Why do you think he’s wrong?
It’s part of the same game of playing both sides against each other.
The conservative middle class viewers know they have to fend off the poor and liberal elites. Meanwhile his conservative poor viewers know they have to fend off non-white poor and liberal elites.
The rich just have to sit back and wait for the crabs in the bucket they own do the work of making sure none of them are able to climb out.
Except crabs don’t act like that.
Some land-crabs of the West Indies and North America combine in large swarms in order to travel to the sea and to deposit therein their spawn; and each such migration implies concert, co-operation, and mutual support. As to the big Molucca crab (Limulus), I was struck (in 1882, at the Brighton Aquarium) with the extent of mutual assistance which these clumsy animals are capable of bestowing upon a comrade in case of need. One of them had fallen upon its back in a corner of the tank, and its heavy saucepan-like carapace prevented it from returning to its natural position, the more so as there was in the corner an iron bar which rendered the task still more difficult. Its comrades came to the rescue, and for one hour’s time I watched how they endeavoured to help their fellow-prisoner. They came two at once, pushed their friend from beneath, and after strenuous efforts succeeded in lifting it upright; but then the iron bar would prevent them from achieving the work of rescue, and the crab would again heavily fall upon its back. After many attempts, one of the helpers would go in the depth of the tank and bring two other crabs, which would begin with fresh forces the same pushing and lifting of their helpless comrade. We stayed in the Aquarium for more than two hours, and, when leaving, we again came to cast a glance upon the tank: the work of rescue still continued! Since I saw that, I cannot refuse credit to the observation quoted by Dr. Erasmus Darwin—namely, that “the common crab during the moulting season stations as sentinel an unmoulted or hard-shelled individual to prevent marine enemies from injuring moulted individuals in their unprotected state.”
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You’re implying that people like Rob are expressing “extreme conclusions” by claiming there’s an active and nefarious conspiracy afoot. That’s simply not what people are talking about here.
What they are talking about is a culture or mindset that leads to bad decisions like this – one of smug complacency and knee-jerk deferal to the establishment that emerges from being an affluent creative-class professional with secure econmic prospects who lives on a figurative and/or literal blue-state “magical island”, but who’s lost any real self-awareness (or at least wants to cover their self-loathing through shoddy rhetorical tricks – a speciality of some Times columnists).
I also think the NYT does highly competent and mostly good-faith journalism, which is why I feel comfortable linking to them here. But that mindset has undermined their ability to do better, and it’s reflected in their op-ed choices and also allowed hires like Judith Miller to degrade the straight reportage over the years.
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The “magical island” references the discussion here:
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No one on the left or in the center are calling for the military to “put down” the other side. Wake up.
Right? This is not at all what people are concerned about! This can very much devolve into a dangerous situation, a civil war, an end to presidential elections, etc. Anyone who has read on the history of Europe in the 20s and 30s or on Yugoslavia in the 1980s and early 90s can see dangerous parallels. This is not us being paranoid, and it’s not a shadowy plot. It’s happening in REAL TIME in front of our eyes.
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It is hard to know which op-eds the NYT has refused to run, because they don’t appear, but there are certainly cases we know of because the author whined about it, for example this one by Saint John McCain they wouldn’t run in 2008.
I don’t know from “people like Rob”. As far as I can tell I am in agreement with Rob that this was a counterproductive mistake. Others on this thread (and other threads), have drawn broader conclusions about NYT operations.
Oh, and as for
There’s this:
Do they count? Or does it have to be Al Qaeda for them to not be hypocritical?
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The NYT has been deteriorating and this editorial by bigot warhawk brain-dead Tom Cotton of Oklahoma just confirmed their failures.
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Well, yeah, the fact that you have to go back 12 years to find an example doesn’t exactly undercut my point on this.
We shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about this. Very Serious People have assured us that such talk is just hysterical, given that our institutions are sure to kick in and prevent the worst case scenario. So rest easy.
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Rob Beschizza, the author of the FPP, and those like @moortaktheundea who agree with his assessment of the NYT’s culture and mindset of blind privilege – one that’s made this more than a simple mistake". To even imply that they’re spreading conspiracy theories is to misrepresent their point.
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Tom who? It’s not journalism? Do you have a background in journalism? Do you know much about how The New York Times operates? Do you follow its reporting regularly, even daily? Anyhow, not worth debating any longer. I think a lot of people on bb want mainstream news sites to be the same as bb – one point of view, really all opinion, but just ones they agree with 100% of the time to the exclusion of all others. Not all consumers of news want that from every source we consult, so again, I am happy to have access to The Times, in addition to the countless other sources I utilize, knowing full well what The Times is and represents.
On most things I don’t, on fascism I do. Shame we can’t all be as open-minded about whether human lives have value, I guess. 
