This site is usually devoted to criticizing the New York Times, not to praising it. But an exception is called for in the case of Edward Rothstein's piece in today's special section on museums, which is so good, so smart, and so at odds with the paper's left-leaning conventional views, that it's almost a wonder that it made it into the paper. If you are interested in history, museums, or identity politics, it's worth your time.

The Wall Street Journal's Keach Hagey shrewdly notices that the Ochs-Sulzberger family's economic stake in the New York Times company has declined to a mere 13 percent, from 19 percent as recently as 2010.

A Times company spokesman who spoke to the Journal attributed the decline to "estate planning and long term estate taxes." (I will resist the temptation to make a smart-aleck remark here about the Times editorial position on the estate tax.)

It does raise certain questions about the candor of the newspaper's $5.3 million a year chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who is running around town granting breakfast interviews emphasizing the point that the Times is not for sale. In fact six percent (the difference between 19 percent and 13 percent) of the New York Times Company at today's prices is worth about $146 million. So the family was willing to sell $146 million worth of the Times Company — they just don't want to give up any control for that money. They're selling while insisting it's not for sale! It's the best of both worlds (or the worst, depending on how you see it).

It also raises the question of how long the paper's non-family shareholders will want to hang around if the family's economic ownership continues to decline but its control over the company's governance remains intact. It looks like the family was willing to find a taker for about $146 million worth of its shares with that proposition, but there's probably some limit to it. If someone came along offering $300 million for the rest of the Ochs-Sulzberger family's economic stake in the business, that person making the offer would almost certainly want some control in exchange for the money, or at least the right to take control at some time in the future.

Paul Krugman writes in his New York Times column:

it's hard to find angry Tea Party denunciations of huge Wall Street bailouts, of huge bonuses paid to executives who were saved from disaster by government backing and guarantees. Instead, all the movement's passion, starting with Rick Santelli's famous rant on CNBC, has been directed against any hint of financial relief for low-income borrowers.

Finding these denunciations is not "hard," as Professor Krugman claims. In fact a quick search in the archives of the Times itself turns up a news article about Sharron Angle, "the Tea Party darling from Nevada," denouncing Senator McCain as "Lord of the TARP."

Another Times news article, which appeared on the newspaper's front page, reported:

Democrats who voted for the bailout — which was championed by their own leaders along with President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain of Arizona, then the Republican presidential nominee — are now facing attacks from Republican challengers on the campaign trail. Republicans who voted for it are being accused of promoting big government and fiscal irresponsibility by Tea Party candidates and other conservatives.

Emotions can run high over the subject. Lawmakers report being buttonholed over bailouts by confrontational constituents, and Senator Robert F. Bennett, Republican of Utah, was jeered at a party convention by people chanting "TARP, TARP, TARP."

"It became a litmus test of fidelity to free enterprise principles," said Representative Bob Inglis, a South Carolina Republican who was crushed in a primary last month partly because of his vote in favor of the plan.

Another Times news article, headlined "Conservatives Heckle Hatch on Tarp Vote," reported: "Speaking to the conservative activists, Mr. Hatch, a Republican in his sixth term, was booed as he tried to defend his vote for the TARP program that bailed out the banks — a bugaboo for conservatives."

Professor Krugman doesn't even have to rely on the Times news department for this sort of information. It was readily available from his colleagues on the Times op-ed page, who didn't seem to have nearly as much difficulty as Professor Krugman did in locating Tea Party activists angry about TARP.

Here is Frank Rich: "The more we learn about the Tea Partiers, the more we can see why. They loathe John McCain and the free-spending, TARP-tainted presidency of George W. Bush."

Here is Ross Douthat: "It was TARP that first turned Tea Partiers against Republican incumbents, and independents against Washington."

Here is Frank Bruni: "He [Paul Ryan] voted for TARP. That's now Tea Party anathema and was precisely the cudgel Perry used to flatten Kay Bailey Hutchison in his 2010 re-election race."

The fact that the Tea Party hates TARP undercuts Professor Krugman's argument that the Tea Party is all a bunch of racists who oppose government subsidies for poor black people but not for rich Wall Street bankers. But Professor Krugman goes ahead with that argument anyway, in defiance of the facts.

