One of the most illuminating things about the Times can be the comments section of the Web site. It offers some sometimes unattractive insights into the paper's readership. One recent sad example is a response to David Brooks' column about a kosher supermarket in Brooklyn, Pomegranate. The topmost reader comment, recommended by 71 Times readers and given a "NYT Pick" stamp of approval by the paper's editors, is one that blames the Orthodox Jews for contributing to global warming by having too many children. It reads:
This is published on the very same day as Timothy Egan's piece on global warming, which emphasizes the dramatic changes to our earth attributable not just to our greed for fossil energy but also to our greed for more and more babies. How can you respect a religion that keeps itself unresponsive to modern realities? I confess to being a German surnamed American of non-Jewish heritage; there are nevertheless many things about Judaism that I much admire. But slavish adherence to any powerful but narrow mindset is not admirable.
The commenter is admirably self-aware about his German surname but perhaps not quite self-aware enough.