One of the most strange news articles ever appears on the front of the business section of today's Times. It begins:
WASHINGTON — It has been nearly 18 years since Hillary Clinton used the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" to describe the conservative forces arrayed against her husband's administration. But the suspicion about right-wing plotting remains as current on the left as, well, Mrs. Clinton.
Readers would have been better served by a straightforward preview of the issues in the case. (The Times legal reporter already did that.) Instead this is something confusingly halfway between an effort to investigate and prove a right-wing conspiracy and an effort to debunk the conspiracy claim. If the conspiracy claims are false, why even bother to repeat them? It's the second Noam Scheiber article in recent weeks that seems weirdly off in terms of tone for a Times news article. He came to the Times news department after 14 years at the left-of-center New Republic and having written a book criticizing President Obama for not spending enough taxpayer money, a conclusion the Times' own reviewer criticized as "polemical," "glib and premature." I'm not saying someone with that background can't turn around and write straight-down-the-middle news articles for the Times, but on the basis of this article and the other one I wrote about, I am not seeing it happening.