Clark Hoyt, the New York Times Public Editor, basically wrote the tell-all on Weddings and Celebrations, and for that, we have to thank him. But first: a few weeks ago on our weekly analysis of the Weddings and Celebrations, Altarcations, we featured a couple that was very, very outside the realm of what the Times typically highlighted. He, a former homeless heroin junkie who'd been in and out of the pen his entire life. She, a sexually-abused meth addict turned teenage mother. They met outside of a narcotics anonymous meeting, and the story ends with him falling in love with her daughter and the daughter telling him to marry her mommy. If my summary of it didn't just make you cry, reading it actually will.

Here's where it gets good:

A few readers did not like the change of pace. "Are we telling young adults it is alright to waste half their lives in a drug stupor and somehow it will magically work out?" wrote Richard S. Emrich of Plymouth, Mich. I heard from other readers who said they regarded the weddings pages as a place for upstanding people with good educations who come from good families. Sousa and Keen, they said, did not belong.

And now you know why there's so much to hate about the Times: the assholes who read it like this. But Hoyt stands by the couple - who both have careers on the up-and-up, now - and against his dickhead readers. He found it inspiring. So do we. But he's also pretty clear on what the Times wedding announcements really are to people like us: manna from blogging heaven.

They are parodied online and in a new book, "Weddings of The Times." They are featured in New Yorker cartoons (bridesmaid to downcast bride: "So what if he's not the man of your dreams. The Times is going to be there.") and dismissed as "wedding porn" by people who find them an irresistible guilty pleasure.

There's also a gem in there about Slate writer Timothy Noah calling the NYT wedding announcements "anachronisms serving 'a very small aristocracy'" and then confessing that he pulled strings in the 90s to get his nuptials up in the 'pages. Nice! But do you know the numbers? They get 200 submissions a week for inclusion in their pages! You KNOW strings are pulled like mad. Also, to avoid any controversy, the Weddings and Celebrations section is (ironically) one of the most heavily scrutinized and fact-checked sections of the Times!

They must comply with three pages of rules and submit to rigorous fact-checking. Everyone involved in a wedding, including the person performing the ceremony, is interviewed, and some are asked for documentary proof of things like degrees and honors. Robert Woletz, the editor in charge, said it is amazing how little some people know about their family members, like a father's current job.

There's so much more awesomeness in there. But the holy grail trumps it all: once all is fact-checked and done, how you make it on the broadsheet. Answer?

Woletz decides who makes it in, "for better, for worse," he said. How does he choose? "The basic premise is that we're looking for people who have achievements," he said. "It doesn't matter what field these achievements are in."

Boom. There it is. And that's why we love it - because they are, at some points, the secret decoder to read the Sunday Styles: a strange mix of high-fallutin' over-achievement intermixed with the occasional, sometimes-guilted, often hysterical peek into what lies elsewhere. But what about straight-up sycophanticism? Phyllis Nefler, former Intern Alexis, and myself have all cheered on the Weddings and Celebrations section of the Times loudly and without fail. Did we (or any other outlets) get links or proper mentions?

Sure. About.com. The New Yorker cartoons. A blog devoted solely to this kind of thing. Slate. But us? NOTHING, GODDAMNIT. Message to Clark Hoyt and Robert Woletz, editor of the Weddings and Celebrations: do you have any goddamn idea how hard we work on these? We just want to be acknowledged. Loved. Married intellectually, or even married but estranged via a toss-off link. Mostly, we just want to make it in your pages one day. Then again, as Altarcations professor Phyllis Nefler put it via IM earlier today, "i HATE HIM. he's reinforcing the dominant paradigm of elitism in the Times wedding section!!!11!!" Some things never change.

Love and Marriage, New York Times Style [NYT]

Apparently the original question was just that good, although it was edited down for Randy Cohen's smaller brain:

Minutes before my first lunch date with a man I met online, he called to cancel because he was hit by a bicycle and was in the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital. I later called the E.R. to check on him, and a nurse said he was never there. Weeks after that, I heard about another woman with whom he used the same excuse: hit by a bike; in the E.R. Is it dater beware, or is there an obligation to be honest even online? — BETH ROSE FEUERSTEIN, LONG BEACH, N.Y.

The question itself provoked Galanes into a four paragraph rant replete with what he calls "jokes":

Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a perfect delivery system of eligible men and women. And what the online world offers in terms of increased volume and speed, it tends to subtract with its profusion of cads and game-players. Next time you find one, simply report him to the site’s complaint desk, and move along to the next guy.

Yes, report him!

Maybe this was just Beth Feuerstein's trial run for the big show, the Times Magazine? Cohen's column doesn't do much better:

From my narrow, crackpot’s point of view (my favorite), the real harm here is not to you but to the many tens of thousands of New York City cyclists. This fellow promulgates the canard of the pedestrian-threatening bicycle. Average number of pedestrian deaths attributable to cyclists each year here? About one. (There were 11 between 1996 and 2005.) Yet in 2006 alone, cars killed 156 pedestrians (and 17 bicyclists) in New York City and injured more than 10,000 pedestrians (and more than 2,800 bicyclists) badly enough to be hospitalized.

The Times has yet to run a correction for using the same question in two different columns, but you can be sure there's a possibility they'll screw it up somehow. Can someone also explain whose bright idea it was to give Randy Cohen a podcast?

Credit the New York Times for never knowing when a column has run its course. If they exercised good editorial judgment, we wouldn't have to listen to a comedy writer crib questions from other columnists because he couldn't make up his own.

Clark Hoyt found that Greenhouse's marriage had not affected her reporting, but chastised the Times for not making the implications of her marriage clearer. Still, Greenhouse couldn't have been too stoked to have the ven diagram that is her professional and private life examined in the Sunday paper.

The column was prompted by Ed Whelan, Greenhouse's blogger foe at the National Review Online, who has repeatedly accused Greenhouse of being biased. Incidentally, Whelan also broke news of her buyout yesterday afternoon.

Now the pressure is on Whelan to find a new reason to hate the next Times Supreme Court beat reporter.

• NYT's Greenhouse Takes Buyout Offer [AP]

• Public and Private Lives, Intersecting [NYT]

The only person you really single out in the intro is business reporter David Cay Johnston, who started a campaign against you for being on a corporate board. Yeah, he was very single-out-able. I didn't mention this in the book, but when I had my troubles with Johnston, one of the senior editors said to me, "There are three things you must understand about Johnston: He's a Pulitzer Prize winner, he's a unique talent, and he's an asshole." I'm convinced that at least two of those are correct.

And a highlight from the Calame column we didn't read: "Based on the close look I have given The Times's coverage in response to these messages, the soundness of the news judgment reflected in the paper's performance so far deserves a decent grade."

Come back, Dan? Please?

Good Times [NYM]
Public Editor: Covering the Duke Lacrosse Team Case [NYT]

And so what did public editor Barney Calame pick to write about this Sunday? Which strand did he pick to thoroughly examine? On which murky corner did he shine his spotlight?

The answer: None!

He just ran some letters instead.

Maybe we misunderstood the job, but isn't the public editor supposed to be more interested in ethics fuckups within the Times than, say, we are?

Other Voices: Judith Miller Responds to the Public Editor [NYT]