An article in the national section of today's New York Times slimes two of the newspaper's largest advertisers, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's. The article, about the newly named next president of Brown University, Ruth Simmons, reports that as a black woman, "Dr. Simmons says she has been under surveillance in Bloomingdale's, Saks Fifth Avenue and Ferragamo in New York, and, just a couple of weeks ago, in the gift shop of a hotel in Syracuse, where, she says, she apparently lingered too long near a sprawling display of Beanie Babies." Never mind the indignity to Saks and Bloomingdale's of being lumped in with a hotel gift shop in Syracuse. (The Times ad salesmen are probably having heartburn at the thought of it.) The clear implication is that Saks and Bloomingdale's engage in racial profiling. This is a grave accusation, which, if true, could subject the department stores to boycotts and, potentially, to legal action. The Times has devoted countless front-page stories and editorials to allegations of racial profiling by the New Jersey state police (controlled by a Republican governor) and by the New York Police Department (controlled by a Republican mayor.) Funny, the allegation of racial profiling by the security teams at the big department-store advertisers doesn't get the full-court investigative treatment. That's not surprising. What is surprising is that today's Times article doesn't even bother to convey a response to the allegations from Saks or from Bloomingdale's. Such a response would probably include a statement to the effect that at such stores, all shoppers -- not just African American ones -- are subject to surveillance in order to combat theft, which is a multimillion-dollar-a-year problem in the retail industry. If the Times is going to pass along these charges against Saks and Bloomingdale's based on the recollections of the incoming president of Brown University, the least the newspaper could do would be to give the retailers a chance to respond.
S. Daniel Abraham: A story in the national section of today's Times refers to "a handful of wealthy Democratic contributors, including Danny Abraham, the West Palm Beach billionaire founder of Slim-Fast Foods." Mr. Abraham lives in Palm Beach, not West Palm Beach.
Moral Equivalence Watch: A story in the Arts & Ideas section of today's Times claims that "being able to cite American critics of globalization and contemporary American capitalism -- among them, besides Mr. Rifkin, the economists Lester C. Thurow, James K. Galbraith and Robert B. Reich -- is, for the European left today, a bit like the anti-Communists of the 1970's quoting Russian dissidents like Andrei D. Sakharov and Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn." This is a classic example of the Times' moral equivalence. To the Times -- not just to "the European left today," for the Times passes along this argument with all full respect -- a critic of American capitalism and a critic of the Soviet Red Communist regime are "a bit like" each other. The fact that American capitalism is one of the most successful and free political and economic systems ever devised and Soviet communism was one of the most evil and brutal and failed political and economic systems ever devised is entirely lost on the Times.
The same article goes on to refer to the "Archer Daniel Midland" company. It's Archer Daniels Midland, after one of the founders of the company, who was named John W. Daniels.