New York Times

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s 180-degree turn on Barack Obama has made her a New York Times cover girl today, the lead example in a front-page story on Republicans whose opinions of Obama have undergone drastic makeovers in the five days since his landslide victory in the presidential election. But hers wasn’t an immediate conversion, or even overnight as the Times has it. The political calculation required to move from worries about Obama’s “anti-American views” to his gladness over his African-American background took a little more time, even for a woman who also promised him a kiss.

Maureen Dowd’s column in the Sunday New York Times linked two Republican shopping trips. The first, a 1991 George H.W. Bush photo-op run to the mall, was intentionally symbolic, meant to inspire Americans to repress their tightwad instincts during the early-’90s recession. The other — recent high-fashion expenditures by the Republican National Committee on behalf of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her family — only became symbolic by accident. Dowd then moved on (so much to mock, so little time) without fully exploiting the delicious details of this political parallel.

Four years ago, Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times staved off 63 competitors to lay claim to the coveted Wimblehack crown honoring the country’s worst political reporter. Although it was deemed an upset by Wimblehack Chairman Matt Taibbi (Newsweek’s Howard Fineman was the formidable favorite), Bumiller has now let it be known that she [...]

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine features a sympathetic profile of Gen. Vang Pao. The story chronicles the U.S. government’s sting operation against the 78-year-old Hmong leader, who was tapped by the CIA to oversee a secret proxy war against the Laotian government in the ’60s and ’70s, and now faces conspiracy and gun-running charges that [...]

Nancy Larson, the Minnesota superdelegate whose switch to Obama rated a big photo in Sunday’s New York Times, is a lobbyist at the state Capitol who represents small cities — the kind of places supposedly insulted by Obama’s “bitter” remark.

In an excellent letter to the editor of the New York Times, Sen. John Edwards calls the paper to task for failing to report on the real human impact of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He takes issue with writer Lawrence Downes for not detailing the real number of casualties. And he rebukes the media [...]