1. I had thought the Jeffrey Epstein story was running out of energy, but here it is back on the front page and in the top spot. But it's a real estate story: "A Look Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan Lair." As if we're into his mystique!3. 2 things to angst over: declining school enrollment and a nuclear reactor on the moon.
4. Something that isn't even vaguely surprising — an old bookshelf contained a particular old book. It might be worth $20,000. Who cares!? This is like the news that somebody won the lottery. The winning ticket is rare, but you know it's in the great mass of tickets, and somebody found it.
5. Suddenly, it's time to talk about your intestines. That seems to scream: slow news day.
6. At last, the name Trump appears. Tariff business. The ongoing story. The photo is of immigrants — caption (outside of my screen shot): "Trump’s New Tactic to Separate Immigrant Families."
7. And then, there's Thomas Friedman, supplying the overarching and very high-level-abstract theme: "The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away." It begins: "Of all the terrible things Donald Trump has said and done as president, the most dangerous one just happened...."
***
Strangely low-level anxiety wafts up from the usual jumble of well-worn topics.
Posts
71 comments:
That is the flagship look for a newspaper that has completely given up on actually reporting news.
Does Joseph Epstein support "conspiracy theories" about his fellow Epstein, or did you just mistag the post? Anyways, the NYT is basically falling apart as it tries to stay relevant. But if they have a problem with tariffs on India, it obliterates the chance to reduce Indian trade in Russian oil.
Globalism is increasingly stepping on its own wang to stop President Trump and is failing. Badly. Perhaps others take cultural cues from New York liberals- I would rather get fingers broken than pretend Friedman is smart.
Not one "front page" story is a timely report of contemporaneous actions that affect the lives of NYT readers, as if absolutely nothing important is happening in the city or state or country.
Meanwhile X serves up a steady diet of up-to-the-minute breaking stories about Congressional subpoenas, Israel saying they will annex Gaza, Kentucky's Democrat governor praising FEMA, appeals court ruling TX can demand voter ID, and the new rule that SNAP cannot be used for sugary sodas etc.
News. NEW facts happening all around. As the old gray lady sits and feels sorry for herself.
That sculpture is very Podesta-Esque if you know what I'm saying...
Thomas Friedman is another Danish Zoo candidate.
No big photo of the painting of Clinton in a blue dress?
“ I had thought the Jeffrey Epstein story was running out of energy ….” Not possible as long as Tulsi has stuff to release documenting Democrat and media corruption the leftmediaswine need a distraction.
There's some of Biljana Đurđević's aesthetic of violence pieces and spirit-cooking shyte somewhere in Epstein's pad they're not showing, I just know it. "Prove me wrong".
....Marina Abramovic's spirit-cooking shyte.
It's August. All the newsmakers and newsbreakers are in the Hamptons or Nantucket.
That being said, there is an obvious effort to keep the Epstein story in the Times reader's consciousness. I look forward to the upcoming stories on Epstein's favorite summer salad, and pasta sauce recipes.
“ 3. 2 things to angst over: declining school enrollment and a nuclear reactor on the moon.”
Yes, I can see why overpaid government employed teachers are worried about declining enrollments. A longtime mainstay of the Dem party. But looking under the surface, much of the reason is probably:
1. Increase in home schooling (and probably private schools too), because those overpaid public schoolteachers do sch a shitty job. Then their corrupt unions get the Biden Administration to give them a two year fully paid partial vacation.
2. A lot of kids of illegals have been bolstering school enrollments. Part of the welfare we have been giving them that are bankrupting our states and cities. Their parents are going back home, taking their kids with them.
3. The worldwide Baby Bust.
So, no, nothing that keeps normal people up late at night worrying about it.
And WTF would rational person obsess about nuclear reactors on the moon? There is no air there so no wind - whatsoever. And they would need to be shielding for cosmic rays already, so fallout is not really an issue there. Besides, modern reactors are far safer than the ones built 30, 40, etc years ago.
Boy, are NYT readers dumb!
The real Friedman, Kinky Friedman, died last year from complications of Parkinson's. He was a much more interesting and entertaining Friedman that Thomas.
"The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away."
Friedman wants to make America great again?
Thomas Friedman?
hasn't he died yet? Get on the BALL Tommy!
we Can't Miss You, if you Won't Leave!
