The Plonking Earnestness of the New York Times

I saw this headline on a New York Times column:

“The Scary Specter of Ted Cruz”

I thought it was meant ironically.  (The over-the-top double deprecation is a clear signal, right?)  I thought, That’s interesting!  Someone writing in the New York Times is actually going to push back on some of the left’s more extreme emotional overreactions to conservatism, possibly even using humor and poking fun at them.

Nope!  The columnist, Frank Bruni, just actually has that emotional reaction to Ted Cruz and means the words at face value, as far as I can tell.  In the column, he describes Cruz as

a menacing, stalking, relentless force to watch for and run from, like the body-hopping spirit in this year’s most celebrated horror movie, “It Follows.”

As Mark Steyn would say, I just hope the movie can live up to the trailer!