An article on the front page of the Arts & Leisure section of Sunday's New York Times refers to Boston, Massachusetts, as "America's most culturally hidebound city."
The meaning of hidebound that the Times seems to be using is the one that Webster's Second gives as "obstinate; bigoted; narrow-minded; prejudiced."
It sure looks to Smartertimes.com like the one being narrow-minded and prejudiced here is the New York Times. Surely there are cities in America that are more culturally hidebound than Boston. Perhaps those cities are outside the usual travel paths of the Times's cultural critics.
For Boston residents who patronize that city's many cultural institutions -- for example, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Berklee College of Music, the Massachusetts College of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art -- it is going to come as news that they live in "America's most culturally hidebound city." And residents of such cutting-edge cultural beacons as Bakersfield, Calif., and Yonkers, N.Y., can now breath a sigh of relief: "Whew, thanks to the New York Times, we know that at least we are not as culturally hidebound as Boston."
If indeed Boston is "America's most culturally hidebound city," it may be cause for examining some assumptions. The citizens there, after all, vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. The city's dominant newspaper, the Boston Globe, is owned by the New York Times Company, which has embarked on a campaign to dumb it down so as to drive the Globe's higher-end readers to the New York Times. Thus the cutback in the Globe's book coverage and its elimination of David Warsh's column, which is now available online at http://www.economicprincipals.com .
Too bad the Taylor family and the owners of the Red Sox did not realize that they were selling the city's jewels to a company that considers Boston "America's most culturally hidebound city." The columnists at the Herald sure should have some fun with this one.
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