It's All Very Clear

Reading through the paper.  Only it’s not paper.  It’s the online version of the New York Times.  If it were a physical paper, I’d treat it a bit more reverentially, and certainly dive into more of the articles, at least until tomorrow, when I’d use it for kindling.  I gaze at all the titles on line, but there is a notably less pressing sense of obligation to actually begin any of them.  Texans can now go shopping with AK47s on their shoulder, as long as they aren’t concealed.  How do you conceal and AK47?  Do I need to read this?  Charles Schumer is the new lighting rod for the Republican Party.  I see.  I left New York before he became senator.  Now he is an elder statesman.  I’ll read this and the article about the pissing match between Bratton and Kelly over who really reduced more crime in NYC.  I suppose I read these because it is New York news and I still care, I can still fit it all into something that makes sense. 

The China news in the Times is always disappointing.  They seem obsessed about finding anything that casts China in a compromised light.  “They think they’re really something, but look at this, see, they’re silly and hypocritical.  Isn’t that something?  See here, their aircraft carrier isn’t as good as ours.  See there, Chinese are sleeping in MacDonald’s because they’re open all night . . .” The other day there was a front-page article asserting that Zhou En Lai was gay.  There’s a new biography, you see, that makes this claim.  What is the claim based on?  Within the two thousand, or so, word review there are essentially two points:  One, Premier Zhou wrote letters to a male friend, a Mr. Hui, wherein he expressed how much he’d miss him.  The calligraphy was apparently excited.  (How on earth the Times’ book reviewer verified this is beyond me.)  Secondly there was an anecdote wherein we learn that Zhou was particularly unemotional when his wife arrived after a long period of separation, during a meeting that Zhou was overseeing.   There you see.  It’s all very clear.  I certainly hope the book offers a bit more to buttress its argument than this reviewer chose to dwell on, but regardless, is this front-page news?  I rely on the Times for most other places in the world, as I don’t and can’t really know any better.  But for China the artifice is rather obvious.  Who decides that this kind of drivel merit’s front-page consideration?

I’m curious, because in the bathroom, is my copy of Evelyn Waugh’s “Scoop.”  I’d been on about Ethiopia with my Thesiger read.  Wilfred T had mentioned meeting Waugh in Ethiopia and finding him an ill-informed dandy.   Written in 1938, “Scoop” is supposed to be the book that all news organs give to oversees correspondents as a must-read.   Waugh had never been a reporter before and was bundled off to Ethiopia, as it was invaded by Italy, which was the international story, until it was quickly eclipsed by events in Catalonia.   

I don’t know who at the New York Times is the equivalent of Mr. Salter at Waugh’s Daily Beast, the gentleman who is that paper’s Foreign Editor.  I appreciate that China is as frightening as it is fascinating to Americans and that the paper’s reporters are not always treated particularly well here, but the Times it seems, consistently seeks to feed their readers odd, disquieting, snickering copy because its what they expect.  Someone must be swatting down any copy that challenges this meme.  That or they convince themselves that a “Zhou Was Gay” story is somehow a trenchant look at this rising civilization.  Book reviewers are, parenthetically, regarded as the lowest form of life at the Daily Beast. 

Today’s to be a day of work.  A Saturday of work.  My Friday of work, didn’t work.   Working isn’t easy when the whole family is milling about your work place.  I have Spotify now to newly explore.  Hard Bop works.  I’ll keep finding new Hard Bop, to keep me working.  Hampton Hawes is working.