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Bad News: The Foreign Policy of the New York Times, by Russell Braley (Regnery, 660 pp., $22.50)

A few years back New York magazine ran an article asking why New York Times editorials are so boring, and offering a few tips toward spicing things up. It never occurred to the writer that Times editorials are meant to be boring. Each sentence is dipped in a powerful attention-repellent, concocted from a secret formula in the possession of John Oakes. This prevents the wrong people—namely, the general public—from discerning the implications of what the Times is really, in its civic-minded drone, saying.

JS

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Joseph Sobran

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Bad News: The Foreign Policy of the New York Times, by Russell Braley (Regnery, 660 pp., $22.50)

A few years back New York magazine ran an article asking why New York Times editorials are so boring, and offering a few tips toward spicing things up. It never occurred to the writer that Times editorials are meant to be boring. Each sentence is dipped in a powerful attention-repellent, concocted from a secret formula in the possession of John Oakes. This prevents the wrong people—namely, the general public—from discerning the implications of what the Times is really, in its civic-minded drone, saying.