Twitter Envy

I haven't read the Sunday paper as a ritual for years. There used to be a lot of it, but on the web it looks like any other day. And today, a good deal of it is about Egypt:

Frank Rich is such a tease. For a few lines, he sounds like he's going to say something, but it doesn't take long before he starts thrashing.

He starts off strong. He's writing about American ignorance of Middle Eastern culture, politics and society. "We have no context ... ," he complains. And then blames the "Islamophoibic coverage of the Arab world." Interesting, though debatable that the average American knows much about anyone's culture, politics, etc.

But he segues into a condemnation of the notion that the Internet is a powerful medium. Somehow this insidious Twitter envy afflicts television the most in Richworld, where he ignores his own employer's fascination with social media.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/opinion/06rich.html

To see the Times version of Facebookization, there's this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06face.html

David Brooks, who shares prime time on the Op-ed page, goes off in the opposition direction, offering the technocrat's view, citing study after study that ranks the institutions in different countries on numerical scales, quoting figures like Egypt is at the 40th percentile in government effectiveness.

So not only is the NYT dazzled by the new media on the Internet, but it's still firmly impressed by the social sciences that weigh and measure everything but never know anything.
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/opinion/06brooks.html

The White House is still working on foreign policy. The administration is still "struggling" with Egypt. So if you're in the mood for a maybe/maybe not discussion, here's one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06policy.html

And going local:

They used to call this call this block-busting, but usually it was a reference to American blacks. When yuppies are involved, it's fashionable. What I'm talking about is a real estate article about yuppies on the move into Jackson Heights, a lower-middle-class neighborhood that was never fashionable but heavily immigrant for many years. It's still cheap, but the real estate brokers are working on it. They even have a story in the Times, which, after all, sells a lot of real estate ads. (And, it's a well-done, on-line classified site.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/realestate/06living.html

The snow used to be deeper when I was a boy, but now it seems that it's turned catastrophic. Here's more than you ever wanted to know about renting heavy-duty equipment for shoveling snow.

And so with a click of the mouse, we go from the global to the humorously inconsequential. This is the heart of the $20 question.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/nyregion/06critic.html