Despite that disgraceful article enjoying a prime spot on the site’s home page for days, Bill de Blasio, the current mayor of the largest city in the United States and the paper’s home, endorsed Bernie Sanders on February 14th. The NYT article on that topic was relegated to the paper’s archives after just a couple hours of front page treatment. While the degradation of editorial standards required to publish this type of blatantly biased coverage must have been hard for journalists to swallow, the Times delegates the proliferation of its most scathing attacks to its op-ed columnists.

In his “Tips for Aspiring Op-Ed Writers”, Bret Stephens claims that “a newspaper has a running conversation with its readers.” To me, recent Times editorials about Senator Sanders feel less like a conversation and more like a small, ideologically homogenous group of bigots scolding me with permutations of his age, impracticality, unelectability, and the danger my wife and I pose by supporting him.

A large number of the NYT’s latest political op-eds deal centrally with Bernie. This is hardly surprising given that over the last few weeks, despite some notable claims to the contrary, Sanders has established himself as the clear front-runner in the Democratic Primary. As of February 17th, Nate Silver gives him almost triple the odds of his closest rival to win a majority of delegates and he has by far the highest RCP betting average to win the nomination.

Bernie supporters will always have his back in the meme war against Bloomberg.

However, upon closer review, you’ll find the most recent pro-Sanders op-ed featured on that page is “Please Stop Calling Bernie Sanders a Populist,” published on January 23rd. Yet the same list features at least seven articles from February alone that are primarily critical of Sanders’ policies and/or his chances of defeating Trump:

Some of the most absurd editorials weren’t featured on that page at all. In Searching for the Perfect Trump Antidote, published February 12th, Gail Collins creates her own version of Joe the Plumber named Ralph to represent “all the people in swing states who went for Barack Obama and then turned Republican in 2016.”

The real Ralph would never vote for Trump.

Ralph is understandably frustrated. He’s got the tough job of encapsulating millions of voters with a single stereotype and if history is any indicator, he probably won’t even get a medal for it. On top of that, Ralph is grappling with some pretty deep qualms about New Hampshire’s top finishers:

What’s the story? A) Mayor Pete reminds them of their grandchildren. B) Bernie reminds them of the guy at their coffee shop who never treats and won’t stop complaining about the weather. C) Millennials hear Sanders speeches and think he’s rapping.

First off, as a millenial, I’m completely lost as to what “C” is supposed to mean. Even more troubling, why does Ralph think Bernie’s coffee shop doppelganger “never treats”? It sounds to me like unless Ralph thinks a millionaire senator fighting to tax the wealthy for free health care and education is inherently reluctant to pay for things, he might need to come to terms with his latent antisemitism.

Just so we’re totally clear, this incoherent, rambling narrative that reads like a third grade essay about grandpa’s take on the 2020 election was published in a paper that has won the Pulitzer Prize 127 times and describes the contents of its Political Opinion section as “Strong arguments and cogent analysis from left, right and beyond.” Despite all this, the arrogance of Timothy Egan’s January 31st article simply titled “Bernie Sanders Can’t Win” takes the cake. His closing appeal speaks for itself:

Three times, the [Democratic] party nominated William Jennings Bryan, the quirky progressive with great oratorical pipes, and three times they were trounced. Look him up, kids. Your grandchildren will do a similar search for Bernie Sanders when they wonder how Donald Trump won a second term.

So I took his advice and learned the following about Egan’s ominous Sanders analogue:

He was born before the Civil War

His core issue was governmental adoption of silver coinage

He started advocating for women’s suffrage in 1910 after his third presidential run

On his deathbed, he fought the theory of evolution popularized by his contemporary, Charles Darwin

Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan looks like Ted Cruz.

First of all, if Bernie were around during the turn of the twentieth century, he would have been fighting for women’s right to vote way before 1910 and by the twenties you can be sure he’d be too busy railing against Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan to waste time on Darwin. Though for the most part I didn’t find Bryan’s century old story particularly instructive, I think I may have discerned the wisdom Mr. Egan tried so condescendingly to impart.

