Seriously who even reads any mainstream anything at this point? NYT or WSJ exist to line bird cages. The readership has to have an average age of 70+. It's over, the next gen doesn't care AT ALL .
There are quite a few of us with 70+ years under our belt who have known for awhile that the mainstream media are propaganda organs. I'm 74, and I figured it out several years ago. Now if only I could convince my 59-year-old sister to stop paying attention to NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, BBC etc.
Your sister isn't looking for the truth or an accurate accounting , she just wants to hear her favorite band "play the hits" even if it's total bullshit.
My older siblings ( and some friends), who are of similar age continue to believe if it’s written in the NYTIMES or WAPO or heard on NPR it’s gospel. There is no hope for them ever seeing the light. I point them to Matt and others like Michael Shellenberger but they refuse to widen their horizons. Willful ignorance is a real thing.
"WE FUCKED UP" in 96 point font above the fold is the only way the NYT will ever get me to turn to that rag for reliable information. The NYT has no journalistic standards (hasn't had for some time) and isn't today and in the future remotely concerned with informing anyone about anything.
A subscription to access the NYT archive for research purposes is a sound investment, however. The track record of their public lies from 2000 onwards is invaluable and essential reading. How long till NYT shit-cans or stealth edits the archive? Who knows?
All kudos to Matt for the moment. Matt (and Walter) still really need to re-calibrate their read of Obama and the Dems writ large from the WOT onwards. Obama was not, and never has been, one of the "good guys."
Obama embraced his role as the enthusiastic and amoral front for an era of truly epochal gang-fuckery of the American public from 2008 on - from the ACA, to Too Big To Fail, to the Security State Spying on the press, Congress, and the American public, Russiagate right up to the present. Matt's still way, way, way behind the curve on this stuff.
That said, Matt's work today is almost beyond reproach. Ditto Walter's. I'll be happily renewing my subscription to Racket. Commenters are great, too!
I quit right before Covid shutdown. All msm. Most peaceful summer in my older life. I didn’t even know about george Floyd until later—that’s how complete my blackout was. It’s still off. Removed myself from the Demwit cult not long after Biden was rolled in on a gurney.
I'm a boomer at 75 yo. I've never subscribed to a newspaper. I have not seen an alphabet newscast or local newscast since my 1984 divorce. Clinton was president for months before I even new what he looked like. Saw a pic of him and pants suit on the front of a mag at the grocery checkout line.
I'm a rural dweller that has never voted for a Dem, but found globalist like the Bush family a far cry from conservative. Obama's eight years brought the country to its knees.
I think that bad wrap the Boomers get certainly does not apply to me and other people I know - hard working, raising families of more hard working people who respect laws, pays bills and stay out of debt.
I'm 87, all my 60+ year old Nieces and 30+ year old grand Nieces are professionals working in education or health care. They all "go" with the MSM and especially former Biden government, because the government is the actual source of their income. They are all married with children and homes and practicing reasonable Christians. My daughter, 46, is one of J. D. Vance's "cat ladies," never married, lives alone, a former serious Buddhist, now a "professional" yoga instructor -actually makes a decent living (in SoCal). Some weeks a year she travels the world attending trans dance festivals as a "musician" and dancer. She's a little further Left than the Nieces. My dearly departed, at 86, wonderful sister-in-law, was an avid fan of "The View." Who can figure women today? I voted Republican in 1960, and still do.
One can only hope the MSM dies off with the boomers, of which I am one. Nearly all the people, and family I know in my age group have swallowed the MSM bullshit and refuse to even consider any of the truth.
I am also 74 and I can tell you that the nearest MSM large metropolitan newspaper is a relentless leftist rag whose derangement syndrome equals the WSJ.
Isn’t it really just Dem and Dem-adjacent vs GOP and GOP- adjacent rather than age? My 38 and 41 year old kids probably have lifetime subscriptions to NYT etc. They think Matt along w every other “substacker” can’t get a job elsewhere. Feels hopeless.
I think Walter Kirn said it best (from a very good 2023 interview) linked below:
“I have tried the case (of the MSM) and come to this conclusion for myself—that between the deceptiveness, the agenda-driven nature, and the social-media-oriented vapidity of the press, it is no longer a reliable source of information about the world. It’s a very good source of information about itself. If you wish to know who’s up and who’s down, who’s in and who’s out, who scored points and lost points, it’s a great scorecard. But if you’re looking to find out what’s going on, it’s a terrible one. In fact, it will actually conceal what’s going on in almost every respect.”
Very late Soviet. Official lies in the state paper that no one with a brain or not complicit still believes. Living in the USSA, you don’t know how lucky you are boy…
I worked with a Polish immigrant for years. He came here before the fall of the soviet union, and became a proud hardworking citizen. He told me that back in Poland everyone on his street would come out and sit on their front steps when the news came on, they all knew it was BS.
My friend I'm pretty damn close to retirement age myself. It's not a bash , it's the point that young people don't read the "papers" and believe it or not every year more of us at this part of the age spectrum will stop existing (which makes us poor readers)
We can't be blamed too much. We fucked up everything for generations to come, while turning ourselves into morbidly obese, human beach-balls.
COVID lockdowns were imposed to protect Boomer beach-balls who refused to make the effort get their BMIs below 30 and near 22. The Boomer response to the data was - "fuck the data, fuck the kids, fuck everyone, I NEED MY DING-DONGS, especially NOW when my self-loathing is peaking!!!"
BLAME the BOOMERS? Absolutely! How can we not? History certainly will. - nutless, amoral, "I've got mine" egotistical cowards who surrendered, for the most part, to the tyranny of lies and exploitation we're all enduring now.
