And Continuing Yesterday's Topic...

OK, perhaps I went too far. Maybe there are still some redeeming, even-handed perspectives one can find in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. For example, this is a pretty fair point of view:

In one of his disturbing spells of passivity, President Obama decided not to fight Congress and live up to his own no-earmark pledge from the campaign...He’s been lecturing us on the need to prune away frills while the economy fizzles. He was slated to make a speech on “wasteful spending” on Wednesday...Team Obama sounds hollow, chanting that “the status quo is not acceptable,” even while conceding that the president is accepting the status quo by signing a budget festooned with pork. Obama spinners insist it was “a leftover budget.” But Iraq was leftover, too, and the president’s trying to end that. This is the first pork-filled budget from a new president who promised to go through the budget “line by line” and cut pork.

Wow. A bit harsh, but arguably fair. Now, I know I played this reindeer game a few weeks ago, and I won't do it ever again, but one more time, this appeared in today's New York Times and not the Wall Street Journal. By the way, when you say New York Times, you need to use that annoying redneck accent intoned in the old Pace Salsa TV commercials...as in NEW YORK CITY??? But it gets even better. Which columnist from the Times wrote this stuff? Click here. Thass right...O.M. freakin' G!

So what's my point? It's that I'm seeing the Times call it as individual columnists see it, while I see the Journal call it as Rupert sees it. The Times has an ombudsman. The Journal doesn't. Now in ordinary times I'd say the two papers are apples and oranges. One is a stellar business daily and the other a stellar general purpose newspaper. But these are clearly not ordinary times and one has to wonder who the hell wants to read a business daily right about now anyway. I used to dismiss the Times. I was wrong. Now I'm dismissing the Journal. I hope I'm proven wrong but don't believe the forcing function exists that will make me wrong.

Comments

[finnickers]

My WSJ subscription expires this week, and I'm not renewing. The capper for me was the new Sports page they have added. Adding a sports page is one thing, but today the feature story was "underwear models take on the world" (in reference to south african baseball team.) i'm done. WSJ has sank faster than citigroup stock.

[Steve]

Thanks for the comment, Finickers. Coming from you this is nothing less than shocking. I really really hope they can get it back, but again, I fail to see the forcing function that would make this happen. I'm keeping the online subscription for now, but I'm finding the Journal to be so much less of a 'must read.' That said, the news reporting yesterday of the ridiculous bonuses M-L execs made last year was quite good.