More and more, the Times is so "woke" as to be almost unreadable.
The Sunday "T" magazine carries an adoring profile of Angela Davis, labeled under the category "The Greats."
Among the highlights, or lowlights, depending on how you see it:
In 2018, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama invited her to receive an award, which was rescinded three months later after unnamed members of the community complained to the board about her support for Palestinian rights and a boycott of Israel. (The institute eventually reversed its decision and issued Davis a public apology.)
Then:
Throughout the '70s and '80s, as the Communist Party U.S.A.'s presence dwindled, and Communist regimes worldwide became increasingly totalitarian, Davis remained a staunch supporter of the party's ideas, twice running as its candidate for vice president in the '80s. In 1991, she stepped away, along with a number of other members, because the party refused to engage in processes of democratization...
That's actually funny, as if the Soviet Union was "increasingly totalitarian" in the 70s and 80s as opposed to, say, in the Stalin era. Or as if what happened in 1991 was really about "democratization" rather than the collapse of the Soviet Union that had been bankrolling and giving orders to the Communist Party USA all along.
Then there's this paragraph, which mixes Davis's voice with the voice of the Times profile-writer:
There's a tendency to define racial progress in America by the upward mobility of various "minority groups" — to count and celebrate how many members have entered the middle class, have graduated from college or have multimillion-dollar deals with streaming services. Davis, however, finds those signifiers meaningless. Racism, she believes, will continue to exist as long as capitalism remains our secular religion. "The elephant in the room is always capitalism," she says. "Even when we fail to have an explicit conversation about capitalism, it is the driving force of so much when we talk about racism. Capitalism has always been racial capitalism." Davis cites the Covid-19 pandemic as "a crisis of global capitalism," adding that "we do need free health care. We do need free education. Why is it that people pay fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars a year to study in a university? Housing: That's something sort of just basic. At a time when we need access to these services more than ever before, the wealth of the world has shifted into the hands of a very small number of people." She believes we need to imagine a "future that will allow us to begin to move beyond capitalism" but refuses to endorse any existing government as a model for the kind of America she envisions. It may be easy to be cynical about Communism and claim that America won the Cold War, but it's also impossible to deny that this country's financial system breeds income inequality, homelessness and divides us into warring camps separated by class, sex and race.
While the Times profile-writer may regard this as "impossible to deny," it is in fact quite possible to deny it. Watch me. I deny it. Capitalism does not divide us "into warring camps separated by...sex and race." These camps war regardless of whether a country is capitalist or communist. Communist China imposed a one-child policy the effect of which was to create, as the Times itself reported, "a sex ratio so skewed that there is now a bubble of 25 million extra males of marrying age... A cultural preference for boys as family heirs meant that many parents tried to avoid having a daughter through selective abortion, adoption, even infanticide." Nor are non-capitalist societies free of ethnic or racial divisions. For example, the Soviet Union's treatment of the Crimean Tatars and of its Jewish minority was disgraceful.
The fawning profile of Davis and her communist views is surrounded by paid ads for Chanel, Hermes, and other luxury brands, who are apparently so thoroughly capitalist that they are happily funding the "T" magazine attempt to divide us into warring camps.
Meanwhile, the Times business section is devoted to a lengthy attack on Vogue editor, Condé Nast executive, and prominent Democratic political fundraiser Anna Wintour.
Under Ms. Wintour, 18 people said, Vogue welcomed a certain type of employee — someone who is thin and white, typically from a wealthy family and educated at elite schools. Of the 18, 11 people said that, in their view, Ms. Wintour should no longer be in charge of Vogue and should give up her post as Condé Nast's editorial leader.
"Fashion is bitchy," one former Black staff member said. "It's hard. This is the way it's supposed to be. But at Vogue, when we'd evaluate a shoot or a look, we'd say 'That's Vogue,' or, 'That's not Vogue,' and what that really meant was 'thin, rich and white.' How do you work in that environment?"
The Times doesn't say who these 18 people are or who the 11 of them are, or why they are or aren't representative of the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of employees at Condé Nast or Vogue. The Times business section doesn't even consider the idea that editorial executives should be chosen by a publication's owners on the basis of pleasing customers, not serve at the pleasure of a random group of anonymous former employees, selected by a competing news organization. As for the "thin" criticism, the Times doesn't explain why Wintour alone should be singled out from an entire fashion news industry—including the New York Times Magazine—that for decades hasn't exactly rushed to publish photographs of overweight or obese fashion models.
At a certain point one puts down the newspaper thinking, "I don't know who these guys think their intended audience is, but I don't think this was written for me."