(6:44 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Subcomandante Marcos is Co-Writing a Detective Novel

The New York Times reports with the patronizing tone we've come to expect in their coverage of left-wing Latin American politics. NPR's audio is better; it's the way I heard about the story this morning.

Perhaps some level of patronizing is appropriate in this case -- though I'm starting to wonder if the narrowness verging on anti-intellectualism that Dan Green critiques in the New York Times Book Review is actually a problem with the paper as a whole. The hiring of David Brooks alone constitutes prima facie evidence of this.

I do like their hard-core international coverage, however, such as the front-page story on Sunday about the poisoning of the Ukrainian opposition candidate Viktor A. Yushchenko. We thought it was bad when the Republicans mocked Kerry's windsurfing exploits (or rather, point out that "Kerry windsurfing was not simply about blowing with the wind, it was about an eastern elitist sport that visually demonstrated the Democratic nominee didn’t share the values of swing state voters"). The Ukraine establishment, by contrast, mocked Yushchenko's cyst-covered face and severe stomach pain by saying that he must have eaten bad sushi -- after poisoning him (I know it's not proven yet, but come on). I know that I find such a dramatic change to be absolutely fucking hilarious:

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