The Grudge Report

...This time it was the journalists, not the leaders, who failed...

...But it is also true that Manhattan itself has often been phobic about the many different forms of life outside itself...

...I don't Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...Economist Paul Krugman ended his September 14 column with a rant against Republicans as partisan and unpatriotic: "The administration developed its request for emergency funding in consultation with Congressional Republicans—full stop...

...Again, the headline writer seems to have ignored the story, which claims the workers are not all that happy...

...Now we know what it takes to get Mr...

...Politicians who wrap themselves in the flag while relentlessly pursuing their usual partisan agenda are not true patriots, and history will not forgive them...

...Fairer accounts of Bush's visit were included in Saturday's edition, two of which ran the same quotes from Charles Schumer: "I would bet this is the first time [the president has] bonded with New York," said the senator...

...BY NOEMIE EMERY GEORGE W. BUSH finally became the president of Blue America around four in the afternoon on Friday, September 14, standing on rubble in downtown New York, clutching a bullhorn, telling the assembled hordes and heroes around him that the world will shortly be hearing from all of us...

...Yet across much of New York City, the visit . . . was welcomed as a much-needed civic lift, no matter how conflicted many residents said they were about the man himself...

...The president will have to forgive the mayor for having warm words for John McCain during the New York primary, but desperate times require desperate measures," she wrote for last Sunday's paper, hitting the wrong note exactly...

...The first, by Clyde Haberman, is titled "Heartened by a Visit from Bush"—a headline written by someone who either hadn't read the text or couldn't believe it...

...Can he . . . Rummy and Condi move past their cold war attitude and Star Wars obsession...

...This spirit afflicts other sections of the Times, unwilling to let minor matters—like World War III or 6,000 dead people—stand in the way of a grudge...

...Especially when the paper would soon explain in detail exactly what George Bush was doing in those two days before he was able to come to Manhattan: securing the homeland, mapping out the response, synchronizing the agencies, talking to other leaders around the world...

...There have been many lucid, perceptive, and inspiring stories...

...Bush back, nothing less than the most devastating terrorist attack in American history," Haberman tells us...

...There they are, the best minds of their generation, hunkered down like the Japanese in caves on the Pacific Islands, waiting for news of the Florida recount...

...Trapped in the past...

...Of course, not everything in the Times was the work of a moral idiot...

...In times of great pressure, some always sink well below the occasion...

...Prominent among them is the New York Times...

...The tone of these stories, then, comes not from the streets of New York but out of the New York Times newsroom...

...More than a few said they thought that Mr...

...A Democratic contact says that his party received 'no consultation, no collaboration, virtually no information.' I didn't want to mention this, but now is the time to draw the line...

...Someone should tell them that this show has closed...

...No one would have been surprised if that was the last time we saw this president...

...You will find two rather startling stories...

...Krugman shouldn't have mentioned this, since what his "Democratic contact" told him was a lie, as any competent editor was in a position to know by then...

...But even as late as Monday, when the editorial page gave in and gave Bush a victory, its words were hedged with what can be described only as geo-suspicion: "His recent attempt to bill his vacation in Texas as a return to the real American values of the heartland seemed a repudiation not only of Washington, D.C., but urbanity in general," said the paper, adding that "in the past, he reflected the country's more Manhattan-phobic side...

...on TV he looked like a scared mouse...

...He shouldn't look like he was told or asked to come...

...Bush's timing was off...

...The thing to know about such man-in-the-street stories is that they are often the most revealing of a paper's intention...

...All the things that are the responsibility of an American president, and things that mayors and governors, however valiant and stalwart, don't do...

...Who could really blame him...

...And the story's first quote from an affected citizen...

...She doubted it: "The young president . . . often seems trapped in the past...

...She then critiqued Bush's tax and energy policies...

...A lot of the tangible loathing for Bush among East Coast trendies has had less to do with concrete views and discrete policies than with a whole cluster of social and regional attitudes: a Texan, for crissakes, who likes the outdoors and didn't care much for their books or their chatter—what use could he be to them...

...Across the page from these graceless notes one finds more, this time under the headline, "Frontline Workers Are Happy to See the Commander in Chief...

...Now, it seems like it's just part of his job.'" And this was just the beginning...

...It is true enough that there has sometimes been an ugly edge to some conservative rhetoric—i.e., the disgraceful remarks of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson...

...a bus driver...

...The Red and the Blue are now Red, White, and Blue— except for a few holdouts...

...But by then, Blue America no longer existed...

...In recent years, there has been an insularity, a prejudice, an intolerance, a suspicion, a palpable snottiness about the Times...

...I could care less," Haber-man quotes another citizen...

...they were unwilling to make allowances for a commanderin-chief only now assuming his post on what they regarded as the front line...

...He arrived in July, not sounding too thrilled...

...It's good that he's come, but it should have been automatic,' said...

...Now he's four days too late showing up...

...More Haberman: "You may recall that George W. Bush was barely six months into his presidency before he decided that New York City was worth an hour of his time...

...That's going to be good for him, and it's going to be good for us...

...For Maureen Dowd, nothing had changed that Tuesday...

...Well, as it turns out, a hell of a lot...

...What in the name of God was the Times Metro desk thinking, when it let those stories run...

...feel that he's the man that should have been there from the start...

...If a reporter talks to enough people, he can get them to say just about anything, and then string together the voices he wants to achieve the proper tone...

...For others, the three days since Tuesday might as well have been an eternity...

...When you lose the state by about 25 percentage points in the last election, and the city by even more, you are not likely to beg your travel office to book you a return trip...

...He is our leader, and even if some people don't respect the person, you have to respect the position...

...Anyone who believes the New York Times is still a great paper should look closely at the coverage by its metropolitan bureau of George W. Bush's trip to Manhattan, in the edition of Saturday, September 15...

...And it will be even better when Texas is finally accepted by the Times...

...As the lede put it, "For some New Yorkers, the hurt was so deep that no one . . . could make it feel better...

...Neither did Red America, for that peculiar map of our past divisions that had transfixed us since last November no longer mattered...