A story in the national section of today's New York Times about Lynne Cheney reports that she criticized Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman "for appearing at the fund-raising gala that major figures in the entertainment industry sponsored on Thursday night at Radio City Music Hall, where celebrities performed and spoke and a number of crude jokes were told."
"The Democratic ticket collected about $6.5 million at the fund-raiser," the Times reports.
A story in Saturday's Times reported that at the event, John Leguizamo "proceeded to make sexually explicit jokes about public figures."
For a presidential ticket that consists of Joe "the preacher" Lieberman and Al "regulate advertising for violence-and-sex-filled Hollywood movies" Gore, this would seem like a big campaign blunder. For one thing, it reeks of hypocrisy. For another thing, it sounds like it was in poor taste. If Mr. Gore and Mr. Lieberman are elected, can we expect to hear "crude," "sexually explicit" jokes told from the podium at state dinners in the White House East Room?
But the Times has pretty much let the Democrats get away with this. There's no indication in the Times of what the jokes were or of just how crude or sexually explicit or funny they were. There doesn't appear to have been much of an attempt to get Mr. Gore or Mr. Lieberman, or their spokesmen, to state whether they thought the jokes were appropriate or funny. There doesn't seem to be anyone at the Times asking whether anyone in the Democratic fund-raising operation has been disciplined for allowing the crude jokes to be told. Smartertimes.com has nothing against humor, and it is hard to judge what sort of response is merited without knowing exactly what the jokes were.
But the fact that someone can get up at a fund-raiser in front of the Democratic presidential and vice presidential candidates and tell crude, sexually explicit jokes may be just another sign of the way in which the Monica Lewinsky affair has lowered everyone's standards for bad taste. The Times has handled this all so far in a glancing fashion in stories buried inside the newspaper. Somehow we'd bet if this happened at a Republican fund-raiser there'd be more of a big deal made over it.
Health Insurance Costs: The Times runs on its front page today a story under the headline "Frustration Grows With Cost of Health Insurance." The story consists of whining by ordinary folks about increases in health insurance premiums. The Times says the ordinary folks "express puzzlement and anger at the economic forces driving" the premium increases. Well, rather than simply reporting the existence of puzzlement and anger, the Times might have tried to allay it by including some factual information in this story about why insurance premiums are so high. It might, for example, have mentioned the phenomenon of cost-shifting, in which hospitals shift onto paying customers the costs of treating uninsured patients. It might have included a mention of the way that the costs of medical malpractice litigation end up being paid in health insurance premiums. It might have included a mention of the fact that the American health care system is known for the swift implementation of high-technology innovations, regardless of their costs, because patients want the best care possible. It might have included the fact that the state legislatures are driving up premiums by micromanaging the coverage offered and outlawing cost-saving tactics, passing laws banning "drive-by deliveries" that effectively mandate lengthy and costly and often unnecessary hospital stays. The Times has written sensibly about some of these subjects recently, suggesting that there are no easy answers to the problem of controlling health care costs while increasing quality and access to care. But the stories that probed those complexities of policy were buried inside the paper. The one that gets front-page treatment is the one that features whining unalloyed by any understanding of economics or health care policy.