QUESTION: How do stories end up in the New York Times?

ANSWER: They don't. Stories never end up in the New York Times, that's where they start.

If the New York Times collapsed, powerful interests would lose a valuable tool for manipulating the public memes. It would, however, also have other serious (unknowable) repercussions because society would lose a major pillar of the public trust. Trustworthiness notwithstanding, society might need these central culture hubs to self-orient and maintain a baseline for judgment or legitimation.

If it goes, it will be one of the last links to the great, universal levers of power from the gilded-age that dominate our recent history. This is undeniably the paper that has launched a thousand tumults across the globe. The grey lady whispers her dirty secrets and foreign governments fall. "This man's a communist." "That woman is corrupt." "Those tubes are nuclear." or "That cloud is mushroom."

She is the trophy wife of power. Trained to speak, only when spoken to.

Rapport

Half the understanding in the world is misunderstanding.


-- Mobile and Free

Greenspan and herpes

Geenspan says that extending bush tax cuts is a bad idea. Too bad he couldn't figure that out ten years ago.

That's how you get rid of herpes.

How you get rid of herpes is you figure out it's a bad idea BEFORE you get you get fucked.


-- Mobile and Free