Absurd that the Times didn't think your piece contained "concrete proposals." Knowing the minds at work there, I'm pretty sure your piece was doomed the moment you wrote "identity bandwagons" and criticized Obama. Please keep on submitting pieces to them. Happy Thanksgiving.
I agree with Ken Tucker: "Please keep on submitting pieces to them." Specifically, I think Catherine should target the Modern Love section at least once, and not just because it is said to be probably the toughest part of the paper to get published in. Humble tip to Catherine: Make the Times an infuriating character you love to hate more than you hate to love.
As somebody who grew up believing op-eds were the everyman pulpit and have had rejections similar to yours this year, I'd take cold-shoulder as a badge of honor. You're too honest for The Iraq York Times. Anything that would cause their readers to look at themselves in the mirror won't sell, so maybe there's no way to get any point across to a zombie. All that said, this is really good cause it's short yet explains a ton and is hopeful. Maybe it could be made into a video essay and posted here or there?
If you haven't already, check out Bailout by Neil Barofsky who was the Special Inspector General in charge of oversight of the TARP bailout funds. You will not find Geithner begging for funds for homeowners: quite the opposite. Obama had funds and authority to help homeowners but chose not to do so. One of the big hurdles to overcome is to get liberals understand the simple fact that Obama is a complete dick and Wall St. tool. Happy Thanksgiving!
Great essay! I am not surprised that the CIA Times didn't want to publish it. Way too thoughtful and informed. I learned a lot from it. I actually don't see the comparison between your essay and Carville's. His was a generic piece with a serious lack of substance. I could not actually make it to the end, although it was undemanding reading. His focus was on electoral strategy and not substance of any sort. This is something that the Democratic Party establishment specializes in. Similarly, I listened to a Podcast on Pod Save America about electoral data, and the interviewer and the interviewee were both very knowledgeable about different Congressional districts, etc., but they never discussed why anyone might want to vote for someone.
There is a serious lack of good news sources in the U.S.
An excellent piece, Catherine. The fact that such op-eds don't see the light of day should be a source of anger in itself. So should the findings of the Rand Studies, which are a serious indictment on the whole 4o years of neoliberalism. No wonder mainstream media don't publish this stuff. Thanks for highlighting them.
Mark Blyth, co-author of Angrynomics, recently tweeted out a link to a Michael W.Green piece that essentially argues that old measures of poverty are no longer appropriate and that today (in the US) one could be earning up to $140,000 and still be in a financially stressed position. As Blyth says this helps understand 'Angrynomics', and I would add, also helps explain what fuels the anger and resentment of the middle classes that turn to the right. Green's article is here, if anyone is interested:
I saw that piece and it makes absolute sense. 31k for a family of four as a poverty line for this economy? It is a terrible joke. Haven’t heard of Angrynomics
Angrynomics (Blyth & Longergan) basically argues that despite the economic rhetoric of growth, stock market highs etc, the experience of a lot of people is one economic decline, with precarity, stagnated wages etc, which is caused by nature of economic system that's in place (neoliberal capitalism in my terms). Hence, the anger expressed by people as a consequence of this economic disconnect is a rational response. They also explore how anger is expressed, and how, for some, it finds expression in tribal identities etc. Worth a look.
Yes, you should continue to pitch ideas to the NYT op-ed gatekeepers. Wear them down by making them confront their own internal paradoxes.
Carvelle is a fraud. He went from "let's all play possum and ignore trump" to "wack people making 500k a year with huge tax increases." This is because he's in league with the corporatists billionaires (as he always has been.)
The top .001 percent of the population holds almost 20 percent of the national wealth. That's less than 35,000 people. The money is not with 500k salaried folks already paying 50% or more in taxes, it's with these fat cats that pay an effective tax rate of nearly nothing. No one making 100M+ a year is paying 50% of their income to the government. Courtesy of both republicans and democrats, there are lots and lots of wrinkles in the tax code to prevent that.
Carvelle's idiot brained ploy is that the heavily taxed salaried workers will revolt and cause the democrats to back away from changes in tax policy leaving the billionaire class yet again unscathed. Nice how he can suck down giant consulting fees to protect his puppeteers. Eminence grise my ass.
👉”Why did contemporary liberals and moderates jump on identity bandwagons with alacrity and leave the financial systems in place that allow for the intensifying exploitation of ordinary people? The donor class, as Jennifer Pan has shown, loves anti-racism and hates redistribution. To take on the money power requires the mobilization not the moderation of public anger, but that anger has
be directed at the proper targets. Anger does not need to be crippling: combined with a sense of collective responsibility, it can create a new politics that benefits the social whole and not the rapacious few. Anger is a natural reaction to abuse and a mode of self-defense. “
Great piece! Amazed that you thought it might be accepted by the NYT. You praise Mamdani (who they hate), while heaping (rightful)scorn on private equity (whom they need) and corporate Democrats (whom they love). The "anger" excuse is exactly that - an excuse. It's utter bs. You are very concrete; they just don't want to hear it. Or rather really don't want to hear praise given where it is due (to socialists). And even better, the fact that the NYT rejects it because you are too "angry" proves your central point about liberals!
