An article in the New York Times magazine today reports that "In the last year or so a very different Hillary has come into focus. . . instead of those dowdy Easter Sunday pastels, she favors a much more slimming palette of browns and blacks." The facts don't seem to bear this out. On May 16, when Mrs. Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination in the Senate race at the state Democratic convention in Albany, she was wearing a "yellow pantsuit," according to the New York Daily News. On June 17, when she visited the Roosevelt estate at Hyde Park, she wore a "pale peach pantsuit," according to Newsday. On July 4, when Mrs. Clinton reviewed the tall ships in New York Harbor, she wore a "peach pantsuit," according to the Daily News. And the New York Times itself reported last week that when Mrs. Clinton marched through Crown Heights on September 4 in the West Indian parade, she was wearing a "lemon yellow pantsuit." Smartertimes.com is going to be casting its vote in November based on policy differences between the candidates, not fashion choices. But if the Times is going to make a big deal about what powerful women are wearing, it at least ought to get the facts straight.
Vacation in Lovely Syria: The "Sophisticated Traveler" supplement to the New York Times magazine today carries an article suggesting Syria as a vacation destination. "It occurred to me that during the whole of our tour I had not met a Syrian I disliked. It was certain I would return," the article says. Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that Syria is a dictatorship that is on the U.S. State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism. Nowhere is it mentioned that, according to the U.S. State Department, "Entry to Syria is not granted to persons with passports bearing an Israeli visa or entry/exit stamps, or to persons born in the Gaza region or of Gazan descent. . . . American citizens are cautioned that the Syrian government rigidly enforces restrictions on prior travel to Israel. Travelers with Israeli stamps in their passports, Jordanian entry cachets or cachets from other countries which suggest prior travel to Israel, or the absence of any entry stamps from a country adjacent to Israel which the traveler has just visited, will cause Syrian immigration authorities to refuse the traveler admission to Syria. In one case in 1998, a group of American citizen travelers suspected of traveling to Israel were detained overnight for questioning." Of course, this is unlikely to be an issue for the "Sophisticated Traveler" the editors of the Times have in mind. After all, why would they have ever visited Israel when such alluring destinations as Syria beckon?
In Syria, the article reports in all apparent seriousness, you can visit a "relaxing environment" such as Hama. The Times article describes the town as "graceful," "peaceful," "prosperous" and "overwhelmingly friendly," brushing lightly over the fact that tens of thousands of civilians were brutally massacred there in 1982 by Hafez al-Assad's regime. These kinds of peaceful relaxing environments, we'd be better off without.
Naturally, the map that accompanies the Syria travel article apparently portrays the Golan Heights as part of Syria, when in fact the heights are now under Israeli control.
Making Ends Meet: The Times today runs on the top of its front page an article about what it claims is "a central fact of American life," that "most of the nation's 72 million families feel they cannot make ends meet." This article consists of extended handwringing by members of families earning $90,000 and $62,000 a year about how they have to work long hours and can't afford everything they want to buy. But as the Times article itself admits, "No one argues that middle income families cannot put food on the table, pay the mortgage, own a car or two, take a modest vacation. What stresses them, sociologists and economists say, are the other outlays of middle-class life: new clothes, child care, lessons for the children, restaurants, movies, home decoration, computers, big-screen television sets, stereo systems, Christmas gifts, and saving for college and retirement."
Aha. At last, a national issue worthy of taking center stage in a presidential campaign and prominent Sunday display in the New York Times: The $90,000-a-year family that can't afford a big-screen television set and a stereo system. Or that can afford it but finds paying for it creates "stress." The next thing you know, Al Gore and the Times editorial page will be proposing a targeted, phased-in tax break for families who earn between $88,000 and $92,000 a year and spend at least $2,000 on home electronics.
If "most of the nation's 72 million families feel they cannot make ends meet," as the Times claims, someone should let them know that there is a difference between not being able to make ends meet and not being able to buy everything you want without having to work hard.