I “liberated” this from Michael Calderone’s blog; he had a bunch of assorted bullshit spouted by Bill Keller, executive editor of the NYT. Most of it wouldn’t have warranted reading if I wasn’t comfortably ensconced in my Immobile Command Unit (I’m sick and spending as much of the day in bed as possible), but this did catch my eye:
Among Keller’s observations about the “unnerving future” of newspapers:
On the NYT: Keller predicted that the Times will be “left standing after the deluge.” Noting that readers have offered to donate money to keep the Times alive, Keller suggested that GM probably isn’t getting similar offers.
Commenting on the keep-the-Times alive movement, Keller said: “Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause.”
Oh, come on! One, you’re a douche. Darfur is genocide. The New York fucking Times is a newspaper. Granted, one of the older and perhaps more respected/well known, but Jesus H. Christ. GM has nothing to do with it; they deserve to go down because their business model sucks, not because people don’t need cars anymore. We still need cars, we just need more fuel-efficient cars (and hybrids) and fewer giant SUVs that get approximately thirty-seven feet to the gallon. GM gambled on the old American way, but that’s just not gonna fly anymore. People do not, however, still need newspapers. Saving the Times is not a high-minded cause; it’s a desperate attempt to hold back change by old people and retards. Who the hell even reads dead-tree news anymore, except for gerries, pretentious asses or some little local rag that doesn’t even have any online content because no one who works there knows how to use anything but MS Word? Print news a rapidly dying medium, and beyond saving some copies for bored kids on museum field trips a hundred years in the future to see and think, “That’s how they read their news? How primitive!” why bother with it anymore? Buggy whip manufacturers went out of business when cars took over, and the same will happen to newspapers. Save a fucking tree–put the lot of them out of business now and be done with it. Newspaper by its very design is nothing but a waste anyway; it’s meant to be disposable. I guess it can be recycled, but nobody does that here, so even though P. still reads our local paper, and it’s sometimes thinner than the goddamned flyers stuffed inside it, we still end up with a big pile of papers crammed under the kitchen sink. I hate newspapers; they can’t go the way of the buggy whip fast enough to suit me. Sure, dumbasses want to “save the Times” right now, and they’d like to think it’s an actual “cause” (it isn’t), but as gerries die off and the online generation grows up, nobody will even care about it anymore. Can’t happen soon enough for me; I hate even having to touch a newspaper because I don’t like the feel of it and hate getting cheap ink on my hands. Bird owners, puppy trainers and people shipping fragile objects will find something else…just let it go already! God, why do people insist upon holding onto old ways?
