The New York Times Has Transitioned Into Clinical Insanity

You watch a lion try to chase down a wildebeest. A professional journalist appears, proposing to explain, and screams Donald Trump’s name six hundred times, clawing at his own eyes. “Click the subscribe button to get more analysis like this in your inbox,” he says, though you’re not sure what subscribe button he’s referring to.

So.

Hollywood sold about 1.6 billion movie tickets in the U.S. and Canada in 2002, and sold 769.2 million in 2025. They’re down to half, and still trending downward. You can read a long dive on moviegoing trends here, with this observation in which the same word shows up again: “About half of Americans (53%) said in a summer 2025 survey that they had seen a movie in theaters in the past year.”

The moviegoing habit is dying, especially among impatient old men named Chris Bray, and it’s happening alongside a dramatic restructuring of the way people watch television. This is the big one, though not the only one: “The broadcast category represented 19.9% of total TV watch-time in April.” There’s a decline sitting alongside a shift, in which people are watching on other screens but also just watching less because studio-made movies and television are horrible. Cartman can explain, if you haven’t been tracking this.

The sharp decline in sales is causing a decline in new productions, which is causing a really ugly decline in Hollywood craft employment: the people who build and light the sets, make the costumes, run the cameras, feed teenagers to hot directors, and all the rest of it.

This is the least obscure business story of the decade, and everyone knows about it. Sample Wall Street Journal headline from this spring: “See How Hollywood’s Job Market Is Collapsing.” See also this story about union “roster culling” as union members who haven’t been working during the contraction face delisting from a database of experienced workers which is used for hiring. (“A few thousand IATSE members were flagged for removal from a key industry resource because it’s believed they haven't held a union job since 2023.”) It’s grim out there.

As the product and the market change radically, the industry that makes the product and serves the market is also changing. The proposed merger between two studios, Paramount and Warner Brothers, is a business move driven by market realities. You can see the business argument here, in the announcement from Paramount, or watch this discussion from J.P. Morgan (which has been advising Warner Brothers). They’re all talking about the business logic behind a business deal. Change causes change. If a couple hundred million Americans radically changed their diet over the next decade, the American food industry would face a reorganization. Changes in consumer habits lead to changes in industrial organization. If David French stopped leaving the house, the tampon industry would scale back production. Cause and effect.

Now, here’s how the opinion pages of the New York Times just described the debate over the Paramount-Warner Brothers merger:

Goldberg opens with a stunning and brave phone call between two freedom fighters, Mark Ruffalo and Norm Eisen, who are essentially the same vaguely human creature wearing different pants, and then goes hard on what the merger would mean. Read this single paragraph slowly and carefully, and remember that insects might fly into your mouth if it hangs open for too long:

Why Paramount want buy Warner Brothers, grunt grunt, IT TRUMP, he want make hard-ass man movies for MAGA chads!!!!!

That’s it. MAGA messaging. The sole explanation for a multibillion-dollar proposed merger between major corporations is that Trump wants chicks and soy boys to suck it, hell yeah, THIS MOVIE HAS GUNS VOTE MAGA.

Here’s the link again. Go look for any discussion at all of the state of the industry or the business logic of the proposed merger. Opposition to the merger is all about “the defense of our democracy,” is the big creative finish. Go read carefully for any sign that anything exists in the universe outside of Donald Trump’s personality. There is Trump, and then there is the void. The distance between objects inside Donald Trump is often measured in light years, because the expanse of Trump is so vast.

TODAY IN THE NEW YORK TIMES WHY DO LIONS EAT GAZELLES TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP WHY DOES MY THUMB BLEED WHEN I HIT IT WITH A HAMMER TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP OKAY MORE ANALYSIS TOMORROW

I understand that there aren’t enough psychiatric medications in the world to help Michelle Goldberg, but does anyone else still work in the building? They could just shut off her computer or something and let her press the buttons for comfort.