Citizen Kane

This holiday announcement caught me off guard. Speculation on William Safire's successor was rife since the only Times op-ed columnist who's reliably pro-Israel recently wrote that he was leaving his post on Jan. 25. I was betting that Sulzberger Jr., Bill Keller and Gail Collins would defy custom and hire a man or woman who held liberal views; not a conspiracy-besotted quack like Paul Krugman, quite, but certainly not a conservative or even the vaguely libertarian in-house reporter John Tierney.

No complaints here: Gregory Kane, the Baltimore Sun's finest columnist, is a talent who merits the national attention that the Times appointment carries, rather than writing in relative obscurity. And as a black conservative, he's an excellent antidote to Bob Herbert, just one of many Times pundits who's a relic (at least in his opinions) from a time when Sid Vicious was still alive.

In one of his final Sun columns (Dec. 25), Kane proved, again, why he's worthy of occupying Safire's slot. He wrote: "We media types love [a] story with legs. And there was one story in 2004 that had enough legs to win an Olympic marathon several times over. That story would be the ruckus comedian Bill Cosby caused in May, when he dared utter what everybody knew was the truth: that there are black Americans who aren't holding up their end of the bargain when it comes to educating their children.

"The reaction was one of two types: praise for Cosby from liberal commentators and columnists who would have called down the wrath of God on a conservative of whatever hue who had said the same thing. Yes, black Americans have reached the pathetic state where lies, flapdoodle and egregious nonsense spoken by liberals is preferable to truth spoken by conservatives, if the topic happens to be anything about black folks.

"The other reaction was to criticize Cosby. Some people are still at it. Considering there were things that happened within Afro-America this year every bit as controversial as Cosby's comments, we have to ask why he's the only one still taking the heat."

I've no idea who the other finalists were-although Los Angeles' Catherine Seipp, who writes for National Review among other publications, would've been delightful duking it out, and knocking out,

Maureen Dowd twice a week-but Kane's appointment is the most sane decision made at the Times since Howell Raines was fired.

WHAT ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA?

There was an extraordinarily odd trio of Christmas editorials published last week by the country's leading liberal newspapers-The Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times-which, read collectively, further signals the eroding relevance of each institution. That's excellent news, of course, and one can more easily visualize the ever-closer reality when these dailies consciously shuck any pretension of appealing to a mass audience that takes their opinion seriously.

It wasn't that long ago when Time and Newsweek, for example, were considered journals of national importance, rather than middlebrow companions to People, Us, Men's Health and Rolling Stone. My memory could be a little faulty-not dissimilar to the memories of those who lament the disappearance of tv "legends" Tom Brokaw and Bill Moyers, who luxuriated recently in a greater avalanche of unctuous press clippings than even John McCain on a busy day-but there was an era in which, when the newsweeklies arrived each Monday, it was of some importance to those who followed current events.

The Post's edit (Dec. 24) was, of the three, the most stern, and consequently the silliest. The writer frets that the Dow reached a three-and-a-half-year high last week, and cautions readers that it's all an illusion. Sure, it's swell for the investor, who can now, according to the Post, spend more freely with money that he or she doesn't have, but just wait until there's a market correction. Never mind a basic misunderstanding of learned investors-we're not talking day traders-who don't take a quick profit and then bop over to Neiman Marcus, it's the Post's lecture to George W. Bush that's really out of whack. (During the Clinton presidency, a healthy Dow was good news; is there any doubt that had Wall Street not topped last year's results that the Post's take would be equally as damning?)

Hold on to your beanie: "Mr. Bush declares that his tax cuts are fueling the economy and that reversing them might slow it down. But this defense, like the stock market's holiday exuberance, seems disconnected from reality: To correct its addiction to foreign borrowing, the United States actually needs a mild economic slowdown." I could be wrong, but during the past presidential campaign, was the Post, in its daily flacking for John Kerry, encouraging voters to support the Democrat because he'd realize the wisdom of an "economic slowdown"? As I recall, there was more hyperbolic chatter about Bush's similarity to Herbert Hoover, who had the misfortune to be in the Oval Office when the Great Depression began.

The Post advocates a lower rate of consumption-regardless of what citizens think about it-and says that Bush must address this concern "by requiring extra individual savings in private accounts (those savings would have to come on top of any diversion of Social Security taxes.)" The paper freely admits its belief in higher taxes, but since Bush won't do that, it suggests this government intervention instead. Has Marion Barry bequeathed his crack pipe to the editorial offices at the Post? Presumably, the writer knows these 400 words will find agreement at the Brookings Institution, and certainly not Wall Street or the homes of the vast majority of its readership.

The Los Angeles Times, on Dec. 25, gave its think-tank a day off, it appears, since the paper's sole editorial was a reprint of a scene from Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. I've always thought Michael Kinsley was off-kilter in his views, not to mention the most overrated journalist (with James Fallows a close second) of his generation, but this was a true head-scratcher. Who knows, maybe Kinsley, in his dotage and zealous (with the usual condescension) embrace of individual bloggers-as opposed to the institutional website magazine Slate that he once edited-has, as men in his position often say of politicians, "grown," and realized that editorials are a complete anachronism.

It may be illusory, but The New York Times, also on Dec. 25, gave an indication that it comprehends, and no longer wishes to disguise, its function as a noblesse oblige media organ, one that lives by one set of guidelines but advises the rest of the country to adhere to another. The editorial, headlined "A Day of Yuletide Leisure," might've been datelined Westchester or East Hampton, NY, judging by the blue-nose, clipping-coupons tone. The writer regrets that Christmas this year fell on a Saturday, and sympathizes with those Americans-who are used to artificial dates for most holidays so that long weekends can pop up every month or so-who feel cheated the holiday came on a weekend.

"If you're a skeptic," the writer, who undoubtedly has a vacation plan that far exceeds those of most of the people he or she is addressing, says, "you can simply say you deserve the extra day off you get when Christmas comes midweek. And even if you're not a skeptic, it seems truer to the meaning of the holiday if the towns falls silent-relatively silent-on a normally uproarious day." Okay, that makes a lot of sense, for the 1950s, that is. Saturday, and to barely a lesser extent, Sundays, are "uproarious enough" for most people, whether that means shopping at a mall, going to a museum or clogging up Soho.

This is my favorite part: "Christmas Day knows no clock, unless guests are dropping by later on? No work, bathrobes and pajamas till well into the morning, and shoals of wrapping paper everywhere? We have enough leisure in our lives, most of us, that there is no longer the hectic sense of squeezing a year's rejoicing into a single day. No one would really want it any other way. But the result is that the leisure of a single day no longer feels as luxurious to us as it must have felt long ago, when work meant a guttering candle, an empty fire grate and a cold dismal cell. There is no pretending that poverty makes for a richer feeling of festival, or that Bob Cratchit honored Christmas better because he had to work so hard the rest of the year. The fact is that Christmas-whatever day of the week it happens upon-requires a lively imagination and a livelier heart."

My imagination button is fully popped: Wouldn't it be lovely if, say, the hundred most amply compensated Times employees were invited to take part in a real-life version of the film Trading Places, for a year, with those people who don't laze around in bed with a fluffy bathrobe and speak of "tubes" of wrapping paper instead of "shoals" and punch the clock the day after Christmas, even if there's no "guttering candle" in their workplace?

This worldview, embraced by John Kerry during the last year, is one of the main reasons he lost the election.