Happy Holidays, New York Times!

FPM: Well, Advent is upon us, and so the New York Times is full of the usual articles about the season. Sorry, my mistake: as far as I can see, the Times hasn’t run anything specifically about Advent. For years. Meanwhile, it’s published these articles:

• “The Joys and Sorrows of Ramadan” (August 1, 2011)
• “Ramadan Poses Challenges for Muslims at the Olympics” (July 31, 2012)
• “Measuring Ramadan” (July 13, 2014)
• “Eid Al-Fitr Prayers in a Brooklyn Park” (July 17, 2015)
• “Ramadan Is Here. What Islam’s Holiest Month Is About” (June 5, 2016)
• “The Right Way to Observe Ramadan” (June 5, 2016)
• “Ending the Ramadan Fast with an Indonesian Feast” (June 5, 2016)
• “Ramadan for Muslim Inmates: Mixing Religious Duty with Prison’s Limits” (July 6, 2016)
• “A Cinnamon-Scented Soup to Break the Ramadan Fast” (June 29, 2016)
• “During Ramadan, Home Cooks Shine” (May 26, 2017)
• “Nabra Hassanen and the Lost Innocence of Ramadan IHOP Nights” (June 24, 2017)
•  “During Ramadan, Read These 3 Books by Muslim Authors” (May 5, 2018)
• “Reconciling Faith and Modernity for Ramadan” (May 14, 2018)
• “This Ramadan, I’ll Try Praying for Enemies, Friends” (May 16, 2018)
• “Australia’s New Rule for Asylum Seekers Makes Ramadan Even Harder” (May 28, 2018)
• “To Be Poor and Ignored During Ramadan” (June 13, 2018)
• “The Personal Wake-Up Call to Prayers, a Ramadan Tradition, Is Endangered” (June 13, 2018)
• “For Some in Tunisia, Ramadan Is a Test of Personal Freedom” (June 13, 2018)
• “Everyone Is Beautiful During Eid” (June 20, 2018)

And there’s more where these came from. Plenty more.

Not that the New York Times is ignoring the fact that Christmas is around the corner. No, as the great day approaches, the Times is, as usual, giving a nice fresh holiday spin to its usual stale agitprop. The daily dose of Trump-bashing, for example, has taken on a seasonal flavor, with the White House Christmas decorations, notably Mrs. Trump’s supposedly “blood-red” trees, providing fodder for at least a couple of snarky articles. A November 30 piece by Ginia Bellafante about the annual Christmas spectacular at Radio City Music Hall not only focused on race (“The crowd was overwhelmingly white….the Rockettes…are themselves almost all white”) and sexism (“it is easy to see the Rockettes as a nostalgic expression for a time when women were not to step out of line”), but even managed to work in the obligatory swipe at President Trump: “Two years ago, when the Rockettes were asked to dance at the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, some in the corps protested and voiced their displeasure. But in the Trump worldview, women dancing in bodysuits was surely what had once made American great. The show went on.”

This isn’t an easy time of year at the Times. You see, if you’re the Times and it’s Christmastime, you’ve got to acknowledge the holiday somehow. But you’ve got to do it the right way. The Times way. You’ve got to come up with a snotty angle.  more