The Week in Review section of the New York Times today devotes an entire article to the subject of breasts. They are getting larger, the Times reports. The article quotes Valerie Steele, chief curator of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, as saying that before long, size won't matter. "We will up the ante. It won't be just size, it will be perkiness or the perfect nipple."
It's this sort of stuff that makes readers think that the Times is no longer the serious paper it was in the days of Carr Van Anda, the legendary Times managing editor, who never would have stood for this frippery. Times have changed, sure, but a discussion of nipple perfection or perkiness or whatever is still the sort of thing a reader would expect to see -- and probably prefer to see -- in Playboy or the New York Post or Cosmopolitan, not the Week in Review section of the Sunday New York Times.
Smith Street Silliness: An article in the Times magazine today bemoans the gentrification of Smith Street in Brooklyn. It describes the pre-gentrification neighborhood as "happily mired in the 1950's. Dotted with members-only social clubs and old men playing cards in front of shuttered storefronts, the area felt untouched by the relentless pace of Manhattan life. That's what persuaded me, and many people like me, to trade in a hip downtown address for space, charm and refuge across the river." The writer doesn't like the fact that there are now good restaurants and bars and stores and coffee shops on the street, and she has moved out of the Smith Street area to a more desolate neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Her perspective is strange. The "shuttered storefronts" may appear "happily" to the writer, but they mean less tax revenue for the city. They breed crime because they reduce sidewalk traffic and create a climate of fear among those who do walk the street. They create no jobs. Restaurants and stores, on the other hand, pay taxes, create jobs, keep eyes on the sidewalk that prevent crime, and are more entertaining for those who live nearby than are "shuttered storefronts." It's just weird to see the Times rooting for "shuttered storefronts" instead of successful private enterprises. Maybe it's another example of the newspaper's patronizing attitude toward Brooklyn. It's unlikely an article calling for the conversion of Times Square or Fifth Avenue into "shuttered storefronts" would get very far very fast at the Times. On the other hand, given the newspaper's hostile attitude toward capitalism in general (except when capitalism manifests itself in the form of violent Hollywood movies or American companies seeking increased trade with Communist China), it might actually not be that surprising to see the Times come out in favor of shuttered storefronts not only in Brooklyn, but nationwide.
Howard Wolfson: There's an adoring article in the Times magazine this morning about a campaign aide to Hillary Clinton, Howard Wolfson. Never mind the fact that Mr. Wolfson apparently has the Times eating so much out of his hand that it did a profile of him in the magazine today in addition to the front-page story this week about his "war room" and another profile of him that ran in the "Public Lives" column of the Times metro section earlier in the campaign. The article is in a special issue of the magazine about people who have moved to New York in the past year. It identifies Mr. Wolfson as moving to New York from Washington, D.C., but it never mentions the fact that he's been basically a New Yorker his whole life, having grown up in the state and having worked in D.C. for members of the New York congressional delegation. The article has the effect of making Mrs. Clinton look like a carpetbagger -- look, honey, even her spokesman just moved to New York. And it has the effect of making Mr. Wolfson look like a greenhorn when in fact he's basically a New Yorker. Mr. Wolfson, who is a shrewd operative, should have been able to spin this one better.