Of Journalists, Students and Power, by Patrick Lawrence

In the midst of Gaza and the campus protests, the U.S.’s paper of record publishes not one but two articles about laundry detergents. From Patrick Lawrence at unz.com:

The original Gaza Solidarity Encampment, just minutes after NYPD arrested ~100 protesters, and still surrounded by a large protesting crowd of students as well as bystanders. عباد ديرانية, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The American media are never short of red-letter days when it comes to their wonderful combination of superciliousness and irresponsibility. But last week the mainstream dailies and magazines went all the way to scarlet and alizarin crimson. The brighter the better, I say, when the derelictions of our media are on display such that readers can no longer miss the deceptions and distractions that are at this point their intent.

I was reading along over breakfast last Thursday in search of the overnight news on the Israeli–U.S. genocide in Gaza when I came upon the headline in The New York Times, “Laundry Detergent Sheets Are Poor Cleaners.” Wow. This is a story The Times had been following since its April 5 opener, “The 5 Best Laundry Detergents of 2024,” but my friends on Eighth Avenue left me hanging. At last I could go forth into the day confident I was a well-informed American, altogether engagé.

Last Thursday, last Thursday: Wasn’t that the day the U.N. Relief and Works Agency reported that Israel’s military operations “continue from air, land and sea” and that “in northern Gaza only five hospitals remain operational, and in the south only six”? Yes, I read this on a U.N. website, but The Times didn’t have room for it.

Then I was even better informed last Sunday, when The New Yorker published a long, delightfully inane conversation between David Remnick, who has very excellently overseen the ruination of what was once a good magazine, and Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian who always has a lot of important things to say. The occasion was … I shall let Remnick explain:

And now, for the first time, he has directed a movie. It is about a Russian Orthodox monk in the sixteenth century who starves himself to death rather than give in to the depredations of tsarist society. No, it isn’t. It’s about the race in the early sixties between Kellogg and Post to invent the Pop-Tart. Yes, really. It is called “Unfrosted” and will air on Netflix on May 3^rd. It is extremely silly, in a good way.

Extremely silly in a good way. I think I understand.

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