Tea at Trianon: The New York Times: A Century of Failure

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, May 15, 2026

The New York Times: A Century of Failure

From Insurrection Barbie:

There is a temptation to treat what the New York Times has done since October 7, 2023, as a modern phenomenon, a product of social media pressure, activist newsrooms, and the politics of a particular cultural moment. That framing is too charitable. It lets the institution off the hook for something that is much more sinister.
The New York Times has a documented, academically established record of editorial decisions that consistently minimized, buried, distorted, or suppressed the truth about atrocities committed against Jewish people, in the 1930s and 1940s when six million were being murdered, and again in the years since October 7, 2023, when the world’s oldest hatred has taken on new institutional garb in the form of human rights NGOs, UN mechanisms, and international courts. Why should you care? (Read more.)