The New York Times is under unprecedented attack and appears rife for a take over--and is teaming up with the unlikeliest of allies --retired generals.
Even Rush Limbaugh has weighed in on this problem, suggesting that the time is ripe for a right wing buy out of this far left liberal Tyrannosaur before the next asteroid knocks over the few remaining carcasses left reading it.
Still smarting from the notorious St. Patrick's Day Massacre, when Moody's delivered their bombshell about the ballooning concerns over Time's long term debt and the increasingly problematic outlook draping the newspaper industry in general, the Times is now embroiled in an all too public shareholders' fight over a fading family's ability to manage a troubled paper.
Tuesday, a group of Class a stock investors, led by Morgan Stanley, called for an end to the two tiered stock ownership system, the Sulzberger family's continued control of the failing paper and called into question the feckless management decisions which have allowed the stock value and reputation of the newspaper to plummet, while its investments in about.com and Boston Red Sox mementos--somehow related to publishing and journalism--have grown dramatically.
Despite the ongoing collapse of the Times share price, 50% in the past three or so years, Mr. Sulzberger enjoyed a 2005 cash and stock compensation package of almost 2 _ million dollars with an additional 3/4 of a million dollars in stock options--nice work if you can get it--while building a new office building said to rival the Clinton Library.
at a hastily called general staff meeting, Pinch, it is reported, in an effort to buck up the troops, seized the microphone, pulled a series of freshly typed 3x5 cards from the silk lined inside pocket of his expensive pin striped blue suit coat and began a high pitched babble, tinged with a double whammy of bathos and John Kerry.
"The best strategy is to always be very strong, Karl von Clausewitz," applause.
"War does not determine who is right, only who is left, George Bernard Shaw," applause, and he winked, to show everyone he fully understood the hidden joke and to demonstrate his studied intransigence in the face of the bitter looming catastrophe.
"If you are going through hell, keep going, Winston Churchill," sustained applause, as Pinch held his small but well manicured right mitt aloft, just as he did that one critical time in college, and then skipped once, briefly exposing his summer weight cotton argyll socks.
"and we will be turning to the restive generals to join us on the barricades to save this great newspaper," ongoing, thunderous applause, punctuated by cheers and wolf whistles, while Pinch stood at rapt attention, arms akimbo, in a pretty good mimic of George Patton, while a smile slowly spread across his care lined face.
and true to his word, Pinch, through his minions, really laid into Mr. Rumsfeld, in Wednesday's article, Rumsfeld Defends His Record against His Critics, the Times avers that, "…many of his controversial decisions-- and his second-guessing of the military…"
Controversial decisions? Second guessing of the military? But of course, historical fact has no place at the NYT, a stark truth which still troubles old line readers. Let it appear that Mr. Rumsfeld dares to question the generals, the new allies of the Times, the real leaders in this time of war, the thwarted architects of systems and plans that would have worked in Iraq--the victims of an ego run roughshod.
and today's renegade generals, those big war, big mechanized generals, are still seething over the death throes of fellow dinosaurs like the Crusader system--that huge hulking clanking automatic cannon system designed to thunder along, through hill and dale, which Mr. Rumsfeld slew so controversially and so quickly.
Crusader, designed back when Gen. Shinseki was head of Operations and Planning, before he was army Chief of Staff, before he started the Chinese made US army military beret fiasco, which forced the Rangers to don tan berets in lieu of the French berets John Kerry offered.
Luckily, for the army, Donald Rumsfeld was savvy enough to realize that any cannon system large enough to lay its own railroad, to require its own caravan, to travel overseas by steam ship, and to cost 11 billion dollars, wasn't going to fit into the rapid transformational army of today--the one we're using so successfully in Iraq and afghanistan.
Nope, the New York Times won't be reporting that the generals on the warpath today were firmly stuck in the Pennsylvanian era, or was it the Devonian, anyway it was back when the turtles were hamming it up in the mud, when it came to realizing that the US army was in need of an overall tune up, that trundling enormous siege guns into battle had gone the way of the chariot, or that Wes Clark had preceded Gen. Shinseki in the planning end of things with obvious results.
a wag named aleks Hindin said that amateurs talk about tactics while professionals talk about logistics. and while all the armchair fox hunters looking for Mr. Rumfeld's scalp blather about the half million men we need in Iraq to win, not one of them took the time to mention the amazing number of additional targets this astonishing number of troops and boundless stockpiles of materiel this vast expeditionary force would supply the enemy. Nor do they mention the 7-13 men needed in the logistical tail needed to wag the single combat dog or the drain this whole thing would put on our airlift capabilities.
Sadly, fossils like the New York Times are disappearing in the publishing world. and the generals criticizing Rumsfeld are still wrestling Big Berthas into place for another siege of Sevastopol.
But the retirees and the Times are perfect allies.
No wonder they're on the barricades together.
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