Bruce, I thought we had concerns over long term debt burden, not 'lets build a nuclear reactor on the moon' sort of cash in the bank to allow for fast tracking space reactors.
The second string was in while the tops vacation in Hamptons, Moscow Heights and Beijing Bay.
Travel | 36 Hours on Jeffrey Epstein's Private Islands
The Ethicist | On Epstein's Island, am I expected to tip my underage sex slave?
Business | What stage of capitalism is this? Tesla board awards $30bn of shares to ‘energize and focus’ Elon Musk
Holy crap......I just made the mistake of reading the comments on Friedman's column. These people are not going to survive the next three and a half years.
Epstein certainly had very strange art.
This is a reminder that Friedman also fantasized about our government operating like China's. (link to the quote at Powerline) Of course that was back in 2010 when somebody else was promising to fundamentally transform the country.
You guys are on your game today…yes, the Times building dead for a week or two for the usual late summer vacations. Most of this drivel was written weeks ago..and I wondered if Friedman had died without notice, too. Guess he’s still skulking about causing problems like the bosses kid in a management position…
The most transformative six months in presidential history and the NYT goes on autopilot. Yep. Sounds right.
…sometimes wealthy people without an eye for design befriend some designer lady who curates for trendy new artists, too. That’s how you end up with looks like that. Sometimes they don’t look bad to live with but you have to neutralize if you go to sell the place…
Trump desperately wants reporters to stop talking about Epstein and instead pivot to things like Coke with real cane sugar. With that in mind, here is our Times taste test of Coke with real cane sugar.
The real test will be when they switch to Epstevia.
Does Soda Made Without High-Fructose Corn Syrup Actually Taste Better? We Did a Taste Test. ~ NYT
Is QAnon clairvoyant? They were right about pedophile infiltration, just before their time.
Members of QAnon claimed that a cabal of pedophiles had infiltrated the highest levels of our government. It turns out they were right. ~ NYT
A magic 8-ball is more clairvoyant than you, kankles.
Just reminding the Kakameister that the only place we have found evidence of illegal activity that includes an adult male's drug use and sex with underage girls is on Hunter Biden's laptop. Unless you would care to share your evidence? Shall we add Ashley Biden's diary, and all of Joe's hair-sniffing / boob-groping photo op's? Let's compare the extent and provenance of these two data sets, shall we?
Frankly, it's all about Trump 24-7. The bestseller of the NYT.
Poor Bich, spending all his day time whacking off to Epstein stories while everyone else can see the story is a dead end and always was after 2019.
“"A Look Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan Lair." As if we're into his mystique!”
Is there some other reason people are so obsessed with this guy? Ted Bundy actually raped and killed dozens of women, and he didn’t get this much attention.
I’m sure Friedman is gone too, over in Scotland somewhere -I don’t know if he likes a pint so…doing whatever he does after his round of golf…
"Slow news day."
Yeah--it's not like the largest political scandal in history, involving the successful efforts of a former president, the most well-known former first lady/senator/secretary of state/presidential nominee, the CIA, the FBI and the FISA court, to frame and hamstring the current and former President of the United States and his administration, is out there just waiting for someone from the NYT to write about it.
Let's do a piece on Epstein's apartment instead.
"Is there some other reason people are so obsessed with this guy? "
Yeah, who can figure it out. Hello? There's a call on line one, its Mr Dumb - he wants to play.
While I don't share his dour outlook I do agree with Friedman that the America we knew is rapidly slipping away. I suspect previously assumed outcomes like ever increasing globalism, diversity, and identity politics are now going to recede. I suspect a lot of the assumptions of feminism are now going to fade away as well. There is a new young pop singer named Jessie Murph who wrote a song called "1965" which laments what romance has become and wishes for a return to 1965 even with all the assumed worst problems of that era. We are in the turning of an age.
I almost feel sorry for the NYT. Reduced to competing with WAPO and CNN for the role of providing therapy to mentally deranged leftists. So sad to see the disintegration of a once great media company.
Trump's savvy decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics could be the perfect distraction from the Epstein saga. ~ NYT
Ghislaine Maxwell announced as new head of BLS. Former head Erika McEntarfer will serve Maxwell's remaining jail sentence duration. 😂
This summer’s downward revision of jobs data under Trump is a left-wing deep state conspiracy. Last summer’s downward revision under Biden was not. ~ Marc Thiessen
Why would a reactor on the moon cause any angst? These people go on and on about how they, unlike those deplorable bitter clingers, “believe in science” but it doesn’t take much to uncover their own ignorant hysteria.
