Op-Ed Sections, Threat or Menace?

It is amazing how much attention the cheerleaders on the morning and primetime cable shows have skewed what we think "important news" is these days.
Used to be you would have a "front page" - whether we're talking newspapers or a TV news broadcast with some meat and potatoes, some good art/slice of life type of deal and a "talker" - something that would make people say "hey Martha" (an old editor used this expression instead of the more common "talker" name. Seems like we're all about the "talkers" now - a Senator is in a verbal feud with Big Bird? An NFL QB lied about being vaxxed? National media seems to be like a bunch of high school girls scream-whispering "OMG, can you believe what X said about Y?!!!"

Linda: Did you hear about some surfer guy pulled a knife on a teacher this morning?
Stacey: I was there. He just called him a dick.
Linda: People at this school exaggerate so much.

 

How about "useless" as a choice?

 

Try the NYT op-ed fuckheads for treason

 

Hey - good local talent pool, especially if they want to run no huddle.

 

Not sure Weiss and Flanagan and Sullivan, et al, are entirely clear on what's happening in America lately with reference to education.

Goddard school district orders 29 books removed from circulation

All 850 Books Texas Lawmaker Matt Krause Wants to Ban: An Analysis

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...157830-35d3-11ec-91dc-551d44733e2d_story.html

 

Youngkin won in Virginia in part because he ran a campaign ad of a parent complaining about a book his kid was assigned. The ads never mentioned that the book was Toni Morrison's book Beloved.

And nobody can really define CRT. Which means that we are going to get a bunch of history books in public schools that will not teach hate but that those slaveowners were really compassionate dudes.

 

oof

Opinion | America Has a Free Speech Problem

 

seconded

https://presswatchers.org/2022/03/the-new-york-times-editorial-board-should-retract-and-resign/

 

I was zero years old when Bret Stephens was briefly a national item for the scorn being rightly heaped upon him.

He hasn't been heard from since.

 

It's a bad op-ed. That someone would call for the entire board to resign over it kind of proves the point a little bit, oddly enough.

 

It really doesn't. Their actions have consequences, too. No one enjoined them from running it or arrested them afterward.

There's no such thing as speech free from any consequences. They're asking for something that doesn't exist anywhere and never has.

 

It's funny - I look at the headline, and "threat or menace" seems to apply more to a newspapers own reputation than to the public at large. For the record, I like a good, broad opinion section, well-reasoned views from across the political spectrum. Too often though, I see opinion pieces published that amount to little more than talking points pushed by one special interest or another.