In case we didn't get the point from June 21 arts section dispatch about the death row musuem exhibit, and in case the July 2 national section dispatch about the visitation program for inmates at a Youngstown, Ohio prison wasn't enough, the Times today places on its front page yet another article sympathetically depicting criminals as family men. (Today's accused criminals have not yet been tried or convicted, so they are referred to in the story as "defendants.") Today's article, unlike the other two, makes at least a passing effort to take into account the possibility that crime victims have families, too. But it does so in a way that suggests a kind of interchangeable moral equivalence between the two: "They are the families of the accused and the victims, and they are all in some form of mourning. . . .A frantic wife or a grieving mother staring intently at a judge or jury can humanize a defendant or a murder victim." In fact, the text of the story is overwhelmingly devoted to accounts of the families of those accused of crimes, not of the families of crime victims. The headline, "In Teeming Courts, Finding Strength in Family Ties," suggests at the outset the line this story is going to take in interpreting the interaction between families and criminal justice proceedings. The story might have been about how criminals exact a toll on their families as well as on their victims. Instead, the headline's focus is on how families are useful, apparently to the accused criminals, by offering "strength."
Showing Off With a Long Word: A story in the national section about Reform Party presidential candidate John Hagelin, who is challenging Patrick Buchanan, contains the phrase "Mr. Buchanan has fashioned himself anti-establishmentarian." We think the word the reporter was looking for was "anti-establishment." Maybe the writer was reaching for that ten-dollar grade school word, "antidisestablishmentarianism." But the meaning of that term has to do with the establishment of a state church, not the "establishment" in the sense that this Times article is trying to evoke, namely Hagelin's college, which was Harvard.
Bad Placement on Amtrak Ad: A news story in the national section about Amtrak's new plan to give dissatisfied customers a free train ticket appears -- surprise -- directly opposite an ad from Amtrak touting its new customer satisfaction guarantee. Probably the ad and the story had nothing to do with one another, but the placement is the sort of thing that causes readers to wonder.
Going Postol: The Times today continues its campaign against missile defense, relying heavily on an MIT professor called Theodore Postol. There's a news story about a letter to President Clinton issued by Mr. Postol -- the third time in recent weeks the Times has fallen for a full-length news story about these letters to Mr. Clinton opposing missile defense, which are essentially publicity stunts. As if that's not enough, there's an article on the op-ed page written by Mr. Postol opposing a missile defense system. The news article and the op-ed piece both present Mr. Postol as a scientific expert testifying on the technical issues of the missile defense. What isn't disclosed is that Mr. Postol has his own political point of view with respect to relations with Russia that is far out of touch with the American mainstream. Many in Congress, for instance, consider Clinton administration official Strobe Talbott to have coddled the Russians by pushing for huge international aid packages to prop up the corrupt Russian regime even while it waged a cruel war in Chechnya and cracked down on freedom of the press. Mr. Postol, however, wrote in the March 2000 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that when it came to missile defense, "Talbott's heavy-handed approach to the Russians was another notch in a perfectly consistent record of Clinton administration actions that add up to a coherent pattern of hostility and deception toward Russia. This record has created throughout the Russian political system a deep distrust of and anger toward the United States."
Lost in Chelsea: In a listing in the Family Fare column in the weekend section, page E36 of New York editions, Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History is described as having a "new Chelsea home" and as being located in "Chelsea." The museum is at 15 West 16th Street, more commonly described as being in the Union Square neighborhood. The Encyclopedia of New York City entry on Chelsea says of the neighborhood that "The northern and eastern boundaries are difficult to define but correspond roughly to 30th Street and 6th Avenue." Judging by the street address, the museum is between 5th and 6th Avenues, too far east to be considered Chelsea.
Solomon Schechter: The obituary of Alan Fortunoff reports that the retail executive contributed to the "Salomon Schechter School of Manhattan." The correct spelling of the school, and of the Jewish scholar, is Solomon. Like the biblical king.