Since the moon has no ecosystem that could be damaged by a nuclear power plant meltdown, it's an ideal choice for a nuclear reactor. All it could possibly damage is lifeless rocks.
We choose to build nukes on the moon!
We choose to build nukes on the moon in this decade and do some other things!
Not because distracting people from Epstein is easy!
But because distracting people from Epstein is hard!
I'm with @Money Manager. It's August. The entire East Coast shuts down in August and leaves everything to the interns.
Oops, I forgot the dread pedophile conspiracy! Watch out, they’re everywhere! There’s probably one under your bed right now! You know, where the Communists used to be!
In June of 2046, when the NYTrumpTimes is celebrating Trump's 100th birthday, Bich, if he is still alive, will be online somewhere talking about Epstein.
Can the regions defined by Anthropogenic Global Warming be extended to include the Moon, since it's within the gravitational orbit of Earth?
Bich/Kak is the poster-child for why you should never, ever let someone rent space in your head for literally nothing at all.
Why get angsty about a reactor on the moon when France is full of them, and not a windmill in sight.
"Since the moon has no ecosystem that could be damaged by a nuclear power plant meltdown, it's an ideal choice for a nuclear reactor."
I have heard no one object to environmental effects, just people wondering why we are fast tracking moon reactors when our government cannot afford to keep spending like a drunken sailor.
Explain why moon reactors are a vital need, more than say health care or cutting spending.
"I have heard no one object to environmental effects, just people wondering why we are fast tracking moon reactors when our government cannot afford to keep spending like a drunken sailor."
Mark, find a single comment you wrote during the period January 2021 until last November that you wrote complaining about our profligate federal government. A single one.
I had thought the Jeffrey Epstein story was running out of energy, but here it is back on the front page and in the top spot. But it's a real estate story: "A Look Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan Lair." As if we're into his mystique!
I certainly have no interest in the so-called aura of Epstein, but I recieved new information that I had never read about before including photographs showing Mr. Epstein smiling alongside Pope John Paul II, Mick Jagger, Elon Musk, and Fidel Castro. Also pictured were Larry Summers, former President Bill Clinton, and Richard Branson.
And the display of a first edition of the book "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov was tastelessly strange humor. So was the Bride hanging from a rope.
I did not know that Ghislaine and Jeffrey had parted ways in 2010, so the photo of Donald, Melania, and Jeffrey had been altered to remove Ghislaine.
So The Times continues to publish stuff designed to sell subscriptions.
These people are not going to survive the next three and a half years.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Fantastic post demonstrating the unbreakable ideological stasis of our betters.
Neither is front page hard news, but is the discovery of a rare book the same as the announcement of a lottery winner? There's a lottery winner every few months, but the book could sit there for decades or generations. Don't we all thrill to the story of somebody who buys something for $20 at a garage sale and finds out it's worth millions? On the other hand, stories of lottery winners can also be very interesting if they make themselves known.
If the book were Jeffrey Epstein's first edition of "Lolita" that would certainly be interesting, but no, it's apparently "The Hobbit." Ho-hum. Did Epstein read his book? I know Lolita isn't supposed to be plain old porn, but was it the moral tale some take it for? Did Epstein miss that? Was it really that easy to see - if you were already an ephebophile or hebephile or nympholept? If the "this is bad" message many readers get and the "this is cool" message some others get are both contained in the book, what then?
Heaps to say about Joseph Epstein too, but I'll save that for the obituary.
That is why, dear reader, though I am a congenital optimist
Tom Friedman is a congenital something or other.
Every president cleans house and throws out the last guy's appointees. Why is this "worse than Watergate" all of a sudden?
"The America We Knew Was Rapidly Slipping Away" when we opened the door wide to Tren de Aruagua. Where was Friedman then?
"The America We Knew Was Rapidly Slipping Away" when the government was working with Big Tech to censor Americans. What did Tom have to say about that?
The long hand of the White House reaching into West Point's faculty hiring decisions may be chilling, but West Point's questionable appointments may also contribute to TAWKRSA.
If America as we knew it is over, how does that map on the end of history?
The "America we knew" - the civil liberty stripping lockdown covid jabbing mayhem America or the 25% inflation spiral forcing Seniors back onto cat food as dinner America or the Seditious Conspiracy of fabricated Intelligence using the Fake News as willing messenger America?
