Flaubert in 2020

It's hard to imagine, other than it just happened, that a reporter for a national newspaper could write a piece on Mitch McConnell, (R-Kentucky) centered on McConnell's prowess as a political strategist and never mention that McConnell's wife works for Donald Trump.

Carl Hulse, NY Times reporter, pulled it off this morning in his feature ('Strategic Retreat is Hallmark of Astute Operator on Senate Floor' p. A18, January 23, 2020).

We now read the kind of writers who let other people do their writing for them.

It's enough to make one wonder, what constitutes reading anymore? Is reading the newspaper, which I consider my daily obligation as a citizen, an act of reading? 

I'm not expecting art from The NY Times or CNN or MSNBC--the great thing about art is that it's against everything and everything is against it. I am not expecting Flaubert, who's once again relevant for our time, having lived through his. "When will we write the facts from the point of view of a cosmic joke, that is as God sees them from on high?" Flaubert wrote to a friend in 1852. 

Baudelaire, by Jacques Villon (Gaston Duchamp, 1875-1963), Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by author.