Except for the NYT Editorials section. They’re…very concerning, as of late.
Agreed. The NYTimes’ commitment to ‘balanced’ viewpoints has led their editorial page seriously astray. And IMO their political coverage is entirely too reliant on anonymous sources with personal axes to grind.
Katherine
Well, isn’t this typical for this user forum? What began with a joke in a comic strip led to a discussion about … a lot of other stuff that has nothing to do with the comic strip.
I love it! 
Steve Bannon loves cats … well, I think it’s cats. It definitely ends in …ats 
Hats? Is he a mad hatter? 
When y’get t’ my age, memory and fantasy can swap roles … amongst other things 
Anyway, floating out there in the ether, is a vivid TV Image of professor Brian Cox welcoming the viewers to the inaugural switch on, of the Cern Large Haddon Collider. After his detailed and inspirational introduction, and just prior to taking us inside, he pointed out that a certain knowledgeable individual had proffered the thesis that there was a possibility that the envisioned collisions could in fact create a massive Black Hole! Proff Cox looked the camera dead on, and informed his audience that, “Anybody telling you that … is a **at!”
For the life of me, I can’t recall exactly what he said, but he was most emphatic. There could have been a t or a w, or whatever. Memory does it’s own thing, at my age
Ahh well … c’est la vie … eh?
tsk tsk, definite name calling. (-: I listen in on both sides and Breitbart users call NYT readers Maoists and NYT readers hurl names that you did. So should I believe that leftist media is Maoist?
I saw this thread on Quora recently quora.com/How-does-Breitbar … ews-source
the answer of Fredrik Josefsson a Swede was different. He starts out:
And again my complaint about NY Times is not that they lean to the left, but that they pretend not to lean at all - that is definitely not telling the truth in my book. Whereas Breitbart wears its right of center with a pride and this is their selling point, that they are on the right. You know what you get when go to Breitbart. Not so at the NYTs. Telling your reader what your bias is at the beginning is being transparent. There may have been a time when the NYT was neutral and unbiased but we are now in a different epoch.
I have no dog in the fight as I am not an American have no party allegiance and have not voted since the early 1970s. And I should also say that until recently I very rarely visit the NYTs, now I look there sometimes to see what new unconfirmed rumor is being promoted as news regarding trashing the SC nominee.
What really is obvious is how much Americans hate each now. But, what is surprising is that considering how many guns there are in the USA that it hasn’t erupted into political violence…yet. Will it devolve into Wiemar Republic style political street fights and body counts? Any opinion from someone in the US of A?
Mohammad definitely loved cats. He often kept a kitten with him stashed in his robes, up his sleeves and pockets. Loved to play with the little fur-balls. I can just imagine what his you tube channel would have consisted of. Right there beside Jihad for Dummies, and how to make IEDs, would be a a lot of cute kitten channels.
Steve Bannon himself proudly declared Breitbart a “platform for the alt-right.” Both he and the site – which fired him – are now running away from the label, but it’s not “name-calling” to call attention to someone’s self-characterization.
Katherine
I think that if you think “Americans” as a group hate each other, you are probably spending too much time reading Breitbart and comment threads generally.
Certainly there are lots of people on both sides with very strong opinions, and the extremes of both parties would happily kick each others’ heads in given the chance. However, those extremes, precisely because they are extreme, attract news coverage wildly out of proportion to their actual numbers. There’s a lot of money to be made by feeding people’s anger, and a lot of people in and outside the US who see divisions as personally advantageous. Some of those people have temporarily achieved a fair amount of power in the US government.
But Weimar street violence? A second civil war? Nah. We’re going through a rough patch, but we’ll be fine.
Katherine
Did he call himself a “fascist?” You did. That is what I was referring to. Sorry for not making that clear.
As for the “Alt-right” label I think, and I may be wrong, the reason the are distancing themselves, if that is true, is because the “alt-right” is too all encompassing and some rather unsavory characters were lumped in.
Some unsavory characters chose to self-identify as the “alt-right.”
When people carry Nazi banners and chant Nazi slogans, I don’t think it’s “name-calling” to identify them as fascists. To avoid being “lumped in” with such people, one can start by not giving them a platform.
Katherine
Actually I was reading the NYT comment threads. (One thing I notice is that if someone makes a racist remark on Breitbart they are accused of being leftists trying to give the right wing a bad name. But if someone makes a racist remark on the NYT everyone agrees with them.)
I hope you are right. And, I plan to take a long break after the Kavanaugh vote.
But what about antifa riots in various locations and people killed and injured? What about the abysmal state of “Free Speech” in US universities where even left wing comics refuse to perform? What about left wing bureaucrats sabotaging government machinery? What about Democrat leaders urging their followers to seriously harass their opponents? (Cases like Ms Sanders and Mr Cruz being denied service and chased out of restaurants? What about the republican baseball team being attacked and one of them seriously injured? What about the very vocal call to “resist” and to resist BAMN - By Any Means Necessary?
