The one thing in THE NEW YORK TIMES worth paying for

I subscribe to the NEW YORK TIMES crossword puzzles.  But I just do Friday and Saturday:  I skip the Monday to Thursday puzzles, because they're too easy. (They put the easier puzzles early in the week, and they gradually get harder toward the weekend.) I used to do the Sunday crossword just in case it was one with rebuses, but I've got out of the habit lately.  As for the second Sunday, I do the diagramless every six weeks.  The puns and anagrams puzzle is a bit too easy for me, and the acrostic takes to long for the reward.

Back in 1992, the TIMES honored their first Sunday crossword's 50th anniversary by reprinting several from over the decades.  The ones from the early years were really tough!  I'd like to get a reprint of their early Sunday crosswords.

As for the rest of that newspaper, don't get me started.  The TIMES has been in decline for the last three decades, since A.M. Rosenthal was in charge.  They have the disease of thinking of themselves as "liberal enough," so when Judith Miller publishes stories promoting the coming invasion of Iraq, they think they're proving how balanced they are.

I remember one sentence from a SUNDAY TIMES "Week in Review" article back in 1988: "In countries that hated America eight years ago, American is chic today." I was impressed by the sheer condescending laziness that makes such an assertion possible. (The Sunday paper got a bit of flak back then when the editor admitted that an up-to-date "Week in Review" was less important than an up-to-date sports section.)

Another thing I recall was a report from the newspaper's Chile correspondent dismissing Chile before Pinochet's military takeover as "a backward banana republic." Never mind that Chile before 1973 was fairly developed and politically stable by South American standards.  This is redundant rhetoric (aren't all banana republics backward?) better suited to THE NEW YORK POST than to the TIMES.  But of course, it proves how "balanced" they are...

Was there once a time when I was capable of buying the SUNDAY TIMES?  It's a barely portable ripoff.  I don't even read it at the library anymore.  Nothing to miss.