We don’t usually get to read what people in the Ozarks are reading. When an editorial from
last week’s Arkansas Times came our way, we realized they’re reading what we’re reading. Have a
look: Scroll down to the second bullet or digest it here. It’s taken from an
interview with John Hess, author of “My
Times: A Memoir of Dissent”, who’s been out and about taking on the
Big Apple bible:
One thing editors of The New York Times and I keep trying to do is knock
down the notion that The Times is a liberal paper. But we go at it differently. They do it by stuff
like calling the Nazi groper Schwarzenegger a moderate Republican, by apologizing for implying
that George W. Bush might not be telling the truth. I’ve read the Times over 70 years — worked
there for 24 — and never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a
fare increase or a rent increase or a utility rate increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take
the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don’t get
me started on universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the Times is
liberal? For one thing, it depends on how you define liberal. Many good people define it as
favoring freedom of choice, protection of the environment, separation of church and state, an end
to capital punishment and our savage drug laws. Good causes — the Times says it’s for all of them.
Yet when push comes to shove, it backs candidates who take the other side. It’s allergic to
progressives — always has been. As I relate in ‘My Times,’ Wall Street bankrolled Adolph Ochs —
another groper, by the way — to keep the Times going as a conservative Democratic paper to beat
back the progressives of the day. It’s been the same ever since.
Ouch!
