In a "Public Lives" profile that appears on page B2 of today's New York editions of the New York Times, the Times subjects Rebecca Lieberman to the treatment that it reserves for powerful women, and particularly for powerful Jewish women. That treatment is a detailed analysis of her appearance.
So, we learn of Ms. Lieberman's "pea-soup eyes" and "tight jeans," and that "Despite a description of her in The New York Observer as a 'bleached blonde,' she does not look the least bit artificial. ('I spent a lot of money on this,' she protested.)"
The last person whose dye-job got this much attention in the Times was the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Sandra Feldman, who had a Times education reporter writing about her hair color in the July 8 issue of the Times. Now the Times has sent another one of its education reporters out to write about Ms. Lieberman's hair.
The Times editors doubtless consider the newspapers whose stock-in-trade is this sort of coverage -- the New York Post, the New York Observer -- to be gossipy publications whose dignity is far beneath that of the Times. But with this business about the "tight jeans," the Times is playing exactly the same game as those more lively papers. It's entertaining, but it's also got a whiff of tawdriness about it. It reinforces the idea that women in public life should be judged by their appearance, while men are judged solely on substance. And it makes the Times look fluffy in comparison to a newspaper like Newsday, which has been seriously covering the issue of just how and why Ms. Lieberman -- who is the daughter of the Democratic vice presidential candidate -- got a $75,000 job working for the New York City Board of Education.
Isolationist on Yugoslavia: Here's a gem from an editorial in today's Times headlined "Liberating Yugoslavia": "It is appropriate that Mr. Milosevic's downfall is being engineered by his own people, not his many foreign foes. The Clinton administration and other Western governments are right to offer verbal encouragement but otherwise stand aside." This sort of timidity is the hallmark of the Times' stance toward foreign dictators of every stripe. It is the Times' favorite foreign policy solution: "offer verbal encouragement but otherwise stand aside." And they criticize the Republicans in Congress for isolationism?
News Blackout on Gay Marriage: In the debate last night between Mr. Lieberman and Richard Cheney, both candidates were asked about gay rights. Mr. Lieberman said he was rethinking his traditional opposition to gay marriage. Mr. Cheney said, "like Joe, I also wrestle with the extent to which there ought to be legal sanction of those relationships. I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into." The Times transcript of excerpts from the debate omitted this question and the answers. The two news stories the paper ran about the debate and the newspaper's editorial about the debate made no reference to the exchange. The New York Post, which has a surer sense about the newsworthiness of cultural issues, ran out a column under the headline "GOP gay bombshell stuns conservatives." The Times not only doesn't consider it a bombshell, it doesn't even consider Mr. Cheney's position worth including in its newspaper. We realize that the debate took place late for the Times' deadlines, but the news stories quoted comments in the debate that were made even later in the night than were the comments about gay marriages.
Israel Coverage: The Times finally moves a distinguished war correspondent, Chris Hedges, into the Middle East to cover the outbreak of violence there, and he turns in a fabulous dispatch that should be required reading for those trying to understand what is really going on there. The dispatch runs in the international section under the headline "A Brother Swept into a Cycle of Death." It is particularly refreshing when compared with the rest of the output from the Times about Israel and the Arabs -- the newspaper's regular correspondent there weighs in today with an article referring to "Kibbutz Stotyam," a reference that would seem to indicate a lack of familiarity with the Hebrew words for fields or for the sea, or even with a standard tourist map of Israel that would spell the place "Sdot Yam."