I used to work with lots of Boomer teachers - the most loathsome were the ones who blamed the kids - I pointed out - the only ones getting paid to provide classrooms solutions - can't, or won't.
Didn't win me many friends among the Boomer bums, but my students were generally happy.
Born in '59 to squeak into the Boomer category. No one I knew ever imagined a national debt of 37 or so trillion dollars. It wasn't created nor wanted by your average hard working, middle class guy but a Cadre of Boomer shit heads got us here while gutting our manufacturing base. On our watch though, we should have been more aware and better informed and stopped it years ago. Perhaps we can make a multigenerational pact to do that now.
The self importance is stunning. Hey…ever heard of history? Maybe read some before arriving at this shallow conclusion about what one generation did or didn’t “fuck up…”
It's the overgeneralization I object to. Plenty of younger people are guilty of the same offenses.
My primary topic of interest is nutrition, so to your beachball point: something about the modern lifestyle is driving the obesity epidemic. Lifestyle factors tend to take years if not decades to manifest. So of course more older people look fat to you. Give the younger generations time, their inflationary days are approaching.
The Boomer Bums didn't have video games while growing up so of course they're loathsome Ding Dong eaters. Blaming the kids for not learning when presented with classroom solutions is the worst.
Some cut our hair and became 'yuppies' and left the commune after the lazy ones wanted a 'fair share' of the cake. David Crosby was the only one not to visit a barber but times changed and he couldn't adapt. Being the last boomer, 1964, I liked some of what we stood for but was a Reagan Democrat in '84. 'Politics is down steam from culture' Andrew Breitbart. We are in another culture war, and the blue hair girls will wash out their dyed hair soon, just hope they don't bring back Disco, please.
The birds might be smarter than our lib friends and start reading and talking what they read. All day. They are birds, however, and political nuance may be beyond them. Your plan is a good one.
You are right that the readership is old, but the problem is that the talking points disseminate across all media including TikTok. There are plenty of young people who are so far removed fro the actual news, and who have so little knowledge of history, even recent history, that they too fall in with groupthink. In fact, younger people are more susceptible to peer pressure than older people are. So it's a universal problem.
We've returned to 19th Century dailies' tribalism. The difference is they announced their devotion (eg, many of the Missouri papers appended "Democrat" or "Republican" to their names), now it's just: all news that's fit to print.
Bari Weiss and The Free Press hasn’t even reported the story. Bari is compromised because she hates Tulsi (recall the Toadie smear because she dared spoke to Assad) and Nellie worships at the feet of queen Hillary. TFP is becoming a joke.
Wow! That's some omission. I hear Bari's in line for a top executive job when the MSM cull is over and the establishment media rebrand begins - Bari's NYT to her core: biased, bigoted, lazy, smug, entitled, incurious, and "a little bit nuts."
Yeah, esp entitled. Bari will worm (and that's the right adjective) her way back into the good graces of The System in due course, if it hasn't happened already.
I terminated my subscription with Weiss a couple of years ago because she's part of the neocon-hegemon crowd who likes using tax dollars to kill people.
10/7 made it lose whatever objectivity it had prior to that time. Over time Bari has hired on dinosaurs from the MSM and intel adjacent community. So yeah, dodgy indeed.
The Free Press is nothing but warmed over turds. Pretending to be honest journalism but she is owned and controlled by Big Tech and they see the writing on the wall regarding outlets like NYT and WSJ etc. the free press only hires ex MSM journalists who have the proper liberal indoctrination in their training. Not a single true conservative voice And do not criticize Hilary too much or you will get put into time out.
They used to have Douglas Murray and occasionally Batya Ungar- Sargon, plus a few others I enjoyed but then they didn’t have my favorites any longer and I became bored and disillusioned so I cancelled my subscription. Don’t miss it at all.
I read Bari’s picks today and not one mention of this story. During the Biden years there was not one single mention of corruption until Joe was out of the race. The Free Press has great writers but I would never look to them for anything truthful
I’m curious about all the talk of Bari being granted a key position in the new “news” product to emerge from this latest merger of CBS / Paramount, apparently this deal is in the millions and gives Weiss an eagle nest perch over editorial. I’m curious what people know? Tx
I have to disagree. TFP has been pretty good on this story and I’m sure will have more, just not taking the lead as Taibbi has done. There are some weak spots but I don’t read the really lame “cultural”
humor stuff—but they have had some really good writers/thinkers and even have some ideologically diverse stuff. Most of what they’ve written would get them drummed out of the NYT newsroom for thoughtcrime.
The Free Press is in active discussions to be purchased by Skydance, the parent company of CBS. They are going the way of MSM, and have been headed that way for a while.
Definitely the case regarding her reporting on the Israel - Hamas war in Gaza. No way the NYT allows her or Matti Friedman to write on that topic in their pages.
We don't expect "an echo chamber." We expect a paper to cover all stories--no matter how they may cut politically-- without fear or favor. TFP fails massively in this regard.
Nope, TFP started out as ‘Common Sense’. I’m pointing out that they are largely ignoring the Tulsi drops that are coming out weekly now, and show Hilary and Obama to be absolutely rotten to the core. I only now subscribe to substacks that I perceive as seeking truths. TFP sometimes does this and other times fails miserably.
lol I’m surprised they haven’t gone with “Ba’athist” yet. Since, ya know, that’s a socialist Arab party. And it sounds scary since it’s an Arabic word.
Matt seems to say that the Times is mistaken, when they’re deliberately, maliciously lying. And if they were to report on the story accurately now, they’d have to admit their previous lies.