I have to tip my cap to the creativity of the Democrat party and their minions in the Fake News Fishbowl.
Yancey, you admit you are a hypocrite and don't care about the deficit. Thank you for the confirmstion.
Trying to turn it into what I said makes it clear. Answer the question - why must we fast track a nuclear reactor on the moon?
"David53 said...
The real Friedman, Kinky Friedman, died last year from complications of Parkinson's. He was a much more interesting and entertaining Friedman that Thomas.
8/5/25, 10:42 AM"
They ain't makin' Jews like Kinky anymore
https://hotair.com/headlines/2025/08/04/new-york-magazine-grumbles-that-media-epstein-overkill-is-ineffective-n3805447
troll harder
the stories are not even written in an interesting way, for example what was william burns doing talking with a convicted sexual predator in 2014, same for the Clintons or any other of the curious figures,
Yancey, you admit you are a hypocrite and don't care about the deficit. Thank you for the confirmstion
No- unlike you I criticize the deficit spending no matter who is in the White House and I can prove it to you if you want- I wrote critical comments about the Big Beautiful Bill just a couple of months ago. However, I already know that you won't be able to prove that is the case for yourself since I can't remember a single Democrat on any thread on any blog that was critical of Biden's enormous deficits.
"since I can't remember a single Democrat on any thread on any blog that was critical of Biden's enormous deficits."
The last two words (and the " 's ") aren't really necessary.
The NY Times is still the best newspaper. Sorry. It is. The amount of in depth stories each day beats any news outlet I have seen. On the front web page now from the top left:
- A story about CA and TX redistricting.
- Middle of page is about a GOP House member who faced a tough town hall crowd.
- Upper right is about Dementia patients and AI.
- Further down is about Trump on a roof.
- Trump to open his own Russian investigation.
- Rare copy of Hobbit found
- Company sues TikTok over toys
- ICE offers cash for deporting immigrants - then withdraws offer
- EPA cancels 7 billion in Solar grants [that's crazy...]
- Under all that is Epstein house story. [Web sites move stories all day].
At this point we're only a 1/6th down the page. There are MANY stories to go.
Great paper. Yeah it leans liberal. Still no one has more to offer that I know of. If someone has better stories that are not just pure politics let me know. I read the Times for art, book reviews, science, history etc. It's not just a political news site.
What's the story with the bottom photo? Young couple suspended in air?
Once again, Yancey .. why reactors on the moon?
Mark said...
"Once again, Yancey .. why reactors on the moon?"
I'll answer.
For a permanent base. Part of our war with China is going to be fought in space. We want the high ground.
Why, Mark? I don't really know and neither do you. However, if the goal is permanent base on the Moon of any meaningful size and usefulness, then I think nuclear is going to be the leading power source simply due to power considerations. This wasn't Trump's idea anyway- there are quite of number of people working on building such bases who have suggested a nuclear power station will be needed. Now, we can argue that a base on the Moon is stupid, I suppose, when we have such fiscal problems but don't go around pretending you even give a shit about deficit spending since I know you would write nothing at all were it a Democrat doing all the exact same things as Trump is doing. You are the hypocrite here and everyone on this thread knows it.
"since I know you would write nothing at all were it a Democrat doing all the exact same things as Trump is doing."
I have read comments from Trump supporters and detractors criticizing the level of spending he supports on numerous blogs. As well, I have read comments from Trump supporters criticizing spending by the Democrats. What I don't see are comments from progressives complaining about Democrat spending.
Who are the hypocrites- those on the right who criticize spending by both right and left or those on the left who criticize spending by the right but remain silent when it comes to spending by the left?
The NY Times is still the best newspaper.
Sadly.
The Times replaced reporters with 17-year-old mean girls and illiterate DEIs a few years ago. Now it's low-rent Cosmopolitan, living off luxury goods ads, environmental pieties, and infusions of virgins' blood transfused from billionaires' stockpiles. Though I do love that chandelier and the room it's in. Funny none of the really creepy art is shown.
All this must be very confuing for Friedman and Kristoff. Also the tampon dispensers in the mens' rooms. Let's hope David Brooks doesn't notice them. He does doesn't notice much. I can see him trying to dry his hands under one until Gail Collins is called in to gently return him to the 19th Century fainting couch in his office.
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