“Moderates on the other hand, are so obsessed with 'optics' and image optimization that when they do lose their tempers in public, they seem especially self-serving, petty and mean…”
Your anger just didn’t have the right “optics”!
For my part, I'm really glad you publish on substack. I haven't taken the NYT seriously since Gulf War II after they sold us on that disaster. The only time I reach for the NYT is when I run out of toilet paper.
My favorite riposte to "old bullfrog" Carville's rant, written by someone named "webtrout," deserves a Pulitzer for Best Letter to the Editor (it garnered 255 Recommends):
"Carville’s thoughts are akin to that restaurant you loved as a kid back in the old neighborhood, and upon dining there in your 40s while on a visit, sadly disappoints. The portions are smaller than you remember, the flavors are below average and actually quite bland, and the service is sub-par.
"It is time to move past this one- or two-trick pony who has strategically helped us arrive at our current state, with selected poll data pressed up against the dated beliefs about what draws the voting public out. The old bullfrog needs to move to his lily pad at the back of the pond and let the young frogs kick a hole in the dam, allowing fresh water to flow in, carrying the fetid water out.
"Let's put the purity pledges and French phrases to rest and move forward with a progressive ideology of taxing the rich fairly, providing affordable, sustainable, and patient-centered healthcare, and offering programs that allow each individual to lift themselves to their highest potential."
The only potentially "legitimate" reason I can think of for turning it down is that they may have felt they needed to do some fact-checking about the neoliberal crises you mention, such as in the paragraph that brings up the Rand study. Otherwise, they must feel that the essay might alienate readers who are comfortably ensconced in the donor class or the political class or the donors themselves.
Only this week I canceled my *free* subscription through CUNY of the paper. Although I had free access, they started getting stingy on some stories. Plus the sane-washing of this administration and one editorial too many from Brett Stephens prompted me to say "enough is enough."
You'd have a more receptive publisher and audience with The Nation, but despite the decline in general of legacy media, your work is likely to get a lot of attention in their pages. So I would go with them, if that doesn't sound too cynical.
Frank
PS: The point about the donor class loving anti-racism but hating redistribution is such a cogent one. It reminds me of a recent book by Norman Finkelstein and his critique of Robin DiAngelo. I'm not sure if he makes that point, but as I recall, he does a good job of showing how hollow, not to mention profitable, the anti-racism industry is.
Catherine, I don't think they rejected the piece on its merits at all. I think they rejected you. I mean, look at the constituency of the NYT editorial and oped pages: overwhelmingly centrist / rw, with a few "leftish" Identitarians for plausible deniability. (Gessen and Polgreen are great, but not real leftists, at least on the page.) Marxists, esp. those who have pronounced the Democratic Party hopeless, don't really fit in.
Pure conjecture, but I think the most likely scenario is that someone, probably a young person, liked your work and knew you had a following, and so pitched or promoted your column. But your piece has a bite that most NYT pieces lack, and perhaps that's what alerted a higher up, who checked your record and said, "Oh hell no."
Carville is just a reliably banal seat-filler. (We could have side discussions about the plausible theories that they stole your idea, and that anger is more acceptable coming from a white man.)
If you find this explanation plausible, it's not clear whether you should keep submitting. OTOH, it doesn't hurt anything, especially if you moderate your expectations, and who knows, you might one day get in - esp. if Mamdani et al. forces the powers that be to acknowledge the growing leftist sentiment in this country. OTOH, there's the opportunity cost...
You have expressed my ambivalence perfectly. I can’t cut off my limbs to fit in their boring dishonest Procrustean bed. I was just shocked when the Carville piece came out the day after mine was rejected. The process was fascinating: they think they can do this to a writer bc she (me) has no
Power. I am not legacy media powerful but I do have an audience that can be edified by this experience of ideological triage.
I first saw you on Chris Hedges's show, so we both know from him how the NYT operates. It sucks what they did to you, and also how leftist voices are silenced everywhere and have been most of our lives (I'm in my 60s), but you are the best - a beacon of clarity, hope, and humor.
Also, for the record, I would never read anything with Carville's name attached.
In case the link to the Rand study did not come through, here it is: they estimate that there was $3.9 trillion wage theft from 1973-2023
https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-2.html
Absurd that the Times didn't think your piece contained "concrete proposals." Knowing the minds at work there, I'm pretty sure your piece was doomed the moment you wrote "identity bandwagons" and criticized Obama. Please keep on submitting pieces to them. Happy Thanksgiving.
