Miscellaneous Media Musings

P.J. O'Rourke

Writing for The Weekly Standard, P.J. O'Rourke has a tremendous take-down of The New York Times and its breathless coverage of the Arizona massacre. It is a humorous and insightful analysis of how selective use of language can be employed to create an impression in readers.

He concludes that the Times has become the equivalent of your crazy old aunt whom you tolerated in your attic but now must move to the nursing home on Staten Island:

But liberalism, as personified by  the New York Times, became a dotty old aunt sometime during the Johnson administration. She’s provincial, eccentric, and holds dull, peculiar views about the world. Still, she has our fond regard, and we visit her regularly in her nursing home otherwise known as Arts and Leisure and the Book Review. Or we did until Sunday, January 9, when she began spouting obscenities and exposing herself.

Mercifully, P.J. focuses on news coverage only and spares us an examination of a unfortunate blog post and an over-the-top column by Paul Krugman in which he coined the term "eliminationist rhetoric" and explicitly blamed the right for the tragedy.

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The Lakeville Journal has published a front-page article in its Jan. 13 edition about Scott and Roxanne Bok preserving 100 acres through a conservation easement along the Housatonic River at Twin Lakes Farm in eastern Salisbury.

I've already heard whispers that the very positive piece is payback for the tumult caused by the snarky food review in the LJ and the subsequent closing of Bok-owned White Hart Inn last year.

I have no idea if such is the case. It is odd, however, that I could not locate the Bok preservation story on tcextra.com, the LJ's website. The letters-to-the-editor page should be lively next week.