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Times Watch for 04/28/03
The Times Column-Recycling Program
Is sports columnist Ira Berkow in trouble? A dour editor’s note in the Sunday sports section slams the paper’s columnist for, shall we say, similarities between one of his columns and an article that had appeared days before in another newspaper, the Chicago Tribune.
The editor’s note reads in part: “[Berkow’s] column should have acknowledged that a central quotation from the coach appeared three days earlier in an article by Bonnie DeSimone of The Chicago Tribune and that several other passages closely reflected her words.” (The Berkow column in question was a laudatory profile of Dean Smith, the former University of North Carolina basketball coach and current liberal anti-death penalty activist.)
“The Times column included two passages that were similar in language and concept to those in the Tribune,” the editor’s note says euphemistically, then quotes the relevant passages, which are indeed suspicious in their similarity.
Well, hints of plagiarism are bad, but it could have been worse for Berkow—he could have written a column that didn’t venerate Masters-protesting feminist Martha Burk.
The Times Repressed Celebrity Syndrome
Leslie Eaton’s latest candidate for anti-war martyrdom is South Carolina war protester Brett Bursey, who is being prosecuted under a law allowing the Secret Service to restrict access to areas the president is visiting.
“To some legal experts it is also part of a growing pattern of repression against protesters, demonstrators and dissenters. The American Civil Liberties Union says it has found many examples, like increased arrests and interrogations of protesters and the shunning of celebrities who have opposed the war in Iraq. ‘When you connect the dots, you see very clearly a climate of chilled dissent and debate,’ said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the civil liberties group.” I’d like to meet these “legal experts” who actually think celebrities are victims of repression.
Reporter Eaton has a history of crying wolf and painting any criticism of anti-war protestors as persecution. Still, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and see how these maligned millionaires are being suppressed.
Let’s see: Anti-war comedian Janeane Garofalo (so repressed she’s unable to stay off of TV talk shows and university-sponsored symposiums) has just signed onto a new ABC sitcom called “Slice O’ Life.” Left-wing actress Susan Sarandon will be feted at a retrospective of her career at Lincoln Center early next month. And the Bush-bashing Dixie Chicks upcoming arena tour is nearly a sell-out, while their latest album, “Home,” continues to ride high on the charts six months after release. Wouldn’t all of us be fortunate to be “shunned” like this?
David Rosenbaum’s report on Bush’s tax cut plans made this claim regarding the administration’s barn-storming tour pushing Bush’s tax cuts: “The speeches followed a pattern. The officials almost invariably equated patriotism and tax cuts. ‘We cannot afford to fail the American people, especially our troops overseas,’ Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the Chamber of Commerce in Orlando, Fla. President Bush has pitched the program himself. In a speech on April 15, he declared that ‘our victory in Iraq is certain, but it is not complete,’ referring to his tax plan.”
If the tax ramifications of Bush’s brief comment regarding “victory in Iraq” being certain but not complete elude you, then you obviously lack the nose for nuance of a Times journalist. Here’s a longer excerpt from Bush’s Rose Garden speech: “Our victory in Iraq is certain, but it is not complete. Centralized power of the dictator has ended -- yet, in parts of Iraq, desperate and dangerous elements remain. Forces of our coalition will engage these enemies until they surrender or until they're destroyed. We have waged this war with determination and with clarity of purpose. And we will see it through until the job is done.”
Did you catch Bush’s “tax cuts = patriotism” line? Me neither. In fact, Bush didn’t transition to the economic part of his speech until minutes later: “Another great priority of the government is to encourage prosperity and the creation of jobs for all who seek them.” Bush’s speech contained both Iraq war news and a push for tax cuts—that’s hardly “equating patriotism with tax cuts.”
Rosenbaum also penned an opinion piece for the Sunday business section titled “Both Sides May Be Wrong About the Budget.” This being the Times, the tax-cutting side turns out to be more wrong than the other.
Rosenbaum writes that Congress’s budget plan “would allow deep tax cuts, at least $350 billion and up to $550 billion over 10 years, mostly for the well off.” What the Times willfully refuses to understand is how hard it is to write a tax cut that doesn’t benefit rich people—since they have more money and higher tax rates, they pay an outsized share of taxes. Cutting the social security tax (FICA) would be an example of a truly progressive federal tax cut, but I doubt the Times will be lobbying for those proposals anytime soon.
Rosenbaum continues: “People outside of politics see room for compromise — perhaps a one-year tax cut limited to the middle class, rather than the 10-year plan skewed to the wealthy.” So a total evisceration of Bush’s tax plan is characterized as a “compromise”? Apparently there are lots of liberals “outside of politics” these days.
Sabrina Tavernise’s piece Monday on the debate over control of Iraq’s oil industry includes this cynical gem, no doubt a hard-bitten byproduct of Tavernise’s exhaustive experience inside the dangerous country: “[The Oil Ministry] was virtually the only government building to emerge from the war unscathed and was heavily guarded by American troops. That fact evokes a hollow laugh among Iraqis, who suspect that America was only after oil when it invaded.”
Tavernise’s powers of perception are amazing. Though she has actually been in Iraq less than five days, she already knows that all Iraqis “suspect that America was only after oil when it invaded.” Saddam Hussein? Never heard of him. Fortunately, Times reporters who keep up on Iraq’s current events have a different take on how average Iraqis actually greeted the U.S. “invasion.”
The Times “Core Principles” of Hypocrisy, Part II
What’s the Times editorial line on states rights? It depends on the day of the week—and the issue involved. An editorial in Monday’s paper, “Another Ideologue for the Courts,” returns to the case of Jeffrey Sutton, a Bush appointee and Federalist Society member expected to be confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
The editorial continues the new theme of the Times: Hypocrisy on federalism. “The Bush administration, however, has sought nominees whose main qualification is a commitment to far-right ideology. Mr. Sutton is the latest example. He is an activist for ‘federalism,’ a euphemism for a rigid states'-rights legal philosophy. Although federalism commands a narrow majority on the Supreme Court, advocates like Mr. Sutton are taking the law in a disturbing direction, depriving minorities, women and the disabled of important rights.”
Contrast that with the Times editorial from Friday, “The Class Action Unfairness Act”, which speaks approvingly of that same “federalism”--since it helps the liberal cause of blocking tort reform: “There is no disguising the gift to well-heeled special interests — and no disguising the departure from core principles of federalism, which the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policymaking body for the federal judiciary, cited in its March statement of opposition.” (Note that when the Times wants to bash federalism, as it does in today’s editorial, it puts the word in quotes, as if explaining some oddball snake-handling ritual.)
When it comes to “core principles,” it’s clear the Times has only one: Advancing a liberal agenda by whatever means necessary: federalist, anti-federalist, or vegetarian.
E-mail Times Watch Director, Clay Waters, with Times Watch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org