Anyone who spends a lot of time reading the New York Times and then scrolling through TAFKAT* must be aware of the antagonism directed at the Times by journalism critics.
While I find much of the criticism frantic and hysterical — I mean, people, you who brag about canceling your NYT subscription haven’t yet informed me where you are getting your factual news — I too perceive some of the headlines to be oddly qualified. Often it feels that half the crucial information is left out of the hed, although it’s definitely in the story. (Re “hed,” if I were a life-long journalist I would know to call a headline a “hed.” But I only recently learned it and didn’t want you to judge me as pretentious. Still, I used it so maybe I am pretentious.)
The anger against the Times has to do with the perception that the paper aims criticism at Democratic leaders while soft-soaping Trump’s vile character and craziness, failing to adequately represent his, well, what’s the word for the stuff coming out of his mouth?
All this anger came to a head after the debate, when the Times fixed on the word “disastrous” for Biden’s debate while failing to come up with anything to describe the breathtaking incoherent insanity of Trump’s yammers. (Remind you of when, in late 2016, the NYT macroed Comey’s condescending phrase “extremely careless” and pasted it into every mention of Hillary Clinton?)
It’s much more complicated than that, though. Yet it’s definitely irksome, to use a mild word for the journalistic abyss between how the Times has dealt with the surreality of Trump and the reality of Biden, and now threatens to lean in the same direction with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
If you looked at the Times heds a few days ago, you would have seen this one:
Harris Has a Big Campaign Launch — and Big Tests Ahead
…followed by what I think is called the “graf”:
Fresh challenges in the offing could determine how long the vice president’s honeymoon will last.
And if you’re like me, you were feeling two things: uneasiness, as the Times plants a warning about the future, and irritation at the Times because it seems incapable of stating the straightforward factual news of the day, “Harris has a big campaign launch.” Moreover, when you read the actual article the hed sits on top of, you learn that the warning about “big tests ahead” comes in the form of an opinion from…brace yourselves…a Republican pollster!
A few days ago, Nate Cohn, the Times poll interpreter or something, who has a gift for making me mad, had a comment on Kamala’s pick of Tim Walz as a running mate, a choice over which every person I know has screamed with joy. But is it all good news? Not according to Nate and/or his hed writer:
With Walz, Harris Passes on a Chance to Redefine Herself
I can’t be the only person who read this and yelled “WHAT?” Cohn followed this inexplicable hed (Harris has to “redefine herself”????) with a snide little tsk-tsk, “There will be other opportunities to move to the center, if that’s a goal.”
The bottom line? This need to qualify headlines is a Times tic. In another word, it’s an obsessive need to kinahora, more fully written as kinahora phuh phuh phuh. Or maybe poo poo poo.
Kinahora phuh phuh phuh is a Yiddish invocation for warding off The Evil Eye. You say “kinahora” and spit three times on the ground somewhere in the direction of The Evil Eye as soon as somebody remarks on a good or hopeful thing that’s happened.
As a lifelong optimist, I have no personal relationship with The Evil Eye, so I can only guess it’s a thing that watches every word that comes out of every (pessimistic) Jewish mouth all the time. And if the word is good…well, The Evil Eye will find a way to rain acid tears over the cause of your joy. Consequently, I assume if you perform a kinahora and spit three times, The Evil Eye won’t shit all over you.
Whew! That’s a relief.
I didn’t hear of kinahora until a few years ago; my immediately family were not the sort of Jews who packed supernatural forces into their spare luggage as they emigrated from Paris, Bialystok and Odessa to America. No god, ergo no Evil Eye in our house.
Maybe that’s why, once learning about it, I became an avid spotter of its signs.
So I suggest looking at the Times heds and grafs with an awareness of the applied amulet that is kinahora. You don’t have to join them in spitting at The Evil Eye via headline, but do read important articles anyway.
Still, though, I’ve gotta tell you. This is what Nate Cohn wrote a day or so later:
New Battleground Polls Show Harris Has Fundamentally Changed the Race
On question after question, at least for now, most voters don’t seem to have major reservations about her.
Cohn’s kinahora spit has been reduced to “at least for now.” And for that I am grateful.
*From Paul Krugman, The App Formerly Known As Twitter