Scott Adams says that the problem with the Russiagate story is its complexity. It’s easy to understand “Trump is a Russian asset” even though it’s a bald faced lie. Explaining how/why it’s a lie is complicated, and normal people (i.e. those who don’t subscribe to Racket, lol) don’t have the patience or the will to understand it, especially when the venerable, gag, Times repeats the lie with vigor, even now.
Tak, calling the valid Trump / Russia investigations (which were unfortunately somewhat influenced by probable KGB agent Igor Danchenko) "Russiagate" is a KGB*-encouraged disinfo op in-and-of-itself, especially since the only reason it's resurfacing now is to try to divert attention from Trump's relationship with convicted child sex-trafficker and pedophile Jefferey Epstein.
Tom, Grow up and learn how to think logically. If the original Epstein files could have been used to implicate Trump in any unseemly behavior Biden would have jumped at the chance and ordered Garland( thanks to Mitch for keeping him from becoming a Supreme) to release the information with great fanfare. Dems are the ones using it to distract from their Dumpster Fire.
Sorry to disappoint you, Matty, but I'm a real person. Truth-be-told, the only reason I'm here is because my handlers told me to spread as much evil, evil, evil "Deep State" disinfo as possible.
Was Biden President when “Republican” South Florida U.S. Attorney, Alex Acosta — before he became Trump’s Secretary of Labor — gave Epstein “the deal of a lifetime” which also protected any possible coconspirators of Epstein?
No, the POTUS in 2008 (at time of Acosta led proceedings) was George W. Bush, who we MAGA disown, most especially for his WMD lies and tremendous amounts of blood and treasure wasted in the deserts of Iraq and Syria.
See how easy it is for an actual human to reply to a question? You should try it!
Anyway, check your programming. You will learn that Acosta was instructed by government handlers to go soft on Epstein plea deal at time because Jeffrey was said to be ‘intel asset adjacent’.
In my current conspiratorial thinking, Epstein minor child sex ring was (in part) to seal Financial Fixer deals between international intel and government agencies (think Iran-Contra) type deals. And likely Israel/Mossad was involved, and there is no way on God’s green earth that either major USA party is going to soil the only ‘democracy’ in the Near East by publicly exposing Epstein info that makes Israel look bad.
The correct spelling of his first name is ‘Jeffrey’. Get that part down Mr. Graves. In my current thinking the deep state spiked the Epstein punch against Trump just like they engineered Russia gate. And that’s why the docs are not released.
However, there are 2019 Epstein Grand Jury transcripts that Trump asked the DOJ to release. But so far a judge has blocked. Maybe those will come out after a lot of redactions. The public would then see what the government had on Epstein to put him away.
Are you in favor of those redacted Grand Jury transcript release?
Repeating the stories from the same people who have lied about Trump and Russia for most of a decade seems pretty close to the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
08/03/25: Hi, Yuri (hope you are well). Matt's headline is, well, misleading. NYT is doing what they're doing intentionally. Headline should be: "THE NEW YORK TIMES CAN'T STOP LYING."
It’s gotten overt. The timeless way to lie in the media is by selection and emphasis. You leave out some things and make other things seem most important. Now even the NYT editorializes in its headlines. That’s new. My hypothesis is that reporters over rely on human sources because documents that could confirm or provide nuance aren’t available. Over classification began to make government secrecy seem normal, and the national security state made secrecy permanent. At the same time, dissent within the bureaucracy was shut down. We saw the party line enforced on the public at large, once the bureaucracy could be made to follow in lockstep. What does that do to reporters who rely on insider sources? They become totally dependent on what they are told, because there really isn’t a way to independently confirm or learn the context of what they hear. This much is baked into the cake, but the icing is the willingness of reporters to regurgitate what they are told as if it’s gospel. My hypothesis on that is that today’s reporters think of themselves as part of the ruling class they report on.
I like your comment and Grape Soda's very much! Just watched Matt on Fox with Brian Kilmeade. You can almost feel Bard Matt cringing while crediting Fox with getting Russiagate mostly right!. To your point and Grape Soda's, the NYT establishment is definitely in retreat and cower mode.
Today the NYT write's "could it be that Matt and others are wrong about who wrote the emails in the Durman annex?"
Before Tulsi - the response would have been "Matt Taibbi lived and studied in Russia - if Taibbi isn't an active agent working for Putin, then the very best that can said of Taibbi is that he's Useful Idiot actively working to undermine the security of the United States.
Cried wolf, lots of times, for a long, long time. No wolf, no pack, no howl.
Just crooks and cowards blinking in the spotlight - NYT included!
Wasn’t there an almost incestuous relationship between the press and Obama’s administration? I seem to remember members of his administration married to members of the press - and members of the press leaving to join his campaign. It was jaw dropping.
NYT: This is the same entity that this week splashed a full-color photo of “a starving Gaza child” on its front page—omitting that this child is a victim of a terrible neurological disease, not “starvation”, and also cutting from the photographic image the child’s perfectly healthy brother.
Matt - if you want to understand why the media is what it is today, you need to deconstruct the collegiate journalism these people were taught for at least the last 30-40 years (maybe skipping the last 10 or so, because god only knows there). The path that became the mainstream versus those like yourself that didn't get a journalism degree. What qualifications does a college professor in journalism actually possess in order to teach journalism? What kind of "research" qualifies for a PhD dissertation? That's where the bullshit factory is built.
American education is a self sustaining feedback loop that never intersects with reality. in general, Teachers dont know shit except how to create more teachers whose only knowlege is how to work for the education system.
