NYT's Bill Keller: Sure the Times Is Liberal, If by Liberal You Mean Cool
Shorter Bill Keller: The New York Times is a liberal paper because we’re all cool tolerant educated urbanites here in Manhattan.
At an event at the LBJ presidential library in Austin, Texas on October 6 (hosted by the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization that provides content for the Times), Keller confessed the Times had a “socially liberal” lean, if by “socially liberal” you mean cool. As reported by Rebecca Shapiro at Huffington Post:
He recalled a famous 2004 column by Daniel Okrent, the first man to hold the title. The column had a simple answer to whether or not the Times is liberal: "of course." Okrent's more nuanced take was that the Times reflects its New York base, and thus takes a more cosmopolitan and liberal view of some divisive social and cultural issues.
Keller essentially agreed with this. He said, "we are liberal in the sense that we are open-minded, tolerant, urban. Our wedding page includes -- and did even before New York had a gay marriage law -- included gay unions. So we’re liberal in that sense. Socially liberal." He also said that the paper "treats evolution as a fact."
Keller advanced that view in similar fashion in a March 27 column for the Times Sunday Magazine.
Back in 2004, Daniel Okrent, the first ombudsman at The Times, wrote a column under the headline, “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” The sly first sentence of his essay was: “Of course it is.” Nobody seems to remember what came after. Okrent went on to explain that The Times’s outlook, steeped in the mores of a big, rambunctious city, tends to be culturally liberal: open-minded, skeptical of dogma, secular, cosmopolitan. We publish news of gay unions on the wedding pages. We have a science section that does not feel obliged to give equal time to creationists when it writes about evolution. Okrent rightly scolded us for sometimes seeming to look down our urban noses at the churchgoing, the gun-owning and the unlettered. Respect is a prerequisite for understanding.
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Comments
Thus speaks the voice from the People's Republic of Austin.
Submitted by drsamherman on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 4:53pm.
Austin is a lonely little island of ultra-liberal hacks that no one else wanted. It is the Texas version of Land of the Lost - only the dinosaurs are all burnt-out 60s radicals and assorted degenerates that the rest of the state did not want. Austin fancies itself as the "Seattle of the South", but the only visible landmarks are the mountains of leftist reprobates that have no other place to go.
Have you been to Austin?
Submitted by Order270 on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 3:07am.
Austin does not fancy itself as a Seattle of the South. Austin is its own identity. As the capital of Texas, it is both a college town and a sophisticated major metropolitan area. I take issue with your sweeping generalities and find none of these accusations to be true.
Trying to unload some property in---
Submitted by matthewdean on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 4:03am.
Austin, eh?
MD
No...
Submitted by Order270 on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 10:32am.
...I used to live in San Antonio and I loved going to Austin. It is a beautiful city.
Ah, libtards... so desperate
Submitted by PeskyDane on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 5:40pm.
Ah, libtards... so desperate to be thought of as "cool" and "smart."
Tolerent?
Submitted by Fredy on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 6:30pm.
Keller essentially agreed with this. He said, "we are liberal in the sense that we are open-minded, tolerant, urban.
Keller has openly HATED conservatives for DECADES! This is not tolerance in any definition of the word.
And are you that open-minded if you're so convinced
Submitted by Quasi-socialist on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 6:47pm.
that the other side is not? They are just socially open-minded, not actually open-minded.
Yeah - 'tolerant'
Submitted by Slyrr on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 7:15pm.
Take a look at the uber-leftists at the NYT and everywhere else.
'You !*(@#^(!@*^ Republicans! You !*(@#^(!@*^ tea party people! We !*(@#^(!@*^ hate you! You !*(@#^(!@*^ stink!! You're not !*(@#^(!@*^ tolerant like us! You're not !*(@#^(!@*^ intelligent like us! You didn't go to the right !*(@#^(!@*^ schools like WE did! If you don't show that you're intelligent, tolerant and loving as us, we'll !*(@#^(!@*^ KILL YOU!!!'
