Craig Gurian

December 3, 2010 — Sometimes there is just no other way to put it.

Once a year, Maureen Dowd turns her column over to her brother; the device, if tired, is at least duly announced. Today, The New York Times, without disclosure, apparently turned its lead story over to Republican Party writers, with two prominent members of the Times’ Washington Bureau giving a pitch-perfect reading of the GOP’s “surrender, tax cuts for multi-millionaires are inevitable” script.

In the performance by David Herszenhorn and Jackie Calmes, it turns out that trivial matters like a vote by the House of Representatives are not “real” or worth exploring in and of themselves. And, we learn, there are some Democrats who — perversely — are still making a nuisance of themselves instead of accepting and embracing Republican triumph maturely and demurely...It is as though these reporters think that one little league team has been outscored by more than 10 runs, should take advantage of the “mercy rule,” forfeit the game, and end the embarrassment as quickly as possible.

Population stabilization advocates of the late 1960s and early 1970s are still derided as prophets of gloom and doom whose claims about environmental degradation and social costs have been “disproven.”

If one side gives up when it has maximum leverage, and the opposition says only that it will keep fighting for its original position, it's more apt to use the term 'surrender' or 'fecklessness.'

Reporting that obscures the central role played by mortgage lenders in creating the housing crisis has aptly been described as “blame the borrowers” coverage. Last week, the Journal added a "blame the lawyers" wrinkle. Readers are told that it is "the growth of a legal sub-specialty called foreclosure defense" that has "sown confusion and turmoil in the housing market."

Characterizations of an extension of tax cuts for the wealthy are misleading in the extreme.