I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have attempted to convince people the NYT is a propaganda organ. I have probably tried to convince 25 or 30 people. I believe I have succeeded with two of those people, but maybe only because they were primed to start doubting the NYT a couple years ago when their 35-year-old son began insisting the NYT was propaganda.
To most of these people I have recommended Ashley Rindsberg's excellent book _The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History_. I doubt any of them have read it, though. They are so thoroughly indoctrinated that reading such a book is anathema to them. They simply cannot allow themselves to do it.
There is a glory hole in Manhattan where all the DNC, CIA, FBI slime and HRC go to unload. On the other side of the wall is Charlie Savage with mouth wide open…
I think: 1. We are becoming more aware of crap that was always there, and also 2. Since Covid began, the elite psychopaths have been piling on much more crap than they had been piling on prior to Covid.
By almost every metric life for people has improved by miles in the last century, especially. Infant mortality figures, health, literacy, literacy among women (remains a challenge). Death from wars is much lower than during the 20th century. Cancer diagnosis and treatment. Morbidity is the greatest challenge we face in the west - when we choose illness, ill-health, and early death from questionable lifestyle choices.
There are lots of Boomers here - remember what going to the dentist - used to be like. Better today, no? Much, much better!
My head is spinning. There have been so many revelations and blatant CYA's this past week, it is refreshing to read such clear and detailed analyses by Matt. Thanks Matt for helping unravel this riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But what are we supposed to expect when out Intelligence Services are involved and spinning to a willing Press.
If there is any justice in this world, job seekers citing their past tenure at the NYT will soon join those claiming a Harvard pedigree.
BTW, one disgusting thing that still goes unmentioned is the way the Clinton campaign distracted everyone from the actual content of the Wikileaks email exposure by making it a question of the leak source. It was briefly noted at the time that no one whose emails were exposed actually denied that they were authentic. And even today, slimeballs like John Podesta still hold down responsible (and no doubt highly-compensated) positions in this sleazy bureaucracy.
Holodomor, Iraq WMD, Russiagate, Covid, Gaza, etc. NYT’s wall of shame grows. The real question is how anyone still believes them.
Seriously who even reads any mainstream anything at this point? NYT or WSJ exist to line bird cages. The readership has to have an average age of 70+. It's over, the next gen doesn't care AT ALL .
There are quite a few of us with 70+ years under our belt who have known for awhile that the mainstream media are propaganda organs. I'm 74, and I figured it out several years ago. Now if only I could convince my 59-year-old sister to stop paying attention to NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, BBC etc.
Your sister isn't looking for the truth or an accurate accounting , she just wants to hear her favorite band "play the hits" even if it's total bullshit.
Michael, you are 100% correct.
The most important thing I learned during Covid is that most people believe what they believe simply because they want to believe it.
Had a very bright academic Dem explicitly admit as much - when pinned.
My older siblings ( and some friends), who are of similar age continue to believe if it’s written in the NYTIMES or WAPO or heard on NPR it’s gospel. There is no hope for them ever seeing the light. I point them to Matt and others like Michael Shellenberger but they refuse to widen their horizons. Willful ignorance is a real thing.
I have the same issue with some in my circle.
There are more rear ends than bodies out there, and these folks it’s where their brains located.
Same here.
I'm 66 & I never read that crap.
"WE FUCKED UP" in 96 point font above the fold is the only way the NYT will ever get me to turn to that rag for reliable information. The NYT has no journalistic standards (hasn't had for some time) and isn't today and in the future remotely concerned with informing anyone about anything.
A subscription to access the NYT archive for research purposes is a sound investment, however. The track record of their public lies from 2000 onwards is invaluable and essential reading. How long till NYT shit-cans or stealth edits the archive? Who knows?
All kudos to Matt for the moment. Matt (and Walter) still really need to re-calibrate their read of Obama and the Dems writ large from the WOT onwards. Obama was not, and never has been, one of the "good guys."
Obama embraced his role as the enthusiastic and amoral front for an era of truly epochal gang-fuckery of the American public from 2008 on - from the ACA, to Too Big To Fail, to the Security State Spying on the press, Congress, and the American public, Russiagate right up to the present. Matt's still way, way, way behind the curve on this stuff.
That said, Matt's work today is almost beyond reproach. Ditto Walter's. I'll be happily renewing my subscription to Racket. Commenters are great, too!
I guess I was an early bloomer, I grew up reading 2 papers in my household, I developed a discerning eye for BS at an early age.
Can't help myself replying. I'm 84 and didn't either. :). But even stopped reading WSJ.
I must admit to the occasional curiosity. They do suck.
I quit right before Covid shutdown. All msm. Most peaceful summer in my older life. I didn’t even know about george Floyd until later—that’s how complete my blackout was. It’s still off. Removed myself from the Demwit cult not long after Biden was rolled in on a gurney.
I'm a boomer at 75 yo. I've never subscribed to a newspaper. I have not seen an alphabet newscast or local newscast since my 1984 divorce. Clinton was president for months before I even new what he looked like. Saw a pic of him and pants suit on the front of a mag at the grocery checkout line.
I'm a rural dweller that has never voted for a Dem, but found globalist like the Bush family a far cry from conservative. Obama's eight years brought the country to its knees.
I think that bad wrap the Boomers get certainly does not apply to me and other people I know - hard working, raising families of more hard working people who respect laws, pays bills and stay out of debt.
