"the combination of meticulousness and prurience": I'll just remark that the Nazis too were noted for their meticulousness and prurience.
"the Times has now published more than 15,000 words' worth of front-page stories asking whether care and support for young trans people might be going too far or too fast. ": You could replace "care and support for young trans people" with practically any kind of sociocultural progress. That's pretty much the essence of little-c conservatism, of which the NYT - contrary to the absurd fulminations of big-C "Conservatives" - is a reliable mouthpiece. Likewise The Atlantic.
To an appreciable degree, I suspect the NYT and its ilk and many of their subscribers fixate on such "concerns", treating them as aberrations from "normal", in order to avoid facing the fact that "normal" is over. (Or as Bruce Cockburn sang 40 years ago, "The trouble with 'normal' is, it always gets worse.") They don't want to acknowledge that the economic and political status quo is wildly unsustainable - after all, it's been very good to them - and tottering toward collapse or that most of its "leaders" are charlatans, grifters, and/or lunatics. Perish the thought the NYT should devote precious front-page space or even page A25 to describing the stupendous inequities of wealth and opportunity that now define American society, the routinized corruption that now pervades American politics, or the insane inadequacy of everything that has been done so far in the face of anthropogenic climate change. No siree. Hand-wringing about maybe-too-soon-and-they-might-regret-it-later transsexual adolescents is sooo much less threatening.
...coverage. I had to pause reading after the account of DeSantis’ demand that Florida schools report what treatments their insurance provided. His fixation on stirring anger over trans and gay people is disgusting, not something we should accept in a modern society. Florida and Qatar have much in common.
Great article. I particularly appreciate the emphasis on the problem of small numbers and the analogy to the Times’ Watergate and Iraq co
"the combination of meticulousness and prurience": I'll just remark that the Nazis too were noted for their meticulousness and prurience.
"the Times has now published more than 15,000 words' worth of front-page stories asking whether care and support for young trans people might be going too far or too fast. ": You could replace "care and support for young trans people" with practically any kind of sociocultural progress. That's pretty much the essence of little-c conservatism, of which the NYT - contrary to the absurd fulminations of big-C "Conservatives" - is a reliable mouthpiece. Likewise The Atlantic.
To an appreciable degree, I suspect the NYT and its ilk and many of their subscribers fixate on such "concerns", treating them as aberrations from "normal", in order to avoid facing the fact that "normal" is over. (Or as Bruce Cockburn sang 40 years ago, "The trouble with 'normal' is, it always gets worse.") They don't want to acknowledge that the economic and political status quo is wildly unsustainable - after all, it's been very good to them - and tottering toward collapse or that most of its "leaders" are charlatans, grifters, and/or lunatics. Perish the thought the NYT should devote precious front-page space or even page A25 to describing the stupendous inequities of wealth and opportunity that now define American society, the routinized corruption that now pervades American politics, or the insane inadequacy of everything that has been done so far in the face of anthropogenic climate change. No siree. Hand-wringing about maybe-too-soon-and-they-might-regret-it-later transsexual adolescents is sooo much less threatening.
...coverage. I had to pause reading after the account of DeSantis’ demand that Florida schools report what treatments their insurance provided. His fixation on stirring anger over trans and gay people is disgusting, not something we should accept in a modern society. Florida and Qatar have much in common.