There is something actually touching about the profound detachment of the New York Times from blue-collar America, once you get past the condescension and perceive the underlying naiveté of the know-it-alls.  Steven Greenhouse, the longtime labor correspondent, uses the Labor Day weekend Sunday Times to ask, "Is Trump Really Pro-Worker?"

I love it when progressive intellectuals throw around the word "worker," as if it were 1917, not 2017.  It reeks of nostalgia for a lost vision.

The arguments he marshals are what you'd expect Times readers to value.  The graphic deployed by the Times actually depicts Trump as factory effluent, from a circa 1917-looking factory:

... this Labor Day, his first while in office, it remains unclear whether Mr. Trump's initiatives have done much to help workers, whether blue-collar or any other collar. It is clear, however, that he has taken several steps that will hurt workers, most notably his decisions to delay, weaken or erase Obama-era workplace regulations. For instance, his administration has postponed rules that protect workers from dangerous silica dust and beryllium.

This is obligatory:

Environmentalists warn that these moves [loosening coal restrictions] will accelerate global warming and despoil coal country, and many economists predict that these moves will add few coal jobs. Coal-mining employment peaked at more than 800,000 in the 1920s and has slid to around 50,000 – one-eighth the number of Home Depot jobs – largely because of more efficient mining technologies and the increased use of cleaner energy substitutes like natural gas, solar and wind.

Completely missing: employment data.  There is, in fact, an elephant in the bathtub with the Times, and it is being ignored.  

Greenhouse's own newspaper published the day before the great news of manufacturing employment being a "bright spot" in last Friday's jobs report.  But of course, we now have sworn testimony from the now dismissed Sarah Palin lawsuit against the Times to the effect that writers of editorials there do not have to read the news columns.  While this claim of immunity was made by a member of the editorial board, perhaps it can be extended to actual news reporters when they write op-eds.  Still, it is pretty basic stuff for a journalist who covers labor to know about.

In fact, President Trump has been terrific for private employment, adding more than a million private jobs in his first six months.  Not that actual people getting actual jobs ever mattered to people who fancy themselves in the vanguard of the workers.

Hat tip: Ed Lasky