Why One Reads the NY Times

"It was as if they had been hurled into another galaxy, a stubbled land of raccoon woods and Andy Griffith towns, Indian smoke shops and creased-faced cowboys in pickup trucks."

SJ feels protective about the New York Times--fondly known as NYT--in these days of partisan polarization. For newspapers are a prime source of fuel for the professional that Walter Benjamin identified as le flaneur, whose art is closely allied, if not the same as, the snap judgment. As the flaneur walks the street of the city, SJ treads the paths of newsprint, looking for a shock to our sensibility. And the NYT is the best newspaper for this practice, still full of nooks and crannies of reportage, rather than strokings for partisan sensibility. As much as SJ practices snark, we are not in the business of scoring points for one side or the other. And in the process of scoping targets, we of course find ourselves also distracted by the sometimes lyric digressions that the NYT allows its reporters, as in this long article about the New Orleans evacuees:

"If the evacuees had come from any other city in the country, it might not have mattered so much. But food became the topic of every day's conversation and the cause of many rolled eyes. The blander the food got, the fewer people showed up and the less they ate, and the more disillusioned the staff got."

All the news that fits is a grand idea, but SJ applauds the NYT's ability to find items that don't fit, in a time when nothing but fitting in, seemingly, counts.