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Times Watch for 03/04/03
Racy New Russia Forgets The "Women's Rights" Of The Communist Era
In an apparent effort to tart up its front section, the Times put a story in its International section whose subject wouldn't have been out of place in a tabloid: A profile of the racy Russian pop duo TATU.
Yulia Volkova and Elena Katina are two 18-year-old girls who dress up in schoolgirl outfits and mimic lesbianism in their videos and on stage. Their act has caused controversy in Britain, where they've hit the top of the pop charts.
Sabrina Tavernise's piece from Moscow uses the TATU titillation to claim a "cultural divide between Russia and the United States" on issues of sex-and to express a yearning for the security of the old Soviet Union.
To Tavernise, it seems the Iron Curtain of Soviet Communism was nothing more than a constricting blanket to be tossed off a bed, good for sexual freedom and perversion but disastrous for people's pocketbooks. "The group is the product of the sexual free-for-all that ensued after the fall of the Soviet Union. After the strait-laced Soviet state collapsed in 1991, sex exploded onto city streets, television shows and advertisements," she writes. "But the new freedoms that brought openness in sexual relations also carried economic woes. The Soviet economy collapsed and a raw, new capitalism emerged, plunging millions of Russians into poverty. In the scramble to survive, prostitution and human trafficking jumped, as did production of child pornography."
The phrase "strait-laced Soviet state" seems to praise by faint damn the Soviet dictatorship, and one can hardly credit the idea that "poverty' emerged in Russia only after the Communist regime of bread lines and rationing had collapsed.
Tavernise also includes this ahistorical howler: "Most Russians see the West as sexually repressed. During President Bill Clinton's impeachment, Russians admired his manliness instead of judging his morals. In Russia, feminism is a dirty word, despite the Soviet era's emphasis on women's rights."
Women's rights? Tavernise seems to forget that under Soviet Communism, neither men nor women had any rights at all.
One Cheer for Columnist Kristof
Former reporter (and newly appointed Op-Ed columnist) Nicholas Kristof opened his latest missive, "God, Satan and the Media," with this provocative paragraph:
"Claims that the news media form a vast liberal conspiracy strike me as utterly unconvincing, but there's one area where accusations of institutional bias have merit: nearly all of us in the news business are completely out of touch with a group that includes 46 percent of Americans."
Kristof's bit about a "vast liberal conspiracy" is of course a straw man; no one is arguing that all reporters are engaged in a conspiracy to tilt the news left. As Bernard Goldberg pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, liberal bias "comes naturally to most reporters."
Still, it's nice to see a Times-man acknowledge the mainstream press has a problem dealing with Christians: "In its approach to evangelicals, the national news media are generally reflective of the educated elite, particularly in the Northeast. It's expected at New York dinner parties to link crime to deprived childhoods - conversation would stop abruptly if someone mentioned Satan."
The Phony Diversity of the "Coalition for Peace"
One way the liberal media whitewashes the left-wing leanings of the anti-war movement is by simply not reporting the anti-American ranting done at anti-war rallies. Another is to claim, like the Times did on January 18, that protesters represent "a diverse coalition for peace."
But today's story by Leslie Eaton on local peaceniks Bronx Action, though it takes an admiring tone, also gave the protesters enough rope to convict themselves as lockstep left-wingers, not the diverse coalition of liberal wishful thinking.
Eaton described the most active protesters: "Members of the group said that they did not necessarily agree on much of anything except peace."
But a couple of outspoken members let slip how monolithic this "peace movement" actually is: 'We have pragmatists, communists, Christians, capitalists and some Greens,' Mr. van Hollebeke said."
They're so diverse, they even have some capitalists! You won't find too many Republicans there either: "Laughing, Ms. Hynes continued, 'Some of us are Democrats and none of us are Republicans,' though another member hastened to add that peaceful Republicans would be welcome, too."
The headline "TV Campaign Calls for Higher Tax on Wealthy" leads into a short piece by James McKinley Jr. announcing: "A coalition of labor and civic groups began a television campaign today urging the state to raise taxes on the wealthy rather than cut back money for education and health care."
Who are these plutocrats that are going to start paying more in state taxes? Here are the details: "The coalition is also calling for a seven-tenths of one percent increase in the tax rate for people earning more than $100,000 and a 1.4 percent increase for people making more than $200,000."
In a high-income state like New York, that's a burden on a large chunk of the population. An analysis of New York state income levels from the liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy marks the starting income level of the top 20% of taxpayers at $74,000. If that number is accurate, the Times considers one of approximately six New York state residents "wealthy." And you thought times were tough!