Is There No Barking Because It's A Dog?

Here is the curious incident of the NY Times offering a press release that crows about increases in web-site traffic across the board but makes no mention of the progress or results for Times Select.

Comments

[TexasToast]

MoDo pulls no punches. I hope I never get on her bad side.

[TM]

If you are referring specifically to her column today about Judy Miller, I would say she was remarkably respectful - there could have been lots of snark about Judy riding the coat-tails of her famous hubby, or comments about a scholo girl crush on Rummy and the manly neo-cons.

I'm not saying it was a bad column - actually, it was OK, but mainly because it was quite different from her normal catty drivel.

[TexasToast]

Respectful?

I wouldn't think that labeling her as the "Fourth Estate's Becky Sharpe" and suggesting that she was a suck up to powerful men was very respectful.

Seems to me she basically said "the paper trusted you, you lied to us/them, you let the paper defend your going to jail when you only went in an attempt to rehabilitate your career, and if they let you stay, I fear for the paper. Don't let the door hit your backside on the way out the door."

In short, you are a drama queen liar and a whore to boot.

Ouch.

[TM]

Ahh, well, Roger Ailes has extensive excerpts here.

And all I am saying is, MoDo did *not* call her a drama queen, or invent a cute nickname.

As to her intro:

I have often wondered what Waugh or Thackeray would have made of the Fourth Estate's Becky Sharp.

Pardon my ignorance, but who is Becky Sharp? As insults go, that does not exactly leap off the page, to me anyway.

[TM]

My first seemingly relevant search gave me this:

None of the novel's characters is more memorable than Becky Sharp, one of Victorian literature's most remarkable creations. While Thackeray's narrator takes pains to expose Becky's subterfuges and to insinuate sexual immorality and even murder, we cannot help but admire her intelligence and élan. Alone among the novel's major characters, she is not content to live out the life she was born into—that of a governess. Lacking money and family, she uses the only tools at her disposal, sex and cunning, to seek advancement in the world. Her success in gaining entrée to society's most exclusive circles, despite the hostility of her husband's family and a chronic lack of cash, is a testament to Becky's audacity and brilliance, her ultimate downfall notwithstanding.

A pretty mixed insult, I think.

[TexasToast]

Thackeray - "Vanity Fair"

Greed, gold-digging and deception sit at the heart of "Vanity Fair." It's no joke that it's subtitled "a novel without a hero" -- William Makepeace Thackeray mercilessly skewered the pretentions and flaws of the upper class all throughout it. The result is a gloriously witty social satire.

It opens with two young women departing from a ladies' academy: dull, sweet Amelia (rich) and fiery sharp-witted Rebecca (poor). Becky Sharp is a relentless social climber, and her first effort to rise "above her station" is by trying to get Amelia's brother to marry her -- an effort thwarted by Amelia's fiancee. So instead she gets married to another family's second son, Rawdon Crawley.

Unfortunately, both young couples quickly get disinherited and George is killed. But Becky is determined to live the good life she has worked and married for -- she obtains jewels and money from admiring gentlemen, disrupting her marriage. But a little thing like a tarnished reputation isn't enough to keep Becky down...

Like most nineteenth-century writers, Thackeray had a very dense, formal writing style -- but once you get used to it, his writing becomes insanely funny. Witticisms and quips litter the pages, even if you don't pick them all up at once. At first Thackeray seems incredibly cynical (Becky's little schemes almost always pay off), but taken as a social satire, it's easier to understand why he was so cynical about the society of the time.

Becky Sharp is the quintessential anti-heroine -- she's very greedy and cold, yet she's also so smart and determined that it's hard not to have a grudging liking for her. Certainly life hasn't been fair for her. Next to Becky, a goody-goody character like Amelia is pretty boring, and even the unsubtle George can't measure up to Becky.

[Lesley]

Think Scarlett O'Hara and you've pretty much got it nailed (Peggy Mitchell may have been more influenced by VF than she realized, or archetypes are archetypes for a reason) except, unlike Scarlett who has her moment of "enlightenment" at the end of GWTW, Becky never does.

[TM]

Think Scarlett O'Hara and you've pretty much got it nailed

Troubling - I *was* thinking Scarlett, and I know plenty of women who adore her.

I want to put some character from "East of Eden" in the mix, too, but I am drawing an absolute blank.

[Lesley]

TM, Becky Sharpe is a much darker character than Scarlett O'Hara, although archetypally similar. I consulted my Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and found this:

"A Regular Becky Sharp" - an unprincipled, scheming young woman, who by cunning, hypocrisy, good looks and native nous* raises herself from obscurity and poverty to some position in society, but falls to earth in due course after maintaining a more or less precarious foothold.

*nous - (Greek, mind, intellect) A word adopted in English to denote intelligence, horse sense, understanding. 'Nous' was the Platonic term for mind, or the first cause, and the system of divinity referred to above is that which springs from blind nature.

Hope this creates a better picture for you.

[Lesley]

Addendum

Thackeray's choice of the name 'Sharp' was no accident and would have been easily recognized by his readers: Sharp, Sharp practice: Smart, underhand or dishonourable dealing; low-down trickery intended to advantage oneself.

It was a pointed literary insult (MoDo v Judy) for sure.

[Lesley]

"In its most recent quarter, the New York Times Company earned $60.8 million on $845 million in sales. This is a 7.2% profit margin, about one third that reported as average in the Star Tribune. Last month, S&P put the New York Times Company on CreditWatch for a downgrade of its A+ credit rating. This occurred when the Times said it was laying off 500 people, which we wrote about then.

We had not realized, however, that the Times is only one third as profitable as its peer group. The Board really should consider running the Company for its shareholders, rather than for the family trust, as we have said previously.

Given these facts, it is little wonder that, while the S&P has advanced almost 20% over the last two years, the NYT Company has declined nearly 40%."

Jack Risko/Dinocrat