No, I am not employing extreme rhetoric to describe the biased bunch that turned the Grey Lady into a leftist propaganda rag. It turns out that the brand new fancy skyscraper headquarters of the Times has developed a slight problem with infestation by some of the more common scavenger species. Gawker reports on an email circulating among the ad sales staff on the 19th floor speaking of "a herd of mice" stampeding in their new digs:
Apparently the mouse control efforts on 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 have been very successful. We know this because a herd (???) of mice have been stampeding on the 19th floor. Building services is on the case, and will address this immediately. Please stay calm.... Help is on the way. An extra sales call might be a great idea...
Also, please suspend any dining on our floors immediately, and dispose of any food or waste in the receptacles found in each mail room. Do not keep food of any kind on or in your desk, this is why our guests have joined us.
New York Magazine reports on "a ‘big rat' scurrying around Metro editor Joe Sexton last week-‘one so huge it made him turn pale,' says one reporter" and on a leak - a literal water leak, not the kind where partisan bureaucrats disclose national security secrets - in editor Bill Keller's office. But the latest and most disgusting unpleasant discovery is maggots. Geoffrey Gray of New York Magazine writes: "It's hard to put out a newspaper when you're worried about what might fall on your head," one Times staffer told us this week. "One of the photo editors was sitting at her desk and maggots started falling from the ceiling tile on to her head." [....]
They were "followed by a rat," our source said. A dead rat, that is, "that had been eaten by the maggots." You could hear stifled screams ripple through the newsroom as word spread, said the source. "We all scanned our own ceilings for any loose tiles," the source continued. "With maggot-y ceilings and rats falling out of the air, it's like the dark ages in this building that was supposed to bring us into the 21st century."
I suppose it is going to be harder for Alessandra Stanley and Maureen Dowd to sneer so much in print when they have maggots dropping and herds of mice scampering. So maybe it is a bit unfair to speak so harshly of vermin. Those little critters are part of God's plan. Oops, I'd better rephrase that so that people at the Times can understand it. They are part of an ecosystem in which each species plays an important role. It is time for them to lean to live in harmony with our little friends. They might even find they have certain things in common.
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