I lived in the USA for more than 20 years and have never seen such division before. But I will definitely take your advice and stop reading the news for a while and give things time to happen. Now I have to find a new form of procrastination. 8)
I disagree.
You might want to read Glubb’s short essay Fate of Empires webcitation.org/6a8z7Lvfj?u … /glubb.pdf
to see where the USA is going, the same place every other empire went. It is only a matter of time. kālaḥ kalayatām aham – among subduers I am time-- Bhagavad-gita 10.30
Glubb in his essay estimated that an Empire lasted for about 10 generations 250 years. I would not hold that as etched in stone as there are variations. But, it is interesting to note that 2026 will be the USA’s 250th year. And all in is not well.
And of course it is only later historians who write the death certificates. While people who are going through it are not aware. The Romans in 250 AD thought their empire would last forever but didn’t realize it was already in serious decline and some would say was in such disarray that it had already fallen. Though the official date of the fall of Rome in the West is not for 150 years later with the end of the last Caesar.
Sources for these claims other than Breitbart?
The death and serious injuries in Charlottesville were attributable to white supremacists. People who were there credit antifa with saving lives. Similarly, a serious injury here in the Seattle area occurred when a right winger shot an unarmed protestor. (In both cases, criminal charges have been filed against individuals, which is how their affiliations are known.)
The “free speech crisis” in US universities is largely manufactured by right-wing provocateurs: they come to campuses, encourage large numbers of (sometimes armed) supporters to come with them, say outrageous things, and point to the entirely predictable (and legal) protests that result as proof that they are being “silenced.” And then right-wing commentators are paid by major media outlets to talk about how oppressed they are.
Protests directed at elected officials are rather a different matter than widespread harassment of one’s “opponents,” don’t you think?
The attack on the baseball team was universally condemned by people on both sides of the aisle. Sadly, attacks by right-leaning terrorists get much less attention, though they are far more common. (Source: qz.com/1355874/terrorism-is-sur … xtremists/)
Katherine
None of my sources are from Breitbart but rather all from left of center media. If you recall our whole little discussion started from my interest in finding neutral, unbiased sources of news. I wrote:
Antifa riots in Berkley widely reported in all the press including WAPO which is left of center
And here tinyurl.com/ya8yhq8l a wide variety of sources detail the violent activities of antifa. I obviously have not checked them all, just providing a reference. Some may be better than others.
Free Speech crisis in American universities is widely published and brought to national attention in The Atlantic a left of center publication with their article The Coddling of the American Mind theatlantic.com/magazine/ar … nd/399356/
It is not the creation of right wing provocateurs but of the university ecosystem as detailed in the article
The Atlantic writes:
Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher are not right wing provocateurs.
Attacking elected officials with their families in a restaurant is okay with you? And Ms Sarah Huckabee Sanders is not even an elected official but just a spokes person. Are you saying that it is okay to abuse and harass women if they are not democrats? Its not misogyny if they are Republicans?
And plenty of news coverage of attacks on ordinary people just because they wore a MAGA hat. Here is one from Yahoo which is also left of center tinyurl.com/ycr9oext
And here is a bunch more from a variety of sources tinyurl.com/yamadwt7 I obviously have not checked them all, just providing a reference. Some may be better than others.
As for the Quartz article it only adds proof that civil unrest is on the rise in the USA not decreasing. It was not my intention to imply that it is only coming from one direction. By definition civil war requires more than one party. “Civil war” may be too strong a term for the current level of violence but it is certainly a cultural war going on. To see how this is symptomatic of the decline of the society see Glubb’s Fate of Empires tinyurl.com/yc7jgja8
And I remind you that I am not an American, and I have no party affiliation and do not vote. I am observing what is going on from the perspective of cycles in world history. In modern times conservatives are the counter culture.
I found a source for vetting news outlets mediabiasfactcheck.com/
Now if we could be certain they had no bias. 8)
Show me a news outlet that claims to have no bias and I will show you a liar. There’s no such thing. Even if you were to depend for your news on your trusted nextdoor neighbour briefing you over the garden fence, the ordering of his or her news items and the prominence that he or she gives to each one would betray the way that they think about them - and therefore their biases. There will be biases that coincide with your biases and therefore seem bias-free, but there are no single news outlets that have no bias.
(I write as someone who spent a career in journalism, and who at one point took more than 20 national and international newspapers a day. When I first placed my order with the newsagent, he thought that all his Christmases had come at once. I took so many newspapers to try to ensure not only that I received the best available coverage of individual stories, but also that I absorbed the widest range of views. But I’m certain that I still showed bias. )
I should perhaps add that this is not a prescription for anybody to read 20-plus newspapers a day (other than those like me for whom it is or was a professional necessity). Just consume your news media intelligently; be conscious of potential biases; discount them. And educate your children in the risks the world contains.