6 Underreported Reasons Why The NY Times Totally Sucks
Contrary to reports that they're failing because they're being mean to the president, The New York Times remains a successful institution that is responsible for some of the finest reporting on the planet. But we have good news, Mr. President -- there are actually several reasons to harbor a strong dislike for the Gray Lady, regardless of your political affiliation. Because once you leave the NYT's front-page reporting behind and venture into the back pages of style and culture populated by the musings of the trendsetting elite, the paper becomes a Greatest Hits compilation of the most insufferable douchenozzles to have ever lived.
A Wedding Section Written Exclusively For The Benefit Of Awful People
To make it into the NYT's wedding section, either you or your spouse (or both of you, ideally) had better be a fashion designer, a ballerina, or an actual Marquise. These pages are dripping with stories of the wealthiest, most privileged people in the world wooing each other, and every other word of it is a grievance etched on the tombstone of a French king. Consider this likely pair:
Oh, lovely. We're sure Benjamin appreciated having a custom Seize sur Vingt tuxedo when he was debating which of his nostrils to pick for dinner. Other details of this orgy included how the couple first bonded on a trip to Ibiza with 25 of their closest friends, how their wedding guests included Paris Hilton and Adrien Brody, and how they once got into a minor disagreement over where to put a Gerard van den Berg chair, a trendy La-Z Boy that typically sells for thousands of dollars.
Look, wealthy people have every right to throw fancy weddings. But when you get the newspaper to rub our faces in it like this, you inch just that little bit closer to becoming the villains in a young adult dystopia.
But don't worry -- their extreme wealth hasn't caused them to forget how to treat working-class life like a novelty:
Ugh. How is Waffle House the least awful part of that?
Sometimes, the opulence comes with a delicious hint of scandal:
Is ... is the writer implying they hooked up in the pre-K classroom?
Would you believe this paean to a love that triumphed in the face of other spouses somehow suffered a backlash? Look, relationships are tough, and sometimes divorce happens. We get it. But maybe don't write a glowing tribute to how you were able to overcome the pain and criticism you endured from breaking up each other's marriages.
Oh, and the gifts. Sometimes there are gifts.
"Time to buy my wife!" he said without the slightest hint of irony.
Sorry folks, if you've never given a goat to seal the approval of your in-laws, your love doesn't count. You're not going to find any gushing wedding announcements for blue-collar tradespeople in the wedding pages of the NYT, because in their world, weddings don't exist unless they have celebrity DJ booths, Givenchy loot bags, and fair-trade cocaine bars.
But don't worry -- even despite these limitations, a sense of journalistic integrity remains:
Journalism, folks. The future of our republic depends on it.
"Hilariously" Ironic Fashions
Let us now turn to the Times' "Holy shit, this is going to age terribly" section.
This is from an article about how hilarious it is to wear Trump's hats. "Sure, he's emboldened people to express their hatred of women and minorities, but check it out, I'm wearing one of his hats ironically! Get it?!"
"Get it?"
"No, we get it."
Let's move on to an even more controversial subject: man buns. Centuries ago, European explorers wrote accounts of their adventures to exotic foreign lands with less flowery prose than the NYT uses to write about man buns. For those unfamiliar with it, the man bun is a hairstyle worn almost exclusively by white guys talking about yoga, but the Times has somehow convinced itself they are a profound form of expression.
For a certainty, brave top-knotted warriors once risked their lives in a dangerous, sword-filled world, and now we who pull espresso shots and can't afford regular haircuts are their spiritual successors.
There's something pretentious for you too, ladies:
A good rule of thumb is that, whenever a headline poses a question, the answer to that question is no. This is especially true if the question is fucking stupid.
That is an absolutely real article earnestly extolling the social capital to be gained in today's society by wearing a fucking monocle for no fucking reason whatsoever.
And finally we bring you to this, in which the Times crawls directly up its own asshole to discuss how trendy it is to wear normal clothes.
News flash: The millions of people that buy clothes at Old Navy and Target are just doing it for the lolz.
If you hadn't heard, normcore is the term when otherwise fashionable people opt for bland clothes, the kind that you might find in (shudder) a store with shopping carts. There's another, more common term for "Normcore," New York Times. It's called "wearing affordable clothes you like without making a pretentious cultural statement because you don't have disposable income to waste on fancy bullshit."
Excruciating People Buying Apartments
It can be difficult finding a house that fits both your needs and your budget. And while The New York Times sympathizes with the first part of that problem, its real-estate section is filled with eye-wateringly wealthy people discussing the challenges they face finding a place to live, and "budget" rarely makes its way into any of those challenges.
Consider this graduate student struggling with high rent:
Aw, you poor thing, throwing away your money on something as frivolous as rent. Look, if you have advantages, take them; we won't hold it against you. We aren't all filthy communists here at Cracked.
Many of us bathe.
But for the love of Midas, at least acknowledge your cosmic privilege. Don't present it as an inspirational story of triumph and maturity, not when so many of the rest of us are struggling to enter the housing market with the help of our regular, poor parents.