I’m in that camp too.
hear, hear
I'm 87, all my 60+ year old Nieces and 30+ year old grand Nieces are professionals working in education or health care. They all "go" with the MSM and especially former Biden government, because the government is the actual source of their income. They are all married with children and homes and practicing reasonable Christians. My daughter, 46, is one of J. D. Vance's "cat ladies," never married, lives alone, a former serious Buddhist, now a "professional" yoga instructor -actually makes a decent living (in SoCal). Some weeks a year she travels the world attending trans dance festivals as a "musician" and dancer. She's a little further Left than the Nieces. My dearly departed, at 86, wonderful sister-in-law, was an avid fan of "The View." Who can figure women today? I voted Republican in 1960, and still do.
We really don’t want them to change we love them as they are but our hopes are they try to have an open mind occasionally.
One can only hope the MSM dies off with the boomers, of which I am one. Nearly all the people, and family I know in my age group have swallowed the MSM bullshit and refuse to even consider any of the truth.
That sounds like many of my family and friends, just knee-deep in BS and ready to suck up more.
I am also 74 and I can tell you that the nearest MSM large metropolitan newspaper is a relentless leftist rag whose derangement syndrome equals the WSJ.
Isn’t it really just Dem and Dem-adjacent vs GOP and GOP- adjacent rather than age? My 38 and 41 year old kids probably have lifetime subscriptions to NYT etc. They think Matt along w every other “substacker” can’t get a job elsewhere. Feels hopeless.
At least Maher & Co. are closing up shop. Not sure where the effete listeners will go. Shortwave radio, maybe? Voice of California?
It's pointless to try, as it likely serves her need for confirmation bias.
I think Walter Kirn said it best (from a very good 2023 interview) linked below:
“I have tried the case (of the MSM) and come to this conclusion for myself—that between the deceptiveness, the agenda-driven nature, and the social-media-oriented vapidity of the press, it is no longer a reliable source of information about the world. It’s a very good source of information about itself. If you wish to know who’s up and who’s down, who’s in and who’s out, who scored points and lost points, it’s a great scorecard. But if you’re looking to find out what’s going on, it’s a terrible one. In fact, it will actually conceal what’s going on in almost every respect.”
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/07/25/walter-kirn-on-how-america-lost-the-plot/
Excellent point….MSM is essentially no better than TMZ
Very late Soviet. Official lies in the state paper that no one with a brain or not complicit still believes. Living in the USSA, you don’t know how lucky you are boy…
I worked with a Polish immigrant for years. He came here before the fall of the soviet union, and became a proud hardworking citizen. He told me that back in Poland everyone on his street would come out and sit on their front steps when the news came on, they all knew it was BS.
Fantastic interview! Thanks for the link.
I'm 71 and I'm here too. Getting tired of boomer-bashing.
My friend I'm pretty damn close to retirement age myself. It's not a bash , it's the point that young people don't read the "papers" and believe it or not every year more of us at this part of the age spectrum will stop existing (which makes us poor readers)
Only boomers get the area newspaper around me and listen to all the msm. I’m 77. Haven’t touched any of it for years.
We can't be blamed too much. We fucked up everything for generations to come, while turning ourselves into morbidly obese, human beach-balls.
COVID lockdowns were imposed to protect Boomer beach-balls who refused to make the effort get their BMIs below 30 and near 22. The Boomer response to the data was - "fuck the data, fuck the kids, fuck everyone, I NEED MY DING-DONGS, especially NOW when my self-loathing is peaking!!!"
BLAME the BOOMERS? Absolutely! How can we not? History certainly will. - nutless, amoral, "I've got mine" egotistical cowards who surrendered, for the most part, to the tyranny of lies and exploitation we're all enduring now.
I used to work with lots of Boomer teachers - the most loathsome were the ones who blamed the kids - I pointed out - the only ones getting paid to provide classrooms solutions - can't, or won't.
Didn't win me many friends among the Boomer bums, but my students were generally happy.
Born in '59 to squeak into the Boomer category. No one I knew ever imagined a national debt of 37 or so trillion dollars. It wasn't created nor wanted by your average hard working, middle class guy but a Cadre of Boomer shit heads got us here while gutting our manufacturing base. On our watch though, we should have been more aware and better informed and stopped it years ago. Perhaps we can make a multigenerational pact to do that now.
The self importance is stunning. Hey…ever heard of history? Maybe read some before arriving at this shallow conclusion about what one generation did or didn’t “fuck up…”
It's the overgeneralization I object to. Plenty of younger people are guilty of the same offenses.
My primary topic of interest is nutrition, so to your beachball point: something about the modern lifestyle is driving the obesity epidemic. Lifestyle factors tend to take years if not decades to manifest. So of course more older people look fat to you. Give the younger generations time, their inflationary days are approaching.
The Boomer Bums didn't have video games while growing up so of course they're loathsome Ding Dong eaters. Blaming the kids for not learning when presented with classroom solutions is the worst.
Counterintuitive, isn't it, that the hippies became the barons of capitalism, eh?
Some cut our hair and became 'yuppies' and left the commune after the lazy ones wanted a 'fair share' of the cake. David Crosby was the only one not to visit a barber but times changed and he couldn't adapt. Being the last boomer, 1964, I liked some of what we stood for but was a Reagan Democrat in '84. 'Politics is down steam from culture' Andrew Breitbart. We are in another culture war, and the blue hair girls will wash out their dyed hair soon, just hope they don't bring back Disco, please.
Abbie Hoffman went from Yuppie to entrepreneur, in other words, to being a entrepreneur in a different racket.
Categorizing people into groups has never led to bad outcomes apparently...
Ditto
😂
I have colleagues in their 30’s and 40’s who look to the NYTimes as their bible
Remove them as colleagues.
Not that easy….