A Times article about Mayor de Blasio begins, "He wants to close schools for the Chinese New Year, has pledged fealty to an Israeli political group, sprinkles Spanish and Italian phrases into his speeches and speaks frequently of his wife's Caribbean heritage."

The reference to the mayor having "pledged fealty to an Israeli political group" is unexplained in the rest of the article, which is about Mr. de Blasio's relations with the Irish-American community in New York.

But it appears to be aimed at Mr. de Blasio's remarks to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. If that is indeed what the Times is talking about here, a correction is warranted, because Aipac is not in fact "an Israeli political group" but an American pro-Israel lobbying group.

The New York Times has now published its second article in two months about a book that tells readers how to clean sex toys. The first article, an interview with the author, was the subject of an earlier Smartertimes post here. Today's Times article, a book review, reports:

What other book will advise you to wash your sex toys — your unmotorized ones, at any rate — in the top rack of the dishwasher? Or will note that STP Fuel Injector & Carburetor Treatment helps remove certain lube stains? Or will have a trick up its sleeve for getting bong water out of a carpet?

Plenty of books published get no attention from the New York Times at all, so one has to wonder a little when a book gets this much attention. My reflexive assumption in these cases is that the author has some kind of close personal or family connection on the Times staff, but I don't know that to be so in this instance. Maybe the Times is just fascinated by the subject matter.

A Times editorial about the problem-plagued state ObamaCare websites accuses Republicans of "harassing state officials with requests for information about the salaries and vacation time of directors of the state exchanges." The editorial is headlined "harassment of troubled state exchanges."

There may be a point at which oversight of wasteful public expenditures crosses the line into "harassment," but the Times provides no evidence to support its claim that the line has been crossed. In fact, plenty of nonpartisan news reporters and even Democratic politicians are curious about how these state web sites were so badly botched. If merely asking questions about failed projects that consume tens of millions of taxpayer dollars amounts to "harassment," it's enough to make one wonder about whether the Times thinks that checks and balances and accountability apply only to Republican projects. If the failed project had been, say, a missile defense program, you can bet the Times would be cheering these "requests for information" rather than harrumphing about harassment.

One of the nice things about the comments section of the Times online is it lets us see quite dramatically when the newspaper disappoints its readers (no wonder the paper usually does not allow reader online comments on its staff editorials). The latest example is a Metropolitan DIary item, published by the Times with the byline "Billy R.," a first-person account of being so stoned that he missed his train to work.

Reader comments include "Dear NYT, What are you giving us? A story about someone who gets high, misses his transportation and gets canned? Pointless." That comment was upvoted by 34 readers.

Another reader comment was: "The point of this taking up space as a bylined article is? He gets a chunk of space for being a doofus? Why?" That comment was upvoted by 32 readers.

A third reader commented, "You were fired because you were foolish. Other than that, not sure what the point is of this essay. Is the bar for publication really this low?" That comment was upvoted by 26 readers.

Reader-contributor-content co-creator-community member-watchdog-participant Colin writes:

Today's NYT has a travel piece on Nicaragua that, unsurprisingly, was written by someone who first went there to assist the Sandinistas in the 1980s. In any case, at one point she says:

My friends and I spent the night at Selva Negra Mountain Resort (named for Bavaria's Black Forest)

The Black Forest is not located in Bavaria, but rather the German state of Baden-Württemberg.

The Times banned cigarette ads from its pages back in 1999 "because of concerns about the harmful effects of cigarette smoking," the paper reported at the time. Earlier this month, a Times editorial called for stricter government regulation of electronic cigarettes, citing "increasing evidence that the electronic cigarette industry is targeting children and young people who have never smoked before."

So it's surprising to see an article in the Times Men's Fashion magazine glorifying a tobacco consumption device called the Firefly, about which one writer the Times hired to review the gadget wrote, "Thanks for getting me hooked on tobacco again after 12 years of not smoking. This is the sleekest thing I've ever owned. I'll use it till the day I die, and that may come sooner thanks to this device." The other writer the Times asked to review the item wrote, "I think it's a clean way to smoke...it's cool."

So the Times position is that the stuff is too dangerous to advertise and so dangerous that the government should step in to make it harder to obtain, but nevertheless should be glorified in the newspaper's "fashion" section as "cool"?

