Cases

My once-again favorite section of the NYT: The Science Times.

It still features the usual science-news stories it always did, but in recent years has branched out and become so much more reader-focused. Besides the usual servicey Q&As and the contrarian column/blog by John Tierney, the Cases column also manages to add a moving, human touch to the section.

"Comforter and Comforted in an Unfolding Mystery," from two weeks ago, tells of how a young man named Josh, crushed by the loss of his girlfriend, finds a way to honor her memory. It got me all misty on the subway ride home one night. Check it out.

+ art: NYT/Yvetta Fedorova

Hold On Tight

My roommate Mel told me about this story from the NYT weddings section from Sunday, about two lovers finally discovering, after 27 years, that they were meant to be together. They first met in the 1970s, and ended up going their separate ways after two years because their lives were just too different. Soon after that, he proposed marriage when he couldn't stand being without her, but she couldn't say yes. They had their lives - she married and was divorced, he married and lost his wife to illness. Then they found each other again.

It's an amazing story. But can you imagine if, the first time around, they had recognized that they had found the right person? If they had just never let go?

The Fluidity of Facts

Back at the Tartan, my school newspaper, we insisted that columnists not face off in op-ed debates. We thought that there would always be other issues to engage and that infighting would make us look fickle and unprofessional, too.

Which is what made this Op-Ed brouhaha so goshdarn fun to follow: These are the pros! At the country's most influential paper! Squabbling about Ronald Reagan and Republicans' exploitation of racism in the South!

This might sound boring to some (all) of you, but it provided a significant amount of entertainment for me over several lunch hours in dreary November. Worry not, once you have been briefed, you just may scurry over to the New York Times site to read Krugman, Brooks, Herbert, Krugman, and (again) Krugman duke it out.

September 24: Paul Krugman, everyone's favorite outraged liberal economist, offers up a thesis: "And yes, Southern white exceptionalism is about race, much more than it is about moral values, religion, support for the military or other explanations sometimes offered."

He cites Ronald Reagan's invocation of "state's rights" while at the Neshoba County Fair, where 16 years earlier three black civil rights activists were murdered. By any measure, it's an odd place to begin a presidential campaign.

November 9: David Brooks weights in, weeks later. The op-war has begun, and it has been recentered around Reagan and the Neshoba County Fair. His column begins:

Today, I’m going to write about a slur. It’s a distortion that’s been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.

Brooks says Reagan's actions in Philadelphia, Miss. weren't malicious but simply a mistake on his part.

November 10: On his blog, Krugman poo-poos the "campaign to exonerate Ronald Reagan" of the alleged race-baiting in Mississippi. He is biting, sarcastically calling each Reagan anti-civil rights misdeed an "innocent mistake."

November 13: Bob Herbert gets in on it! Now we've got a full-on three-way liberal-conservative-liberal smackdown in the works! His main point? "Throughout his career, Reagan was wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited on civil rights and other issues important to black people. There is no way for the scribes of today to clean up that dismal record.... The suggestion that the Gipper didn’t know exactly what message he was telegraphing in Neshoba County in 1980 is woefully wrong-headed."

November 18: Lou Cannon, a chronicler of the Reagan years, weighs in on the Op-Ed page. His piece defends Reagan from charges of racism, which to me don't seem particularly relevant. It's not about whether the Gipper is bigoted, but whether he exploited racism for political gain.

November 19: Krugman puts the kibosh on this thing. He notes that the "controversy unfortunately obscures the larger point, which should be undeniable: the central role of this backlash in the rise of the modern conservative movement."

Stunningly, he says at the end in very un-Krugmanlike fashion: "Now, maybe I’m wrong about all of this. But we should be able to discuss the role of race in American politics honestly. We shouldn’t avert our gaze because we’re unwilling to tarnish Ronald Reagan’s image."

Check it out.

Real Life Mystery Story

A friend of mine sent this article to me over a year and a half ago, raving about the reporting and storytelling in this real-life murder mystery unfolding on the Upper East Side, of all places:

The consulate, an elegant 19th-century Beaux-Arts mansion off Fifth Avenue that is Indonesia's home in New York for cultural events, cocktail receptions, economic conferences and aid to travelers, was transformed on a quiet Sunday morning into the setting of a locked-door mystery. It appeared to be a homicide, investigators said, though they did not rule out suicide."

The broody narrative and graphic detail (later) feels like a mystery novel -- the reporters draw you in with scenarios and the lingering doubt of investigators -- but at the same time all the elements of a hard news story are there.

 

Here's the follow-up.

TimeSelect, We Hardly Knew You

TimeSelect is defunct, or so NY1 says. There was such a fuss kicked up two years ago when that smug, superior name was introduced and readers worldwide lost access to (and subsequently refused to pay for) various parts of the New York Times website. Thank goodness for free information.

And plus, now people will stop calling and emailing me to mooch off of my subscription.