I remember when I considered myself a liberal intellectual because I read the Times. 🙄 Then I woke up. These millennials are the same way I’m sure.
Me too!
But living in a hyper Blue city I see no sign of awakenings
A sickness of the body politic but one that will be eventually cured .. one way or another.
Funny you should say that…when I cancelled my subscription they asked why I was doing that. I said: “My canary died.”
Ha ha ha ha ha!!!
I'm 71, and have read neither paper/birdcage liner for 20 years.
I'm over 70 and dropped these empty shells decades ago. A rebel against the rebellion.
When I cancelled I told them that purpose of news is to inform and not to tell me how I'm supposed to feel about it.
My mother in law , she’s for the most part a lovely woman but it’s like talking with a retard.
For the record, I have birds and would never mistreat them like that!
The birds might be smarter than our lib friends and start reading and talking what they read. All day. They are birds, however, and political nuance may be beyond them. Your plan is a good one.
Do they still print this drivel?
You are right that the readership is old, but the problem is that the talking points disseminate across all media including TikTok. There are plenty of young people who are so far removed fro the actual news, and who have so little knowledge of history, even recent history, that they too fall in with groupthink. In fact, younger people are more susceptible to peer pressure than older people are. So it's a universal problem.
We've returned to 19th Century dailies' tribalism. The difference is they announced their devotion (eg, many of the Missouri papers appended "Democrat" or "Republican" to their names), now it's just: all news that's fit to print.
😆
Bari Weiss and The Free Press hasn’t even reported the story. Bari is compromised because she hates Tulsi (recall the Toadie smear because she dared spoke to Assad) and Nellie worships at the feet of queen Hillary. TFP is becoming a joke.
Wow! That's some omission. I hear Bari's in line for a top executive job when the MSM cull is over and the establishment media rebrand begins - Bari's NYT to her core: biased, bigoted, lazy, smug, entitled, incurious, and "a little bit nuts."
Yeah, esp entitled. Bari will worm (and that's the right adjective) her way back into the good graces of The System in due course, if it hasn't happened already.
Bari is about to sell The Free Press to Skydance Media, which is the parent company of CBS. She’s a sell out extraordinaire.
I terminated my subscription with Weiss a couple of years ago because she's part of the neocon-hegemon crowd who likes using tax dollars to kill people.
Same here, I smelled a stinking fish and jumped ship.
I liked TFP at first, but I stopped liking it after I got to know more about Bari and Nellie.
That endeavor (TFP) has been dodgy from the getgo
10/7 made it lose whatever objectivity it had prior to that time. Over time Bari has hired on dinosaurs from the MSM and intel adjacent community. So yeah, dodgy indeed.
Hired legacy media people? Are you serious?
Keep up Frank. Here ya go.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/free-press-skydance-acquisition-talks.html
The Free Press is nothing but warmed over turds. Pretending to be honest journalism but she is owned and controlled by Big Tech and they see the writing on the wall regarding outlets like NYT and WSJ etc. the free press only hires ex MSM journalists who have the proper liberal indoctrination in their training. Not a single true conservative voice And do not criticize Hilary too much or you will get put into time out.
They used to have Douglas Murray and occasionally Batya Ungar- Sargon, plus a few others I enjoyed but then they didn’t have my favorites any longer and I became bored and disillusioned so I cancelled my subscription. Don’t miss it at all.
I read Bari’s picks today and not one mention of this story. During the Biden years there was not one single mention of corruption until Joe was out of the race. The Free Press has great writers but I would never look to them for anything truthful
Correction, Matt: The Free Press (and Bari) is a joke.
I subscribed for a month recently to read Martin Gurri’s bit on Covid and another related article. Other than that it’s a snooze.
Hey, Bari has offers to buy FP. I bet she’s laying low right now.
Is
I’m curious about all the talk of Bari being granted a key position in the new “news” product to emerge from this latest merger of CBS / Paramount, apparently this deal is in the millions and gives Weiss an eagle nest perch over editorial. I’m curious what people know? Tx
Yes, it’s MSM 2.0. And how disappointing that is after Bari’s departure from The NYT and invite to investigate the Twitter Files.
I have to disagree. TFP has been pretty good on this story and I’m sure will have more, just not taking the lead as Taibbi has done. There are some weak spots but I don’t read the really lame “cultural”
humor stuff—but they have had some really good writers/thinkers and even have some ideologically diverse stuff. Most of what they’ve written would get them drummed out of the NYT newsroom for thoughtcrime.
The Free Press is in active discussions to be purchased by Skydance, the parent company of CBS. They are going the way of MSM, and have been headed that way for a while.
Definitely the case regarding her reporting on the Israel - Hamas war in Gaza. No way the NYT allows her or Matti Friedman to write on that topic in their pages.
You've explained it perfectly, flyoverdriver.
No it hasn't. Not even close.
Bingo! as the Big Guy might say..
TFP ain't an echochamber. Evidently, that's what you expected when you subscribed.
We don't expect "an echo chamber." We expect a paper to cover all stories--no matter how they may cut politically-- without fear or favor. TFP fails massively in this regard.
Nope, TFP started out as ‘Common Sense’. I’m pointing out that they are largely ignoring the Tulsi drops that are coming out weekly now, and show Hilary and Obama to be absolutely rotten to the core. I only now subscribe to substacks that I perceive as seeking truths. TFP sometimes does this and other times fails miserably.
What I *expected* was that a forum that calls themselves The FREE Press, wouldn't censor views they disagreed with.
THAT is what made me cancel.
Same. Almost exactly.
