Wednesday November 21, 2007

CONTEXTUAL READING. Ed Driscoll thinks you should stop reading the New York Times, but notes that he has just linked to two Times stories. Cognition doesn't get much more dissonant than that, even among fierce opponents of Blue Statism who nonetheless spend all their time in the bluest territories.

I read the New York Post most every day, largely because it is cheap and easy to read even before coffee. I would find it insulting to be told that I should give it up because I am bound to encounter writing in it with which I am inclined to disagree. That is all of its charm.

Driscoll quotes in defense of Times avoidance Rush Limbaugh, who says, "I found myself questioning the accuracy of the paper based on my own knowledge. I too often wondered, ‘Hmmm—is that true?’” Fancy being turned off by that! Just today I read the Post TV critic Linda Stasi in high dudgeon:

Speaking of changing the face of late-night TV and black men, in a move worthy of Michael Richards, in another skit, [Frank] Caliendo channels Charles Barkley but does so without changing his skin color or donning a wig! Every other character wears wigs and makeup. Caliendo has said on radio that TV stations freak out when they see a white man in black face. Talk about racist! Would they expect Eddie Murphy to play a white guy without changing his skin color? But here we've got poor Caliendo doing an exact impression of Barkley, but sitting there in his big, pasty face and beige hair. It's ludicrous and the worst type of reverse racism: politically correct racism!

Stasi's bizarre outrage over a lack of blackface ("worthy of Michael Richards"!) brightened my day, not because I agreed with it, but because it reminded me of the mad variety of human existence. That Stasi was declaiming it, not from a ward for the mentally ill, but in the pages of a popular newspaper, merely sweetened the jest.

You miss a lot by only reading things with which you may expect to agree.