Sometime soon the New York Times will post their Sunday editorials. The signed editorials will be behind a firewall. The unsigned ones will be available for all the plebians. According to Adam Nagourney (link in the open thread below) the New York Times editorial board will be endorsing Ned Lamont over Joe Lieberman.
[The editorial page of The New York Times on Sunday endorsed Mr. Lamont over Mr. Lieberman, arguing that the senator had offered the nation a “warped version of bipartisanship” in his dealings with Mr. Bush on national security.]
I don’t know how people that didn’t grow up in the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, plus Philly) feel about the New York Times. I suppose they feel somewhat like how I feel about the Washington Post. It’s a very important paper but I have no special bond with it. The New York Times, however, is my hometown paper. It’s almost a local paper for people from northern New Jersey and Western Connecticut. An endorsement of Ned Lamont from the New York Times is a very big deal. It’s not only that the paper is very sensitive to issues pertaining to Israel, its also that they are very much part of the Establishment that tends to think of Lieberman and McCain as stellar examples of how politicians should behave. Anytime they see bipartisanship they get all weak-kneed. In spite of all these factors, the Times still appears to have gone out on a limb for a little known businessman with little political experience. For a certain segment of society (James Woolsey, Tom Friedman, Jane Harman) this is kind of earth shattering.
In any case, it is very good news. It will make a difference and send a message. Also coming in the New York Times is a piece by Frank Rich.
As America fell into the quagmire of Vietnam, the comedian Milton Berle joked that the fastest way to end the war would be to put it on the last-place network, ABC, where it was certain to be canceled. Berle’s gallows humor lives on in the quagmire in Iraq. Americans want this war canceled too, and first- and last-place networks alike are more than happy to oblige.
CNN will surely remind us on Sunday that it is Day 19 of the Israel-Hezbollah war — now branded as Crisis in the Middle East — but you won’t catch anyone saying it’s Day 1,229 of the war in Iraq. On the Big Three networks’ evening newscasts, the time devoted to Iraq has fallen 60 percent between 2003 and this spring, as clocked by the television monitor, the Tyndall Report.
I guess things have changed since Mission Accomplished:
Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple. We’re not like the Brits.- Chris Matthews
Editor’s Note: Tweety is back to being opposed to the war, which has been cancelled on his show.
