The editor of the New Yorker closes with a warning to all MSMers assembled to gird up their loins. "You have to wonder," he broods, whether he Bush White House, "in its urgent need to find scapegoats for the myriad disasters it has inflicted, is preparing to repeat a dismal and dismaying episode of the Nixon years."

We should not be surprised by the quiver in the column, as Remnick tells us that the days of the "supremely confident Bradlees and Rosenthals" are gone. And perhaps he's just rushed to get out an assist to his beleaguered pals whose subscription bleeding is said to be as intesne as the lopsided verdict against the papers for their recklessness. Short deadlines don't allow for careful prose and lousy historical comparisons are one product. (Didn't anyone at the magazine point out that no prior restraint had been sought in this instance? Which renders the comparison with the Pentagon papers less than compelling.)

Most telling though is the comparison between Keller/Remnick and the character of Runway editor Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. Now there's a New Yorker who might rally some to her flag. Priestly's supreme confidence in her judgment was expressed in hauteur, nit paranoia. The former could intimidate, but the latter only amuses.

But please, invoking Nixon dead these dozen years, or Vietnam era court actions? Retreating from the significance of the story or its consequence? Ignoring the claims made by the story itself and instead pretending as though the Administration was not sincere in its anger while ignoring the overwhelming rejection by the public of the arguments advanced by the Times men?

A confident press deals forthrightly with its critics, defends its decisions in open forums, debates and does not denigrate its opponents.

But as Mr. Remnick admits -- and not just expressly-- the era of that press is long gone. At least among the formerly great press institutions of Manhattan.