There’s an exceedingly long line of vapid sycophants eager to be spoonfed buckets of bullshit as long as the spoon is sterling.
Hey they're going to elect a communist for mayor. They're nothing less than just pure stupid.
Well he’s either a communist or a Muslim but he can’t be both because Communism is a secular cult and Islam is a fully integrated religious system.
lol I’m surprised they haven’t gone with “Ba’athist” yet. Since, ya know, that’s a socialist Arab party. And it sounds scary since it’s an Arabic word.
Matt seems to say that the Times is mistaken, when they’re deliberately, maliciously lying. And if they were to report on the story accurately now, they’d have to admit their previous lies.
Scott Adams says that the problem with the Russiagate story is its complexity. It’s easy to understand “Trump is a Russian asset” even though it’s a bald faced lie. Explaining how/why it’s a lie is complicated, and normal people (i.e. those who don’t subscribe to Racket, lol) don’t have the patience or the will to understand it, especially when the venerable, gag, Times repeats the lie with vigor, even now.
They need to be sued into oblivion.
Problem is, they're shameless.
Their circulation down to just the hard core Socialist Marxists Dictators?
Dear Yuri,
Tak, calling the valid Trump / Russia investigations (which were unfortunately somewhat influenced by probable KGB agent Igor Danchenko) "Russiagate" is a KGB*-encouraged disinfo op in-and-of-itself, especially since the only reason it's resurfacing now is to try to divert attention from Trump's relationship with convicted child sex-trafficker and pedophile Jefferey Epstein.
Let me know how that works out.
*Today's SVR and FSB
-- Tom
Tom, Grow up and learn how to think logically. If the original Epstein files could have been used to implicate Trump in any unseemly behavior Biden would have jumped at the chance and ordered Garland( thanks to Mitch for keeping him from becoming a Supreme) to release the information with great fanfare. Dems are the ones using it to distract from their Dumpster Fire.
I think ‘Thomas Graves’ might be a bot 🤖 ?
Sorry to disappoint you, Matty, but I'm a real person. Truth-be-told, the only reason I'm here is because my handlers told me to spread as much evil, evil, evil "Deep State" disinfo as possible.
Was Biden President when “Republican” South Florida U.S. Attorney, Alex Acosta — before he became Trump’s Secretary of Labor — gave Epstein “the deal of a lifetime” which also protected any possible coconspirators of Epstein?
No, the POTUS in 2008 (at time of Acosta led proceedings) was George W. Bush, who we MAGA disown, most especially for his WMD lies and tremendous amounts of blood and treasure wasted in the deserts of Iraq and Syria.
See how easy it is for an actual human to reply to a question? You should try it!
Anyway, check your programming. You will learn that Acosta was instructed by government handlers to go soft on Epstein plea deal at time because Jeffrey was said to be ‘intel asset adjacent’.
In my current conspiratorial thinking, Epstein minor child sex ring was (in part) to seal Financial Fixer deals between international intel and government agencies (think Iran-Contra) type deals. And likely Israel/Mossad was involved, and there is no way on God’s green earth that either major USA party is going to soil the only ‘democracy’ in the Near East by publicly exposing Epstein info that makes Israel look bad.
100,000%
Well put. They charge Trump with 95 felonies in four different federal and state courts, but they were holding Epstein back, just in case. Sure
The correct spelling of his first name is ‘Jeffrey’. Get that part down Mr. Graves. In my current thinking the deep state spiked the Epstein punch against Trump just like they engineered Russia gate. And that’s why the docs are not released.
However, there are 2019 Epstein Grand Jury transcripts that Trump asked the DOJ to release. But so far a judge has blocked. Maybe those will come out after a lot of redactions. The public would then see what the government had on Epstein to put him away.
Are you in favor of those redacted Grand Jury transcript release?
Jeffrey.
As in Jeffrey "Yuri Nosenko Was a True Defector" Morley?
Good. Now, how about a reply to the question on 2019 GJ release, that Trump asked for. What say you? Do you support?
Repeating the stories from the same people who have lied about Trump and Russia for most of a decade seems pretty close to the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
How many red (pardon the pun) pills did you take, anyway?
You don’t have to sign your comments. Crawl out of your ass. Your name is at the top of every comment Abraham Lincoln. Settle down.
08/03/25: Hi, Yuri (hope you are well). Matt's headline is, well, misleading. NYT is doing what they're doing intentionally. Headline should be: "THE NEW YORK TIMES CAN'T STOP LYING."
I agree: “Give back your Pulitzer, you clowns!” The New York Times is a disgrace.
They really should return a lot of hardware, going back at least a century if not more.
It’s gotten overt. The timeless way to lie in the media is by selection and emphasis. You leave out some things and make other things seem most important. Now even the NYT editorializes in its headlines. That’s new. My hypothesis is that reporters over rely on human sources because documents that could confirm or provide nuance aren’t available. Over classification began to make government secrecy seem normal, and the national security state made secrecy permanent. At the same time, dissent within the bureaucracy was shut down. We saw the party line enforced on the public at large, once the bureaucracy could be made to follow in lockstep. What does that do to reporters who rely on insider sources? They become totally dependent on what they are told, because there really isn’t a way to independently confirm or learn the context of what they hear. This much is baked into the cake, but the icing is the willingness of reporters to regurgitate what they are told as if it’s gospel. My hypothesis on that is that today’s reporters think of themselves as part of the ruling class they report on.
Very good!
I like your comment and Grape Soda's very much! Just watched Matt on Fox with Brian Kilmeade. You can almost feel Bard Matt cringing while crediting Fox with getting Russiagate mostly right!. To your point and Grape Soda's, the NYT establishment is definitely in retreat and cower mode.