At 1896 Democratic convention, William Jennings Bryan received 137 votes, trailing “Silver Dick” Bland by 98. However, the party chose to align itself around Bryan, who would go on to lose in the general to McKinley, a Republican. So Egan’s message to the DNC is clear: in the event of a contested convention, the best way to win is to nominate the candidate with the most votes.

Given the confidence with which Egan rules out any chance of a Sanders victory, I figured he must be quite the political prognosticator. You can imagine my shock and disappointment when I found his 2016 article, “Crackpot Party Crackup”:

The polls show what will happen [to Trump]. Not in modern times has a major party nominated a candidate who is so disliked across the board.

I hope Tim will be around to tell my grandchildren about Hillary Clinton when they wonder how Donald Trump won a first term.

The truth is simple: no one knows the outcome of a general election before the first vote is cast, let alone before we know who’s running in it. It shouldn’t be hard for the most decorated organization in journalistic history to figure that out, especially after 2016. Then again, if an organization’s capacity for humility is inversely proportional to the number of Pulitzer Prizes it’s received, these challenges are well account for.

Despite all of that, the New York Times is far from alone in their bias and fear mongering. Chris Matthews made even the Times’ most venomous editorials look extraordinarily sensible when he expressed concern that a Sanders presidency could lead to his execution in Central Park. Luckily, Matthews felt much better after reading Egan’s article explaining that Sanders had no chance of winning.

A New Hampshire forces MSNBC to reconsider the efficacy of their attempts to curtail Bernie’s chance at the nomination.

Unfortunately, though some of the examples I’ve cited are particularly transparent, this type of reporting is the rule rather than the exception for Sanders in both the press and in cable news coverage. I used to think the New York Times was above the journalistic chicanery I saw elsewhere in the media, but the facts speak for themselves.

Coming to terms with this made me a more cynical person. Perhaps that’s a good thing; seeing grays between black and white can make us more tolerant and empathetic. But for now, my biggest unanswered question is for the Times’ board of directors:

Is this your best attempt at self-preservation?

Sanders recently surpassed 50% support among college students in Chegg’s College Pulse

Granted, as the founder of a prelaunch tech startup with no revenue, it’s hard for me to imagine the motivations of the Sulzberger family that has controlled the Times (currently valued at more than $6B) since 1896. However, were I on the board, I’d be hard pressed to construe the alienation of the next generation of Democrats, who overwhelmingly support Bernie Sanders, as fiduciarily responsible.

I’ve subscribed to the New York Times since 2016. That might not sound like a long time, but it’s most of my adult life. As of today, I’ve lost my trust in the Times and have neither a use for its coverage nor a desire to support a thinly veiled purveyor of the propaganda Noam Chomsky described in Manufacturing Consent. In fact, in a 2010 interview, six years before the New York Times would all but write off Trump’s chances at the presidency, Chomsky offered the following:

If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? […] [That enemy] will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. […] I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.

Before abandoning all hope, our clairvoyant also had some thoughts about Senator Sanders:

Well, Bernie Sanders is an extremely interesting phenomenon. He’s a decent, honest person. That’s pretty unusual in the political system. Maybe there are two of them in the world, you know. But he’s considered radical and extremist, which is a pretty interesting characterization, because he’s basically a mainstream New Deal Democrat. His positions would not have surprised President Eisenhower.

And in the wake of the 2016 election, he offered an antidote:

[If] the Sanders movement offered an authentic, constructive program for real hope and change, it would win […] Trump supporters back.

I still don’t believe anyone claiming to know what the rest of 2020 has in store for us, but I’m confident that a choice between Chomsky and Egan will be one of the easiest I make all year. Best of all? I’ve already found a new home for my $15 monthly subscription fee, and so can you.