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You say this as if it’s the only perspective. Another is, they value publishing opinions from across the spectrum – the very stated purpose of the Opinion section – and sometimes, that includes columns many people, including most journalists at The Times and most other Opinion writers at The Times, strongly, vehemently disagree with.
Me, I don’t want my view of reality edited to simply be an echo chamber for what I already agree with. Especially when I go to a decidedly mainstream outlet such as The Times. I consult it specifically to understand the spectrum of views that frankly are part of the mainstream discussion – and Cotton’s is, as much as many people here (including myself) hate it, within that range. I’d rather know about it than not know about it.
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I’m very much awake, thanks.
My point was not the left and the right being played against each other. It’s the con that the the class war is drawn along philosophical lines among the non-rich, as opposed to between the rich and everyone else. Ideological Fox viewers all think that they’re on the same side, when in fact that relationship would disolve the moment ROI was at stake.
I didn’t “have to”, it is just one that made the news because the author whined. I don’t think the NYT publishes a list somewhere of op-eds they don’t publish. We at least know that if they now have a policy of always publishing op-eds by establishment figures, then that is a new policy since 12 years ago.
Where did Rob say that?
In this related FPP:
The leadership of the Times could not care less. They live in a floating world far from the contemporary anguish of American life or even the fears of their own employees. They stay close to power and avoid detail in favor of abstraction at all costs. Americans will die for their narcissitic and mendacious belief that until something is published by the paper of record, it hasn’t been given enough exposure for others to reject.
Someone’s already tried to misrepresent that statement in the comments there.
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An honest non-snarky hypothetical question: do you think it would be legitimate to criticize the NYT if it published an Op-Ed from Richard Spencer making a moral defense of lynching and defended it by arguing that they might not agree with the op-ed, but it’s important to hear opposing views?
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This was a call to kill protesters in the streets. This is a real threat to all of us who aren’t the elite 9and probably to some of them, too). 
Our democracy is disintegrating before our eyes. Right now.
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It’s what the New York Times pays its employees to do. That’s why, when it becomes more transparent, like this, a lot of them freak out. But they don’t have much power, especially at a time when well over 40 million people have lost their jobs
Eschaton
Thursday, June 04, 2020
Really Don’t Give Money To That Fucking Newspaper
I know I say that all the time, but that’s my cranky version. My real point has been:
For some reason liberals think subscribing to the New York Times is some sort of civic duty and the NYT cynically profited off of this with a massive ad campaign following the Trump election suggesting they were vitally important to being a check on Trump, and then gave us Maggie Haberman and her deferential court gossip as the primary frame for their political coverage and much other news, which gets subsumed into politics these days. If you want to support journalism with a subscription, giving money to the New York Times is like donating money to Harvard to support higher ed. They don’t need your money, and will be the last legacy print outlet standing. But, hey, sure, if you like the crosswords or just read it enough and don’t want to fight the paywall, go ahead and pay the money. Your choice. Just don’t think it’s some sort of good deed you’re doing by suPporTinG joUrnAlIsm.
But now, really, please don’t give any money to that fucking newspaper. At least until they publish my op-ed “Why Even Linking To This Newspaper is Supporting Fascism.”
Eschaton
Thursday, June 04, 2020
tHe dIvErsE MarKETpLacE oF iDeAs
I get so tired of the same dumb arguments “we” keep having, and in the middle of “all this” it is a reminder that the people who rule our discourse are stupid irresponsible moral monsters. Pareene awhile back.
Civil society requires the toleration of the expression of opposing viewpoints, no matter how personally discomforting you may find them. Therefore, it would be profoundly hypocritical for the editorial staff of the New York Times opinion section not to immediately invite me to come to their offices to call them all morons and trollies.
“But he’s a US Senator, we have to publish him!”
https://mobile.twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1268525409668403206
For the record, we have cancelled our subscription*. Instead I maintain subscriptions with our local reporter-led online paper and Talking Points Memo, among others.
* Not over this, mind, but from the litany of insults ending in a particularly egregious attempt at Trump normalizing. Update: oh, yeah, it was “Some experts disagree that drinking bleach will cure coronavirus.”
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I didn’t see that. I agree with Rob that the op-ed should not have been published, and that the timing (anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre) was especially bad, and worthy of pointing out. I don’t agree with his interpretation of Bennet’s excuse for publishing it, or with any suggestion that this was a product of NYT policy. I think it was just a combination of bad judgment, laziness, and/or not thinking things through on Bennet’s part.
ETA: by “policy” I mean their philosophy of publication, not anything about a corporate structure that allowed this editor to make a decision of this magnitude.
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Once again, he’s not suggesting it’s a product of NYT policy. He’s suggesting that it’s a product of senior management’s mindset and culture, which in turn lead to patterns of bad judgment, laziness, and not thinking things through.
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