I agree with Ken Tucker: "Please keep on submitting pieces to them." Specifically, I think Catherine should target the Modern Love section at least once, and not just because it is said to be probably the toughest part of the paper to get published in. Humble tip to Catherine: Make the Times an infuriating character you love to hate more than you hate to love.
As somebody who grew up believing op-eds were the everyman pulpit and have had rejections similar to yours this year, I'd take cold-shoulder as a badge of honor. You're too honest for The Iraq York Times. Anything that would cause their readers to look at themselves in the mirror won't sell, so maybe there's no way to get any point across to a zombie. All that said, this is really good cause it's short yet explains a ton and is hopeful. Maybe it could be made into a video essay and posted here or there?
Hope ya'll have a good holiday wherever you are.
thank you! Happy Thanksgiving. Maybe I will do a substack on the proper and improper uses of political anger.
If you haven't already, check out Bailout by Neil Barofsky who was the Special Inspector General in charge of oversight of the TARP bailout funds. You will not find Geithner begging for funds for homeowners: quite the opposite. Obama had funds and authority to help homeowners but chose not to do so. One of the big hurdles to overcome is to get liberals understand the simple fact that Obama is a complete dick and Wall St. tool. Happy Thanksgiving!
Great essay! I am not surprised that the CIA Times didn't want to publish it. Way too thoughtful and informed. I learned a lot from it. I actually don't see the comparison between your essay and Carville's. His was a generic piece with a serious lack of substance. I could not actually make it to the end, although it was undemanding reading. His focus was on electoral strategy and not substance of any sort. This is something that the Democratic Party establishment specializes in. Similarly, I listened to a Podcast on Pod Save America about electoral data, and the interviewer and the interviewee were both very knowledgeable about different Congressional districts, etc., but they never discussed why anyone might want to vote for someone.
There is a serious lack of good news sources in the U.S.
An excellent piece, Catherine. The fact that such op-eds don't see the light of day should be a source of anger in itself. So should the findings of the Rand Studies, which are a serious indictment on the whole 4o years of neoliberalism. No wonder mainstream media don't publish this stuff. Thanks for highlighting them.
Mark Blyth, co-author of Angrynomics, recently tweeted out a link to a Michael W.Green piece that essentially argues that old measures of poverty are no longer appropriate and that today (in the US) one could be earning up to $140,000 and still be in a financially stressed position. As Blyth says this helps understand 'Angrynomics', and I would add, also helps explain what fuels the anger and resentment of the middle classes that turn to the right. Green's article is here, if anyone is interested:
https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1272022&post_id=179492574&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=5205r&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email&s=09
I saw that piece and it makes absolute sense. 31k for a family of four as a poverty line for this economy? It is a terrible joke. Haven’t heard of Angrynomics
Angrynomics (Blyth & Longergan) basically argues that despite the economic rhetoric of growth, stock market highs etc, the experience of a lot of people is one economic decline, with precarity, stagnated wages etc, which is caused by nature of economic system that's in place (neoliberal capitalism in my terms). Hence, the anger expressed by people as a consequence of this economic disconnect is a rational response. They also explore how anger is expressed, and how, for some, it finds expression in tribal identities etc. Worth a look.
Yes, you should continue to pitch ideas to the NYT op-ed gatekeepers. Wear them down by making them confront their own internal paradoxes.
Carvelle is a fraud. He went from "let's all play possum and ignore trump" to "wack people making 500k a year with huge tax increases." This is because he's in league with the corporatists billionaires (as he always has been.)
The top .001 percent of the population holds almost 20 percent of the national wealth. That's less than 35,000 people. The money is not with 500k salaried folks already paying 50% or more in taxes, it's with these fat cats that pay an effective tax rate of nearly nothing. No one making 100M+ a year is paying 50% of their income to the government. Courtesy of both republicans and democrats, there are lots and lots of wrinkles in the tax code to prevent that.
Carvelle's idiot brained ploy is that the heavily taxed salaried workers will revolt and cause the democrats to back away from changes in tax policy leaving the billionaire class yet again unscathed. Nice how he can suck down giant consulting fees to protect his puppeteers. Eminence grise my ass.