The Times, having published articles about women's pubic hair in December and in January, weighs in with a third mention in the Sunday Men's Fashion magazine, with a feature on a series of photographs of men's chest hair. The Times reports that "The images are cropped so tightly that they resemble female pubic hair."

A Times article headlined "De Blasio and Dolan Announce a Push for More Pre-K Classes" waits until the tenth paragraph to deliver the news that in the fight between Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio over whether to raise taxes on the "rich" to pay for the pre-K classes, Cardinal Dolan is neutral. (Governor Cuomo opposes an additional tax increase, while Mayor de Blasio is insisting on it.)

The Times article concludes: "Later on Thursday, an advocacy group leading the mayor's prekindergarten campaign released a letter of support for his plan signed by 250 religious leaders. Cardinal Dolan's name was not on the list."

So whose names were on the list? The Times does not say. This is a perfect example of where a hyperlink would be helpful. What New Yorker wouldn't want to read the list and see if his or her pastor, priest, rabbi, reverend or imam favors higher taxes and Mayor de Blasio, or agrees instead with Governor Cuomo that New York City residents are taxed enough already? But the Times carries no link, and no list. For that information, you need to read Smartertimes.com, or the Daily News, whose Ken Lovett has the goods here.

A Times news article about the clash between New York Mayor de Blasio and charter school operator Eva Moskowitz includes this paragraph:

She has also attracted notice for her salary, $475,000, partly paid by donors, and roughly double what the chancellor earns. "The irony of what is going on is, here is a woman who makes quite a substantial living on the ability to create schools by pushing thousands of children out of their school buildings, and now she is upset that someone is pushing back on her," said Michael Mulgrew, the president of the city teachers' union.

This is a cheap shot. First of all, the United Federation of Teachers itself operated its own charter schools in city school buildings. Second of all, Mr. Mulgrew's predecessor at the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, herself earned more than $600,000 from the union in 2010, and Mr. Mulgrew's own union compensation in 2013 of $294,013, according to the department of labor, is itself quite "substantial," and also more than what the schools chancellor earns. The Times doesn't point any of this out.

The Times article also refers to Ms. Moskowitz as "a darling of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's administration." That's a bit of revisionist history. As chairman of the City Council education committee engaging in vigorous oversight of the Bloomberg administration, Ms. Moskowitz was not a "darling" of the Bloomberg administration, she was someone who gave them a lot of headaches. Later, when she left the City Council and became a charter school operator, the administration tried to help her because she was helping students learn.

The front of the Times arts section features a positive review of a book by sportswriter Dan Jenkins:

I woke up with a smile on my face every morning during the two or three days I spent reading "His Ownself." It's a casual and sly sportswriter's memoir, albeit with a few egregious missteps that I'll get to, one of those books that reminds you that good stories happen only to people who can tell them.

Lower down, the Times review reports:

His anti-P.C. campaign is where his geezer routine crosses over into something worse. On Twitter in 2010, writing about the Masters Golf Tournament, he made a racist joke that got him into trouble: "Y. E. Yang is only three shots off the lead. I think we got takeout from him last night."

Mr. Jenkins's memoir would have been a good place to apologize, so we could all move on, but he doesn't. Instead, he doubles down, printing several similarly derogatory and sophomoric Asian jokes. Now this writer is going to be partly remembered for this stuff, which is a shame.

One reason it's a shame is that, in the end, one of the best things about "His Ownself" is how generous its author is.

I wonder whether if these were anti-black jokes or sexist jokes or anti-gay jokes, the Times would have let Mr. Jenkins and his book off so easily, or whether the paper would have bothered to review the book at all. As it is, the gist of the review is essentially "Great book, run out and buy it! Oh, there are some derogatory Asian jokes but don't let them deter you..."

A Times news article about rich people includes the sentence, "In Britain, which, unlike the United States, does not tax individuals on their reported global wealth, the number of investor visas rose by a quarter in the first three-quarters of 2013."

That's a strange formulation — the U.S. in fact doesn't tax individuals on their "reported global wealth," but on their global income. The difference between income and wealth is something that reporters and public policy makers often get confused about.

The Times has never seen a problem that can't be solved by a tax increase, and, to hear columnist Thomas Friedman tell it, the crisis in Ukraine is no different. Mr. Friedman's column today recommends responding to Vladimir Putin's Russia by raising the gas tax on American drivers. It's actually comical, so long as it doesn't happen.