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Times Watch for February 24, 2004

UPDATE: Rosenthal's Anti-Bush Quote Recycling

     Tuesday's Times runs a correction (fourth item): on Elisabeth Rosenthal's story in which she reused an anti-Bush quote from a story she'd filed three weeks ago.

     The Times correction notes: "An article on Sunday about people who supported George Bush in the 2000 election and are considering a vote for the Democratic candidate this year referred incorrectly to George Meagher, who voiced dissatisfaction with the administration. As noted on Feb. 3 in an earlier account of his comments in the same interview, for an article about veterans leaning toward Senator John Kerry, Mr. Meagher is an independent, not a Republican."

     But as Mickey Kaus says, the Times correction "treats the symptom, ignores the underlying disease." Indeed, a major question--why is the Times recycling old anti-Republican quotes in the first place?--is left unaddressed.

• Corrections | George Meagher | Elisabeth Rosenthal

More Cushy Press for Reagan-Hating Tony Kushner

     Marxist, Reagan-hating playwright Tony Kushner (who just doesn't get enough exposure in the paper of record) is again praised in the Sunday Arts & Leisure section, this time by theatre critic Ben Brantley: "Before the United States invaded Iraq, even before the planes had hit the twin towers, the eerily prescient Tony Kushner ('Angels in America,' 'Caroline, or Change') had written a play called 'Homebody/Kabul,' which sent a bewildered British family into Afghanistan, a trip that revealed their own hearts of darkness….And be grateful that Mr. Kushner, in the liberal tradition of E. M. Forster, continues to probe the West's failure to connect with cultures different from its own."

     This is the same "liberal" (not Marxist?) Kushner who authored "Angels in America" and who celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto and expressed the hope of redeeming "Marx from the mess Stalinism made of Marx."

     Three pages later, Kushner is interviewed about the Broadway debut of his newest play "Caroline, or Change."

For the rest of Brantley's review, click here.

• Ben Brantley | Tony Kushner | Theatre

"Abhorrent Steps" by the Bushies

     Deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner reviews eight books on Bush and civil liberties for the Sunday Book Review. Just as Serge Schmemann's critique of seven anti-Bush foreign policy books made the cover January 25, so does Bronner's review of eight (count'm, eight) anti-Bush books that attack the administration on civil liberties.

     Editor Bronner signs on somewhat to that idea, albeit half-heartedly: "Many of the steps taken by the administration are wrong, even abhorrent. A few others, however, seem to me less harmful than portrayed, and some of these books examine the difference….The books focus on Attorney General John Ashcroft, the shameful continuing detention of hundreds of foreigners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba after the war in Afghanistan, and new F.B.I. and Justice Department regulations…. I am horrified that the prisoners at Guantanamo have not been charged or given access to some judicial forum to make their case. But it is far from clear to me that they should be treated precisely as American citizens should be."

     Wrapping up, Bronner says: "The truth is that even most liberals would not be so upset about tightening border controls and easing F.B.I. restrictions if this administration showed some understanding of how to confront militant Islam with something other than force. It acts unilaterally and calls it leadership. That only makes one suspicious of everything it does. But liberals must realize that some things are correct and legitimate even if George Bush believes them."

     That's perhaps the most praise Bush supporters can hope to see from the Times Book Review.

For the full Ethan Bronner review, click here.

• John Ashcroft | Books | Ethan Bronner | Civil Liberties

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org