In the words of Brian Lamb, the best human being on Earth, “Hey Ross Douthat, you seen this Wonkette thing here?” It’s a post about your New York Times “young lightning rod conservative” opinion column! It is not his debut — maybe second, or third, or fourth — but it’s the first one we’ve read so deal with it okay? It’s not bad! And because he is, again, a “youth,” he throws in many Internet hyperlinks to his sources. Clicky clicky hooray! So this post will be, unfortunately, a Civilized response to one of his points — that the grain of history favors the pro-life movement — which is less fun than just spitting blood at the computer screen, as we did for Bill Kristol. MORE »

The sad saga of America’s important newspapers has taken another downward turn, as it looks like the New York Times Company will maybe, probably, definitely shut down the Boston Globe, which it owns, for not making any money at all. A journalistic reporter at today’s White House press briefing asked Robert Gibbs about the Globe’s demise, and what it all means, and whether Barack Obama will maybe bailout all of these newspapers? With more unicorn money?? Gibbs had one of those “How should I put this…” reactions. MORE »

Just imagine our very private and humble Supreme Court justice sitting in his secluded shack in the woods, looking out the window, only to find some nut lurking behind two trees with a macro zoom lens. Next, the NYT will boil his bunny and put him down a well, for fattening purposes. [New York Times]

Back when newspapers still mattered, and our finest journalists wrote important articles regarding crucial current events and our national conversation in the nation’s better daily periodicals, America knew where to turn for the best columnist covering the subjects all citizens cared about most: Larry King and his USA Today column! But then, inexplicably, about 10 years ago, USA Today killed the finest punditry in U.S. History. The newspaper business has been in free fall ever since. MORE »

Today is “Oscar Sunday” for newspapers, Pulitzer Day! This is when the various important newspapers vie for the most important prizes in the fields of journalistic news reporting and commentary before returning to their offices to get laid off or fire-sold into slavery. MORE »

A terribly immature homophobe sent us this childish nonsense earlier about what he and his girlfriend (Princess Leia) were typing to each other on the Internet: “Me and my girlfriend have been discussing it intensely over gchat for the last 20 minutes and we’ve come to the conclusion that we’ve finally found definitive evidence that David Brooks is gay in today’s nytimes column.” Nonsense, David Brooks is white. It means nothing that his driver in Israel, a “young, hip-looking, alt-rocker dude,” protected him after their car raped another car from the rear. MORE »

Whoa hey what’s going on at the liberal New York Times? Let’s take a look at the actual news article, which maybe started that whole “Also.” business …. MORE »

Nevermind, context is overrated, so feel free interpret this nonsense from New York Times executive editor Bill Keller in whichever way feels most comfortable: “Commenting on the keep-the-Times alive movement, Keller said: ‘Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause.’” Ha ha ha. Hmm! No. [Calderone]

Just two weeks ago, fancy “old gray woman” the New York Times produced a comical document instructing its various blog editors to Avoid Snark Or Die. Really, they did this, at the NYT. “What should be avoided in all of them is any hint of racist, sexist or religious bias, or any suggestion of nasty, snide, sarcastic, or condescending tone — ’snark.’ If something could easily fit in a satirical Web site for young adults, it probably shouldn’t go into the news pages of nytimes.com.” Ahem. MORE »

How are the Washington journalists responding to the selection of new NYT op-ed columnist Ross Douthat? The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, for one, has mixed feelings: “Ross is a late-twenties-year-old public intellectual with the sensibility of a 60-year eminence grise, the range of a Hitchens, the pitch of a conservative AJP Taylor, the conscience of a Neibuhr and the intellectual honesty of his frequent sparring partner, Andrew Sullivan… Bill Kristol was just a mistake, but boy, talk about the rebound: I think Ross is the sharpest, most innovative heterodox thinker of his generation, left or right… As the chairman of the Atlantic would say, Ross is in his vertical hour. And now, one of the greatest minds in the country has one of the world’s best megaphones.” He concludes that Ross Douthat is best read while in the nude. [Marc Ambinder]

Not that Bill Kristol can ever be replaced, but the New York Times has finally found a new conservative friend for David Brooks on the op-ed page! As usual, the pick is a white male, but for the first time it’s a young and dashing white male (sorry, Tom Friedman!) So let the record show that after Wonkette wrote in a post about the Times on October 23, 2008, “Just hire Ross Douthat and get it over with,” the Newspaper of Record had no choice but to comply. Congratulations, Ross! [Sigh] Why did they have to pick such a non-clown? [NYT]