Thing is, they don't even see the irony there. Their 'enlightened' media types actually calling for violence, bloodshed and destruction against 'Obama's enemies'.
Yeah - that's the kind of 'tolerance' and 'enlightenment' they're famous for. They should make that their new motto at the NYT. 'Be intelligent and tolerant like us or we'll !*(@#^(!@*^ kill you.'
Cool = Unprincipled (no moral
Submitted by Edhenry on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 9:07pm.
Cool = Unprincipled (no moral standards), co-dependent and "hip" to the most recent/unimportant/ersatz/transient trend. It is a life of begging/requiring praise from other like minded weaklings, while overreacting with personal attacks against those they disagree - usually people with character, which scares them more than velveta cheese.
"Cool" is the most shallow existence, and one I have spent my life attempting to escape.
Cool, eh no
Submitted by Boudin on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 9:13pm.
By liberal, I mean dumb as dirt
The New York Times and Self-Assessment
Submitted by Galvanic on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 9:34pm.
"Okrent went on to explain that The Times’s outlook, steeped in the mores of a big, rambunctious city, tends to be culturally liberal: open-minded, skeptical of dogma, secular, cosmopolitan . . ."
Skeptical of dogma? Since when? The New York Times is nothing if not dogmatic.
As NB has documented for years, the news reporting in the Times is slanted decidedly left, frequently far left. When it can no longer ignore inconvenient facts, it spins them and relegates them to page A-26.
But the Times is cool, and getting cooler, not unlike a fresh corpse. Its circulation continues to shrink, and someday it will be so cool that it will be stone cold dead.
And only the Northeast media elites will bother to attend the funeral, which they will mark as the Death of Journalism.
No, not cool. Stupid.
Submitted by rbosque on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 9:55pm.
No, not cool. Stupid.
And, if by Cool...
Submitted by CobraMan on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 9:56pm.
And, if by Cool, you mean idiotic. Unfortunately for the Times, most people don't think you're "cool," judging by your declining circulation. They do, however, think you're all idiotic.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
Paraphrasing Bill Clinton "it depends the meaning of cool is"
Submitted by antiObamunist on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 1:18am.
Cool is John Wayne
Cool is James Dean
Cool could be Fonzi
No Bill , you are definitely NOT cool
Besides, saying you are cool is like saying you are smart or tough. Most people who are don't feel the need to say it (by definition).
Cool?
Submitted by GeneralAl on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 2:30am.
Keller says the Times is cool? Take off the C from cool and add an F. That's what the New York Slimes is!
"Old Soldiers never die, they just fade away"!
What is cool?
Submitted by Order270 on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 3:19am.
It's cool to be liberal? Is that Bill Keller's assessment? Is he in the 3rd grade? Acting cool is nothing more youth simulating adulthood.
Tell the tea party how open
Submitted by eaglewingz08 on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 8:41am.
Tell the tea party how open minded and tolerant the Slimes is. Tell global warming and keynesian critics how non dogmatic the Slimes is. What a hoot.
Bill Keller = Captain Edward
Submitted by buddyc on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 9:04am.
Bill Keller = Captain Edward Smith=real cool
New York Slimes is cool
Submitted by donaldduck on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 4:44pm.
Yeah, Billy Boy, the New York Slimes is about as cool as that dump that pig Wall Street protester left on the police car. And the Slimes think those pigs represent 99% of America. Can't wait for the Slimes building to be relocated to Mexico City so its sugar daddy Mexican investor doesn't have to travel far to visit his new toy.
urban planning
Submitted by bluecollarbytes on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 11:36pm.
High-density living does strange things to people, like driving them to telling the rest of us how to live and what to think in the flyover backwoods.
urban planning
Submitted by bluecollarbytes on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 11:36pm.
High-density living does strange things to people, like driving them to telling the rest of us how to live and what to think in the flyover backwoods.