The hefty several kilos at which The New York Times weighs in every Sunday continues to be a source of amusement and occasional distress, its six-dollar cost provoking mostly the latter. More distressing still is the realization that the paper’s editorial board is now totally committed to political engagement. This has been the wind’s direction for years, but now even the various “non-news” departments (Travel, Business, etc.) have been fatally contaminated. Heretofore, these segments imparted interesting, original, and even amusing insights. More recently, no subject has remained immune to being made “woke.” A particularly sad manifestation of this was a recent Arts & Leisure section that prominently featured and was almost entirely devoted to “How to Save America’s Biggest Museums—A Manifesto.” The title alone rings like a clarion call to the ramparts. Authored by the paper’s tenured art critic, Holland Cotter, it promises a “five-point plan” to accomplish nothing less than the reinvention of those institutions. According to Cotter, a shake-up of such magnitude is urgently needed because “demands for inclusiveness and truth-telling” have so long been ignored.

The Times is obviously at pains to demonstrate its strenuous engagement in seeking inclusiveness and truth-telling; and nowhere more strenuously than when these relate to trans/queer identity. Leafing further through the same Arts & Leisure section, one discovers another article that informs us of an all-male troupe of Flamenco dancers. But wait: thesedancers all perform in female costumes (and wigs). Apparently, the act is reaping accolades in Spain. Unlike