answer, of course, is the perfectly simple, perfectly obvious one: because we’re willing to take it. Over and over again. We know we’re never going to leave them. There is no other word for it than co-dependency.

Yesterday, I vented my feelings on the subject by getting snarky about the credibility of their “al Qaeda rides again” story. But I’m damned if I’m going to just quietly go back to trusting and believing again.

So I’m proud to launch today what will no doubt be an unending series. Every time the NYT tries to take a whiz down our throats, you’ll see this headline again. So just pull up a seat, and watch the numbers increase. If we get up to about a hundred, and this title starts to get a bit old, maybe we’ll switch to something else. Like maybe: “All The News That’s Shit To Print”.

(2)
Just to show what a great gal I am, and how there’s nothing personal about any of this, I’ll start by giving them a free ride. This post will be a two-fer, but we’ll still call it just “part 1” instead of “parts 1 and 2”.

First up: For some reason, Bag News Notes is profoundly skeptical of the NYT’s “miracle announcement that, suddenly, based on newly discovered data, the Sunnis are as rich in oil as the Kurds and the Shiites!”

Let’s not forget to give credit where credit is due. This story was written by (or at least ascribed to) James Glanz.

(3)
Then we have Digby, making a bit of a hullabaloo about the NYT’s sudden epiphany that there was indeed some kind of vast right-wing conspiracy against the Clintons in the 90s:

The NY Times has apparently had some kind of revelation about the fact that the Whitewater and subsequent scandals were ginned up by rich rightwing character assassins.

Who could have guessed at the time? Certainly not the NYT. And somehow, busy no doubt with other more important stories (Who knows? Diaper-clad astronauts? Or Anna Nicole Smith–demise, child’s paternity, child custody battle, body custody battle, hearings to cover all of the above, etc.?), the NYT has now managed to completely forget its own role as uncritical enabler of that right-wing conspiracy:

How odd it is that (they) fail to mention their own complicity in that ongoing effort. It’s been well over a decade now; you’d think they could have found a paragraph or two to explain why they reported these hoaxes and smear jobs with all the incredulity of a three year old sitting on a mall Santa’s lap.