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When Campaign Desk thinks about “the most excitable New Yorkers,” several pictures come to mind … Bronx-born Yankee fans … Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi … NYU freshmen on their first Friday night in the Big City.
Not The New York Times. In a piece that includes the words “foodie,” “juicy,” and “shindig,” Jennifer (7?) Steinhauer assigns the “most excitable” label to a tiny demographic — upwardly mobile political junkies in a “tiny tizzy” over the impending New York primary. “They think about the primary as they rinse their salad greens,” says the Times. “They think about it when they should be thinking about their PowerPoint presentations.” They’re so obsessed that they even “irritate their spouses by clicking around Internet news sites late into the evening instead of coming to bed.”
These snapshots of the chattering class that the Times is so fond of are amusing — but, c’mon, guys, odds are the primary is drawing the attention of more New Yorkers than just the select few who find that the only thing more satisfying than doing the crossword puzzle is actually finishing it.
Still, we see the temptation — how else could the Times compare presidential politics to pricy French restaurant Per Se or the plot twists of “Mystic River”?
–Brian Montopoli
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