Among the more pointless posts ever: The NY Times

Note: Having randomly typed this post for the last 15 minutes, I see no reason for you to actually read it. You can read the pointless and stupid query at the very bottom though.

I distinctly remember a time in my life when I read every single NYTimes Op-Ed that came into print. It was during college, I was starting to slowly emerge from my cocoon of being totally insulated by an entirely idyllic suburban adolescence, and I was just eager to start learning more about the world.

(Actually, at several points in my life I made entire lists of things that I swore to myself that I would learn about. At the very top of the list, at the end of high school, one of the big lessons of life that seemed unfathomably complicated, opaque, and entirely foreign....was "find[ing] out the difference between Democrats and Republicans, or figuring out what that means." At that point in my life, I was already a pragmatist and figured most people were pragmatists and just sort've had a smattering of ideas based on particular issues. Later, I recall having an experience in the middle of college when my awareness about politics and policy began to sharpen, I remember sending a flabbergasted email to an old high school mentor of mine with a desperately terrified question about how so many people believed so many things that seemed so inherently wrong, and that they were all allied powerfully and representing half of the country. Of course since then, I have grown considerably more sympathetic to conservatives on many of their principles, though I still quite emphatically think they are wrong on the degree to which they embrace their respective ideologies.)

Anyhow, none of this post was really about that stuff. I really just wanted to comment on the effect of TimesSelect. I used to love and wait for the new columns every single day. At the time I guess it was William Safire (the conservative), Thomas Friedman (the simplifier), Paul Krugman (the economist), Dowd (?), David Brooks (another conservative), Bob Herbert (eh), and Nicholas Kristof (bleeding heart white guy who likes asian women), and I guess there were others. In any case, the columns really had an effect on me because they allowed me to see how other people, presumably smart people, had been synthesizing all of the same information and news that I had been seeing at the same time. So when the US invaded Iraq, it was interesting to see how Friedman, who I consider quite credible on the Middle East after reading From Beirut to Jerusalem, was a hawk in favor of the war. And when the Bush tax cuts increased, it was interesting to see how Krugman's polished economic expertise pointed out the effects of the cuts, and also firmly believed it was part of the right-wing's attempt to "starve the beast" and destroy the post-New Deal government without a single veto or political push.
Almost for that reason alone, the NYTimes was my homepage. Internet browser goes up, the Times pops up as my home. There was the beginning of my news day, each and every day. Even in India, when I plugged my crappy little LG phone into my laptop and drowsily surfed the internet for news, the NYTimes and the Columnists kept me plugged into the US political and social climate.

And suddenly upon returning to the US, the NYTimes instituted TimesSelect. The horrible fuckbeast of an idea so that you had to pay for membership to read the columns online. At first I was pretty upset. I mean, apart from scanning headlines and looking at an article here or there, the columns were definitely major players in helping me form models of thought and helping me find my own opinions. So I considered paying for it.

But that pissed me off. Bullshit.

So then I started getting to the columns through Lexis (this was during 1L)...and that just was so irritating that I stopped after 3 days. And then....

Two years passed. The quick and cheap headlines of MSNBC became my homepage. I read more and more Slate for analysis. I surfed over to CNN to make sure no major cities had been leveled during the day. Andrew Sullivan became an increasing influence over my time. ESPN (recently) found a spot in my toolbar. I began to look at more stupid gossip sites. And for two years, I really didn't have anything to do with the NYTimes. I would glance at the site every week or so, get bored, and move on.

And then, in September of 2007, the NYTimes came to its senses and killed the beast. TimesSelect was over, and now all content was totally free. Free! The Columnists were back! Friedman was still there. Krugman was still here! Dowd, Herbert, Brooks, Kristof, and now even Bill Kristol.

...but I think it was too late. I don't care anymore. Two years of being told that their opinions were too good to be freely available made me seek out bloggers and other editorial opinions. Two years of not caring about their opinions made them irrelevant. Now Krugman seems sorta like a partisan hack who talks too much about things he doesn't really have any business pontificating about, like politics, and ignores the very things he knows better than anyone: economics. Bob Herbert's opinions seem entirely predictable. I'm not sure I give a shit what Friedman thinks anymore...

But really, this entire post was supposed to be one sentence...a very meaningless question, but sort of a curiosity for anyone who reads the Times...so I guess I'll just go ahead and ask it:

Does anyone else think that Maureen Dowd's columns just suck? Is there something deeper than the veneer of cartoonish slurs and stylized worlds she portrays? Or is it as empty and unfulfilling to everyone else too? Is she as smug as I think?