John
👉”Why did contemporary liberals and moderates jump on identity bandwagons with alacrity and leave the financial systems in place that allow for the intensifying exploitation of ordinary people? The donor class, as Jennifer Pan has shown, loves anti-racism and hates redistribution. To take on the money power requires the mobilization not the moderation of public anger, but that anger has
be directed at the proper targets. Anger does not need to be crippling: combined with a sense of collective responsibility, it can create a new politics that benefits the social whole and not the rapacious few. Anger is a natural reaction to abuse and a mode of self-defense. “
Great piece! Amazed that you thought it might be accepted by the NYT. You praise Mamdani (who they hate), while heaping (rightful)scorn on private equity (whom they need) and corporate Democrats (whom they love). The "anger" excuse is exactly that - an excuse. It's utter bs. You are very concrete; they just don't want to hear it. Or rather really don't want to hear praise given where it is due (to socialists). And even better, the fact that the NYT rejects it because you are too "angry" proves your central point about liberals!
“Moderates on the other hand, are so obsessed with 'optics' and image optimization that when they do lose their tempers in public, they seem especially self-serving, petty and mean…”
Your anger just didn’t have the right “optics”!
For my part, I'm really glad you publish on substack. I haven't taken the NYT seriously since Gulf War II after they sold us on that disaster. The only time I reach for the NYT is when I run out of toilet paper.
My favorite riposte to "old bullfrog" Carville's rant, written by someone named "webtrout," deserves a Pulitzer for Best Letter to the Editor (it garnered 255 Recommends):
"Carville’s thoughts are akin to that restaurant you loved as a kid back in the old neighborhood, and upon dining there in your 40s while on a visit, sadly disappoints. The portions are smaller than you remember, the flavors are below average and actually quite bland, and the service is sub-par.
"It is time to move past this one- or two-trick pony who has strategically helped us arrive at our current state, with selected poll data pressed up against the dated beliefs about what draws the voting public out. The old bullfrog needs to move to his lily pad at the back of the pond and let the young frogs kick a hole in the dam, allowing fresh water to flow in, carrying the fetid water out.
"Let's put the purity pledges and French phrases to rest and move forward with a progressive ideology of taxing the rich fairly, providing affordable, sustainable, and patient-centered healthcare, and offering programs that allow each individual to lift themselves to their highest potential."
The only potentially "legitimate" reason I can think of for turning it down is that they may have felt they needed to do some fact-checking about the neoliberal crises you mention, such as in the paragraph that brings up the Rand study. Otherwise, they must feel that the essay might alienate readers who are comfortably ensconced in the donor class or the political class or the donors themselves.
Only this week I canceled my *free* subscription through CUNY of the paper. Although I had free access, they started getting stingy on some stories. Plus the sane-washing of this administration and one editorial too many from Brett Stephens prompted me to say "enough is enough."
You'd have a more receptive publisher and audience with The Nation, but despite the decline in general of legacy media, your work is likely to get a lot of attention in their pages. So I would go with them, if that doesn't sound too cynical.
Frank
PS: The point about the donor class loving anti-racism but hating redistribution is such a cogent one. It reminds me of a recent book by Norman Finkelstein and his critique of Robin DiAngelo. I'm not sure if he makes that point, but as I recall, he does a good job of showing how hollow, not to mention profitable, the anti-racism industry is.
I link to the Rand report, but maybe it didn't show up in the cut and paste:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-2.html
Catherine, I don't think they rejected the piece on its merits at all. I think they rejected you. I mean, look at the constituency of the NYT editorial and oped pages: overwhelmingly centrist / rw, with a few "leftish" Identitarians for plausible deniability. (Gessen and Polgreen are great, but not real leftists, at least on the page.) Marxists, esp. those who have pronounced the Democratic Party hopeless, don't really fit in.
Pure conjecture, but I think the most likely scenario is that someone, probably a young person, liked your work and knew you had a following, and so pitched or promoted your column. But your piece has a bite that most NYT pieces lack, and perhaps that's what alerted a higher up, who checked your record and said, "Oh hell no."
Carville is just a reliably banal seat-filler. (We could have side discussions about the plausible theories that they stole your idea, and that anger is more acceptable coming from a white man.)
If you find this explanation plausible, it's not clear whether you should keep submitting. OTOH, it doesn't hurt anything, especially if you moderate your expectations, and who knows, you might one day get in - esp. if Mamdani et al. forces the powers that be to acknowledge the growing leftist sentiment in this country. OTOH, there's the opportunity cost...
You have expressed my ambivalence perfectly. I can’t cut off my limbs to fit in their boring dishonest Procrustean bed. I was just shocked when the Carville piece came out the day after mine was rejected. The process was fascinating: they think they can do this to a writer bc she (me) has no
Power. I am not legacy media powerful but I do have an audience that can be edified by this experience of ideological triage.
Procrustean! I have not heard not heard that in decades. Love it!
I first saw you on Chris Hedges's show, so we both know from him how the NYT operates. It sucks what they did to you, and also how leftist voices are silenced everywhere and have been most of our lives (I'm in my 60s), but you are the best - a beacon of clarity, hope, and humor.
Also, for the record, I would never read anything with Carville's name attached.
Thank you!