Here Are Some Top New York Times Editors Joking About Mass Killings

[Freddie Stubbs]

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--uErR--Do--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/1310025159465924902.png

The New York Times jealously guards its status as America’s paper of record through an obsessive focus on decorum and propriety. So it’s interesting to see in two leaked photos that the paper’s brass has a sense of humor behind its respectable front—even if that humor veers into “making light of mass killings” territory.

Above is an old photo of the Times’ longtime opinion editor Andrew Rosenthal wielding a toy M-16 and a bottle of wine over many staffers stained with fake blood, “recreating,” according to the source who shared the photos with me, “the Nepalese royal massacre with the ‘dead and dying’ foreign desk.” The calendar on the wall indicates that it is June 2001—the same month in which Nepal crown prince Dipendra went on a spree shooting and killed 10 members of the royal family, including the king, queen, and himself, with three guns, including an M-16.

This photo, along with another that appears to show then-foreign desk editor and future Times executive editor Bill Keller presiding over a fake mass-suicide scene, meant to invoke the 1997 self-murders of the Heaven’s Gate cult, were recently provided to Gawker by a former Times staffer.

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--QPYnx14T--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/1310025159591983142.jpg

“These photos are in poor taste, not reflective of the values of The New York Times and deeply regrettable,” Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. told Gawker in an emailed statement after being asked about them Tuesday morning.

more: http://gawker.com/here-are-some-top-n-y-times-editors-and-staff-joking-a-1713336525

[CBGLuthier]

1. I worry a hell of a lot more about what gets published than the private shenanigans of people

It is a pretty well known fact that people who come into contact with gruesome realities sometimes develop morbid senses of humor. Maybe after 30 years of writing about one bloody massacre after another people have to make fun just to cope.

The idea that professional people sit around all day looking pious and behaving like monks as they perform their sacred duties is kind of ignorant.

[Octafish]

2. Explains a lot.

If they can joke about death and suffering in those instances, it's easy to see why they weren't fazed by the death and suffering caused by the traitors, warmongers and banksters.

Thank you for the heads-up, Freddie Stubbs.

[Blue_Tires]

3. Non-story... Workplaces have long had their own ways

of making behind-closed-doors humor, which will occasionally test the boundaries of decent taste...

And from what I hear about Gawker media, they aren't the ones to fuckin' talk

[GeorgeGist]

4. I just read recently that Journalists are in the top 10 professions for psychopaths

As in most other careers, they're even more prevalent at the top of their food chain.