FRUM ON THE TIMES: I know Glenn Reynolds already linked to this quote by David Frum today, so you may very well have seen it, but I wanted to include it as well, since it really, really sums up the New York Times in a nutshell:

The greatest scholar of the Islamic world, Bernard Lewis, has brilliantly explained the roots of Muslim rage. He traces that rage to the failure of Muslim societies to adapt to the modern world. The people of these societies remember that they were once rich and powerful and important. Now they lag far behind – and they do not understand why. Rather than look inward at their own faults and failings, they have sought scapegoats in the world beyond their borders.

Can’t one see something similar at work in the mind of Michiko Kakutani? The brand of liberalism championed by her newspaper was once all-powerful in American cultural life. Over the past decade, that power has ebbed away – and since 9/11, the ebb has become a flood. The New York Times no longer decides what Americans will read and what Americans will think about what they read. Rather than look inward, they blame talk radio and the Internet and Fox TV. And when this ferocious reservoir of accumulated resentment encounters a new and contradictory idea – well it just boils over.