This morning's New York Times book review carries a dismissive review of "State of a Union," the new book by Jerry Oppenheimer that alleges an enraged Hillary Clinton, in 1974, called an aide to her husband a "Jew bastard." The account by the campaign aide, Paul Fray, "looks highly suspect," the Times review says: "More damning, though Fray and his wife have been enthusiastic contributors to Clinton books and articles over the years, they had, inexplicably, never mentioned this incident to any other reporter."
Smartertimes.com doesn't have a view about whether Mrs. Clinton actually used the slur, and, in any case, is more interested in her present policy positions than her past private comments. Nevertheless, the Times review is misleading. Fray has claimed publicly that he did tell several other reporters over the years about the "Jew bastard" comment, but that the other reporters all ignored it at the time because what they were looking for wasn't Mrs. Clinton's alleged anti-Semitism but Bill Clinton's alleged philandering.
Dim: An article in the week in review section of this morning's New York Times serves up the dim conventional wisdom on the California power shortage: "Nearly everyone agrees that deregulation shoulders a significant amount of blame for the crisis." Well, nearly everyone quoted by the Times, that is. In fact, a report by William Kucewicz of geoinvestor.com makes a good case that the California problems aren't the effect of deregulation, but of price controls. (The Kucewicz report was linked Friday on the "Best of the Web Today" section of opinionjournal.com, the new Wall Street Journal editorial page site to which the editor of smartertimes.com is a paid contributor.)
County "police": The cover story in today's New York Times magazine makes reference to "a county police officer" in Los Angeles. In fact, Los Angeles County doesn't have police officers; it has sheriff's deputies.
Wrong chart: A story in the real estate section of today's Times about rising office rents in Manhattan is accompanied by two graphics. One of the graphics illustrates a decrease in rents, which is the opposite of what the story and headline report is happening.