Today the NYT write's "could it be that Matt and others are wrong about who wrote the emails in the Durman annex?"
Before Tulsi - the response would have been "Matt Taibbi lived and studied in Russia - if Taibbi isn't an active agent working for Putin, then the very best that can said of Taibbi is that he's Useful Idiot actively working to undermine the security of the United States.
Cried wolf, lots of times, for a long, long time. No wolf, no pack, no howl.
Just crooks and cowards blinking in the spotlight - NYT included!
'Too BIG to Fail' they said. On his way out the door Bush Jr. bailed out the fraudsters with the votes of Ds and then Obama added $800 Billion.
36 Trillion in debt and what do we have to show for it? Rusted tank hulls in foreign lands and NGOs rolling in dough, 'apparently'. DOGE our $ back.
Wasn’t there an almost incestuous relationship between the press and Obama’s administration? I seem to remember members of his administration married to members of the press - and members of the press leaving to join his campaign. It was jaw dropping.
NYT: This is the same entity that this week splashed a full-color photo of “a starving Gaza child” on its front page—omitting that this child is a victim of a terrible neurological disease, not “starvation”, and also cutting from the photographic image the child’s perfectly healthy brother.
I’ve given up on expecting “news” from it.
Headline from two days ago: "Why Rising Rates of Autism and ADHD Might Be a Good Sign".
Good grief!
You don't really think the NYT cares about getting this story "right," do you? C'mon, man!
Matt - if you want to understand why the media is what it is today, you need to deconstruct the collegiate journalism these people were taught for at least the last 30-40 years (maybe skipping the last 10 or so, because god only knows there). The path that became the mainstream versus those like yourself that didn't get a journalism degree. What qualifications does a college professor in journalism actually possess in order to teach journalism? What kind of "research" qualifies for a PhD dissertation? That's where the bullshit factory is built.
“Those that Can, DO; those that CAN’T DO… TEACH!”
Yeah, now put that into the context of teaching teachers and getting a doctorate in education.
...bunch of made up college majors so halfwits could get a degree...
And those that can’t teach, teach physical Ed.
Nope, they go into HR...
American education is a self sustaining feedback loop that never intersects with reality. in general, Teachers dont know shit except how to create more teachers whose only knowlege is how to work for the education system.
One thinks he knows...
He knows the output, and in rough terms the how; but the details? Think of his work describing the foibles of the finance world in Griftopia.
"The New York Times....a former newspaper."
Andrew Klavan
I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have attempted to convince people the NYT is a propaganda organ. I have probably tried to convince 25 or 30 people. I believe I have succeeded with two of those people, but maybe only because they were primed to start doubting the NYT a couple years ago when their 35-year-old son began insisting the NYT was propaganda.
To most of these people I have recommended Ashley Rindsberg's excellent book _The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History_. I doubt any of them have read it, though. They are so thoroughly indoctrinated that reading such a book is anathema to them. They simply cannot allow themselves to do it.
I read that book and it should be a nationwide realization that the NY Times is and always has been a garbage institution.
Why do you expect any credibility from the outlet playing Hamas's bitch?
Yes.
Matt. This is a religion you’re fighting. Keep up the great work!
The NYT lies about the revelations that Tulsi is putting out there and the WSJ just ignores it. Not one single word.
There is a glory hole in Manhattan where all the DNC, CIA, FBI slime and HRC go to unload. On the other side of the wall is Charlie Savage with mouth wide open…
That is a graphic I did not need, though your point seems accurate.
Ok, that comment is way over the top.
And I applaud you for it.
LO fucking L
Is the world getting worse, or are we just becoming more aware of the crap that was always already there?
Sincere question, with thanks in advance for responses!
well slavery is over. hard to notice since the democrats never stop talking about it.
I think: 1. We are becoming more aware of crap that was always there, and also 2. Since Covid began, the elite psychopaths have been piling on much more crap than they had been piling on prior to Covid.
I think it's always been like this, but we see it more publicly now. We still can't seem to stop it though
I have asked myself the same question for some time now...
By almost every metric life for people has improved by miles in the last century, especially. Infant mortality figures, health, literacy, literacy among women (remains a challenge). Death from wars is much lower than during the 20th century. Cancer diagnosis and treatment. Morbidity is the greatest challenge we face in the west - when we choose illness, ill-health, and early death from questionable lifestyle choices.
There are lots of Boomers here - remember what going to the dentist - used to be like. Better today, no? Much, much better!
Anyone expecting the legacy media to apologize for being the lap dog to the deep state will be disappointed.
It's integral to it.
Nobel Peace Prize for Trump and a Pulitzer for Taibbi!
With respect - neither prize carries any value - as long as Obama and the NYT hold theirs.
No argument. Lots & lots of wrongs need righting. It's thrilling to see this possibility moving in the right direction for a change.
My head is spinning. There have been so many revelations and blatant CYA's this past week, it is refreshing to read such clear and detailed analyses by Matt. Thanks Matt for helping unravel this riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But what are we supposed to expect when out Intelligence Services are involved and spinning to a willing Press.
If there is any justice in this world, job seekers citing their past tenure at the NYT will soon join those claiming a Harvard pedigree.
BTW, one disgusting thing that still goes unmentioned is the way the Clinton campaign distracted everyone from the actual content of the Wikileaks email exposure by making it a question of the leak source. It was briefly noted at the time that no one whose emails were exposed actually denied that they were authentic. And even today, slimeballs like John Podesta still hold down responsible (and no doubt highly-compensated) positions in this sleazy bureaucracy.