Is the New York Times' obsession with Louise Linton, the wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin:
a) just another example of the paper's anti-Trump bias?
or
b) totally nonpartisan — the same coverage that the paper would apply to any rich or famous person found to be behaving badly or displaying a sense of entitlement?
Well, here is a fine double-blind experiment. The same week that Linton Instagrammed in a way that the Times deemed less humble and demure than circumstances warranted, Matthew "Max" Kennedy and his daughter Caroline Kennedy were reportedly arrested on Cape Cod at 1:30 a.m. after noise complaints about a party.
The Times has devoted not just one, not just two, not just three, but at least four separate articles to the Linton situation, including at least three pieces that appeared in the print newspaper.
The Kennedy situation, meanwhile, hasn't hit the print Times at all. The Times has dealt with it by running two brief Associated Press dispatches on its website. Other newspapers — including the New York Daily News (here) and the Boston Globe ("Arrests on Cape Cod show Kennedy Family's Worst Traits") have given the Kennedy story extensive coverage. But the Times has more or less taken a pass.
Now, the Times could make some kind of argument that a government plane was involved in the Linton story. But the Kennedy story involves the treatment of police, who are also government officials. Anyway, I wasn't on Cape Cod and don't know firsthand what happened, but if the situation is anything close to how it was portrayed by the police, with .... well, Howie Carr has a pretty typical treatment in the Boston Herald — the Times treatment here seems to point pretty strongly to "a."