I think there's two things going on here. First, there's a phenomenon wherein people, many of them journalists, don't know or care about anything that happened

I think there's two things going on here. First, there's a phenomenon wherein people, many of them journalists, don't know or care about anything that happened more than about five years ago. They live in the moment, unmoored from any historical perspective and immune to books, encyclopedias, archives, and anything that contains information about things Before. I don't know if this is something that's increasing; it seems that way to me, but it may be that I'm starting to get old enough that I remember a bunch of things first-hand that younger people don't know or care about. The second is that the core audience for the New York Times is rich Manhattan assholes, and there's sort of a bread-and-butter Times article that's basically "Hey, this rich asshole who makes the world a worse place every second he continues to draw breath is actually a complex nuanced person for reasons we will not adequately explain, so maybe you, Rich Manhattan Asshole, also have redeeming qualities and you should feel better about yourself and keep buying our newspaper".