To be fair, the NYT also covers the house-hunting adventures of people who are self-sufficient go-getters, no longer reliant on any financial support but their own. Like this person, who rented a $2,350 a month apartment to serve as a "base" while searching for a second apartment to drop 600 grand on and then immediately tear apart and renovate. Or the tragic story of a woman with a budget of 800 grand and a dream of living in New York's financial district. But, unable to find something suitable in her near-million-dollar price range, she had to settle for a corner apartment in the Upper East Side for a thrifty $650,000.
Jackass Manliness Totems
Men, are you worried that modern masculinity is in decline? Do you often find yourself harassed by bears on the way to your graphic-design job, powerless to defend yourself against them? Then you should listen to The New York Times and start packing a pocketknife, a tool they call a symbol of "ruggedness and lone-wolf competence" which you'll primarily use to open packages from Amazon.
Within this gem of an article, the Times explains that trend-setting pocketknife owners are "office-bound urban men have adopted the accoutrements of their free-range rural brethren," because they have never met a concept they couldn't over-explain by molesting a thesaurus.
Thank goodness an entire generation has rediscovered how knives are used. Keep reading for the Times' scintillating coverage of how washing machines are a huge improvement over beating your clothes with rocks. Also, we should be clear that, because this is The New York Times, these aren't just regular pocketknives we're talking about, like some poor person might own. These are designer knives. Like the Sebenza 21, which will set you back a cool 350 bucks, plus an extra $195 if you want the blade made of Damascus steel (compared to the exactly as functional $30 pocketknife from Walmart, but you have to supply your own pretentiousness).
Which brings us to beards. Growing a beard isn't necessarily pretentious -- it's a totally justifiable grooming choice many men make. But according to The New York Times, growing a beard is the biggest goddamn deal in history. They devote pages-long examinations about the trials of poor, wispy lads who are tragically unable to grow full beards. For example, here's a chronicle of a man's attempt to grow a beard, which is inexplicably in The New York Times and not a teen boy's LiveJournal. And here's a 1300-word essay on the travails and tragedies of the beardless life, one that kicks off with a Walt Whitman reference.
You'll be happy to know the Times has more to say on masculinity, using a list-based format first popularized by far lower-browed publications.
"No, we literally don't." -- All Normal Men.
Is this a big problem? It feels like the author is passive-aggressively settling a really particular score here. Oh wait, there's more.
"Drink whatever the hell you want dude." -- All Normal Men.
Wow, the modern man sounds like a dickhead.
Uh-huh. Hey, just remember when you're over at the modern man's apartment, partaking in the sterling commentary on modern masculinity that is 2006's Miami Vice, not to ask for a Sprite, lest he kick you out and call you a prole.
Idiot Rich Kid Trends
Any publication that publishes as much as the Times does will sometimes stake out two different positions on a topic which are somewhat contradictory. But for a paper to write both blunt articles on poverty in America and then turn around and write salivating puff pieces about trust-fund kids, it's a bit much.
This has to be gearing up to be critical, right? Surely this will be one of those quietly judgmental looks at the hollow emptiness of privileged life, dripping with bitterness and scorn.
Every word is just so punchable.
Nope! It's pretty much just a roll call of brand names and drink orders, an epic story of rich kids who design expensive clothes to sell to other rich kids so they have something to wear when they buy expensive drinks and design clothes together. It's like their reporters skimmed The Great Gatsby, missed the point entirely, and set out to write a modern version of the party scenes.
Fuck you. They're talking about a book club here. Some 20-somethings in New York started a book club, where they discuss books using very big words. They also have a website. Apparently all it takes for the Times to write an ego-stroking essay for your benefit is to be an attractive white person, call your book club a "salon," and jabber about poststructuralism on a website. It's so transparent that we might as well start calling it "ego-hacking."
The Sunday Routine Shame-a-thon
Do you spend your Sundays sleeping off a hangover, watching Netflix, or otherwise relaxing before the upcoming work week? You uncultured swine. According to the Times, you should be going for a hike, writing poetry, checking out a flea market, visiting your family, and then breaking for an early lunch to plan the rest of your day.
Infant daughters love bright colors, songs, and putting things in their mouths, not this.
It's telling that "Sunday Routine" never talks to the guy who keeps New York City's convenience stores stocked with Funyuns and dedicates his weekend to his kids or his sore back or just working more. It's always a local celebrity who has the time and money to indulge their hobbies, and is apparently cramming a week's worth of activity into a single day for the sole purpose of making the rest of us look bad.
The implication behind all of these is that if you don't wake up with the dawn to meditate before taking in half a dozen cultural sights, you are wasting your life away.
Why does this column even exist, beyond being a pretentious way to induce guilt? Were hordes of squealing Ron Padgett fans begging to know what time he eats dinner? They're not even fact-checking these it seems, which brings us to our next point: The New York Times! Interview us. So long as you're not going to ask too many follow-up questions, we're sure your readers would love to know of our Sundays filled with visits to dust-filled archives, sex parties on our submarine, and eating space-age cuisine that's so healthy we start fucking levitating.
Mark is on Twitter and has a New York Times bestselling book.
Also check out 6 Reasons Breitbart Is The Most Batshit Crazy Website Ever and Wikipedia Is Shockingly Biased: 5 Lessons From An Admin.
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