When the Paper of Record published a blistering editorial on President Obama's overbearing national security precautions today, one line stood out from the dozens of others as being the most vicious: "The administration has now lost all credibility."

Although Frank Bruni is a bad newspaper columnist, he does write for a very influential newspaper, even if he doesn't always seem to know it. But we can't expect Frank Bruni to always be writing about "news." Sometimes, you just wanna say, "Hey, Frank: could you opine on the current season, for 800 words or so?"

Seeking a job? Who better to turn to for advice than mustachioed simpleton Thomas Friedman, reliable font of platitudinous excreta? Why, Thomas Friedman knows just who to talk to about this...

The New York Times is sending political reporter Jim Rutenberg to cover the Hamptons all summer. Rich people vacation spots are, uh, important.

Brooklyn, writes the hip hop authority New York Times, "gave birth to an explosion of hip hop" in the 1980s and 90s—"like KRS-One and Gang Starr," who are from the Bronx and Boston, respectively.

Here's a disgusting new way to make Baby healthier: Instead of being an uptight parent who uses dishwashers or soap or basic hygiene, try "cleaning" your infant's gross pukey pacifier by sticking that thing in your mouth and sucking away.

Here's something you won't see on Gawker very often: Andrew Breitbart was somewhat right.

If Politico is to be believed, there is trouble brewing at the New York Times. The story by Dylan Byers, "Turbulence at The Times," focuses on resentment amongst the newspaper's staff over executive editor Jill Abramson's leadership.

Disclosure. Disclosure! I like Frank Rich, based on my small but existent amount of contact with him in the course of my work. And as someone who is well-enough employed, in the unstable business of journalism, and who is still not too old to have maybe have a chance to eventually become better employed, I am also wary of Frank Rich. The former New York Times theater critic-turned-columnist, now a New York magazine writer and an HBO something-or-other, exists within a network of powerful goodwill and even more powerful professional obligation.

The New York Times just torched Times reporter Brian Stelter's new book Top of the Morning, calling it "overblown" and "silly" and comparing it unfavorably with the work of Stelter's partner on the TV beat, Bill Carter. The upside? "Mr. Stelter is just 27, so there’s ample time really to get the hang of this."

Ross Douthat, the young conservative on the Times op-ed page, weighed in today on Susan Patton's totally fucked-up advice for Princeton women. His piece, which lays out that the Ivy league represents the kind of compromised meritocracy that caters to elites like Patton, especially because they give the elite a chance to preserve their wealth and status, is both nuanced and thoughtful. But it's coming from a person who tends towards the right. And attacks the type of meritocracy that has privileged most of the readership of the Times. In other words, commenters are having a really hard time trying to figure out what to make of the piece.

Screw you, New York Times /
This is weak, joyless garbage /
Nor is it haiku.

David Brooks, a clumsy amateur sociologist who has improbably turned a talent for adjusting his glasses in a wise-looking manner into a gig as a nationally respected opinion columnist, is a busy man. He's teaching a class at Yale, okay? He can't be expected to come up with his own ideas every single week. Today, he hit on a novel solution to his quandary: just have one of his students write his column! You can hardly tell the difference.

Three years ago, New York Times media reporter and occult career-bender David Carr was taking a tour through South by Southwest and asked the festival's film person what movie he should see. She tipped him off to a movie called Tiny Furniture and he fell in love. He gave the movie and its creator/star, a 23-year-old woman named Lena Dunham, 1,000 words in the Times.

New York Times travel editor Danielle Mattoon, who put Dwight Garner on a sexy boat, is now the paper's culture czar.

Fashion news: Isabella Blow x Pink Flamingos = "genuinely original." (Also "no child of privilege" = went to Spence.)

The New York Times Style section has logged another entry in its ongoing coverage of economic reality happening to young, pretty people. This time, the paper of record has focused on low-paying jobs with endless hours. Janitorial? No way, Jose — Creative! Look at these tired blue eyes stuck behind tortoise-shell glasses, hundreds of feet above the whimpering masses, stuck inside a small midtown office.

New York Times columnist and culture scholar David Brooks had some thoughts this week about the difference between hardworking Chinese students and lazy American students. The Chinese, he wrote, see education as a moral enterprise, built around the cultivation of discipline and other internal virtues, while Westerners focus on learning about things and are hung up on "critical inquiry" and "sharing ideas."

A couple of times a week I walk by the Yale Drama School. It's a strange experience because my dream through college was to go there and become a playwright, a cross between Clifford Odets and George S. Kaufman. When the socialist revolution came I wanted to be the one writing snappy one-liners to support it. Then I gave up that dream and decided to become Herbert Croly, the early New Republic editor, or John Reed, the radical who went to Harvard and then had a love affair with Diane Keaton (at least in "Reds").

The New York Times is reporting that members of China's most advanced hacking group have been traced to the same small neighborhood as a Chinese Army base, a revelation that all but confirms that the Chinese military is behind the attacks. The hackers, known as the "Comment Crew," have targeted various parts of the U.S. government as well as major corporations like Coca-Cola and, more troubling, a company that has remote access to more than 60 percent of the oil and gas pipelines in North America. Mandiant, the same American computer security company the Times used to rid its networks of hackers last year, traced hundreds of attacks — 90% of the ones they examined — to the Shanghai neighborhood that houses the base, called P.L.A. Unit 61398.