A Moment of Snark

These are momentous times. War could break out on the Korean peninsula at any moment. The Gulf oil spill is turning into an environmental disaster of the first magnitude, while the federal government stands by helplessly. (Speaking of which, I will be on Bill Bennett’s radio show at 7:05 central time, tomorrow morning, to talk about the spill.) Both Afghanistan and Iraq teeter on the brink, and our economy is battered by international currents and bad policies.
But, just for fun, let’s take time out to laugh at the New York Times. You know, the ultra-liberal Manhattan newspaper that tries to teach the rest of us how to think because they are smarter than we are. Over the years, we have chronicled the Times’s failures with respect to history, literature, economics, science and arithmetic. But wine? Is it possible that when it comes to wine, the Times is dumber than you are? If so, there is no possible reason why you should take the paper seriously when it hectors you about politics.
Alas, it is true. The New York Times and its reporters and editors are morons when it comes to wine. From Saturday’s NYT corrections section:

A report on Page 90 this weekend in the feature “The Place” about five vintage wines to seek out in Napa Valley refers incorrectly to one from the Storybook Mountain Napa Estate. Its “Eastern Exposures” Zinfandel 2006 is a red wine, not white.

Zinfandel is, day in and day out, my favorite red wine. That a NYT reporter and editor would believe it to be white, frankly, disillusions even me. These aren’t sophisticated fools, as many think; they aren’t sophisticated, period. Let’s not take political advice from people who can’t even tell the difference between red wine and white wine–or pink wine, as in the case of the dreaded “white zin.” There is no respect in which they are more knowledgeable than you are.

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