As if each Sunday's travel section and the regular "Sophisticated Traveler" special issues of the Times magazine weren't enough, this morning's New York Times drops on us a 12-page "Vacation" section that is filled with, well, pretty much the same stuff we'd find in a Sunday travel section or Sophisticated Traveler issue of the magazine. Are there any readers out there who really have the time or desire to digest this stuff on a weekday morning? Or is this just a shameless ploy by the Times to try to grab some extra travel advertising dollars in the middle of the summer?
Wrong Word: Catch this sentence from the lead story in this morning's Times, about the summit at Camp David between Prime Minister Barak, President Clinton and Yasser Arafat: "Before arriving in the United States early this morning, a senior Israeli official told reporters aboard Mr. Barak's plane that the prime minister was unruffled by the defection of three rightist parties and a no-confidence motion that he barely passed." If the no-confidence motion, had, in fact, barely passed, Mr. Barak would be out of a job. And it would be nonsensical for a sitting prime minister to try to pass a no-confidence motion. The word the writer was looking for is not "passed" but survived. Motions pass, politicians survive.
Extra "s": Catch this sentence from an op-ed piece in this morning's Times by an Israeli politician, Limor Livnat of the Likud Party: "Israel needs a unified Jerusalem and defensible borders far more than its needs more foreign money." Far more than "it" needs more foreign money, the article should say.
Shredding the Constitution: The Times works itself into a lather today over what to the newspaper is the frightening notion that Americans might actually contribute to a vigorous political debate by making donations to political parties. "Such an action would be another flagrant violation of the spirit of the election laws at a time when the public would has been disgusted by campaign spending and fund-raising excesses," the Times' lead editorial thunders. Such an action would suggest, the paper says, "that campaign leaders have learned no lessons over the past few years -- no lessons from the public demand for campaign reform, no lessons from the growing popular cynicism and revulsion over a corrupt political system."
In fact, the public "demand" for campaign "reform" isn't as great as the Times claims; if it were, the candidate who backed the cause most vigorously, Senator McCain, might have won a presidential nomination. Nor is the public "revulsion over a corrupt political system" as strong as the Times claims; if it were, voters might have chosen Senator Dole for president instead of President Clinton, who accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars that the Chinese communists illegally funneled into the Democratic Party. What the Times means by "campaign reform" is actually an effort to impose further restrictions on the constitutional right to free speech, restrictions that will only allow newspapers such as the Times more power to dominate the political debate in this country. While the Times agitates for new, stricter laws, the politicians and the Justice Department barely obey or enforce the laws that already exist. So there's little reason to believe that new laws would make much of a difference. Is that an indication of "growing popular cynicism"? No. The bigger these loopholes in the Nixon-era campaign finance laws become, the better, because the more money is spent on campaigns, the more vigorous the political debate, and the better for the democracy. As the losing presidential campaigns of Ross Perot and Steve Forbes have shown, money is no guarantee of victory in American politics. So it's silly for the Times to get all worked up any time there's a chance some more money might flow into American elections.