An "NYC" column on the front of the metro section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "The World, As Filtered By the City." A better headline might have been "The World, as Filtered by the New York Times."
The column is riddled with whoppers. It claims: "There is not much that any senator can do about the Middle East." Oh? A single determined senator could have placed a hold on the nomination of Martin Indyk as ambassador to Israel or later as assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can at will block delivery of all foreign aid to any country in the Middle East. The senators on the foreign operations subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee can insert riders in appropriations bills, making State Department funding contingent on adherence to certain policies. Senators like Robert Dole, Jon Kyl and Daniel Patrick Moynihan passed a law in 1995 recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Senator D'Amato championed a law imposing trade sanctions on companies investing in the Iranian and Libyan oil and gas industries, a law that probably has had the effect of delaying for several years Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons. It is just flat-out ridiculous to claim that there is "not much that any senator can do about the Middle East." If that were true, why would the American Israel Public Affairs Committee pay several full-time lobbyists to work the Senate side of Capitol Hill, and why would Israeli prime ministers devote so much time to cultivating relationships with senators like Mitch McConnell, Jesse Helms and Joseph Lieberman?
The column also asks, "name a politician of Irish origin in today's New York who has citywide, or even borough-wide, power." The implication is that there aren't any. This, too, is just flat-out ridiculous. How about Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin, who also serves as president of the New York Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO? How about the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles "Joe" Hynes?
Finally, check out the columnist's crowd counts for Thursday's pro-Israel rally and Friday's Muslim rally. "The Israel demonstration seemed bigger than the march by Arabs and other Muslims. But it wasn't much bigger." This is another example of the Times printing two accounts of the same event and letting readers decide which account to believe. A news story elsewhere in the metro section about the Muslim rally reports that that protest was by "an estimated 15,000 people," and it said the Friday Muslim rally presented a counterpoint to the Thursday pro-Israel rally, which had drawn "about 15,000 people." OK, Times columnist, if both rallies drew 15,000 people, why is it that the pro-Israel one "seemed bigger"? (By the way, it sure would be nice if when telling us that the rally drew "an estimated 15,000 people," the Times would let us know who is doing the estimating. Is it the police? The organizers of the rally? The reporters themselves?)
And while we're on the topic of the coverage of those two rallies, it is interesting to note that the Thursday story about the pro-Israel rally included three paragraphs of balancing material from a spokesman offering a Muslim perspective. The report today on the Muslim rally includes no reaction or balancing paragraphs from a spokesman for the pro-Israel position. That seems unfair.
Senseless: An editorial in today's New York Times runs under the headline "A Senseless Health Deduction." It criticizes a Republican plan to make health insurance premiums tax-deductable for individuals. The Times criticizes the plan on the grounds that it would be "stacked in favor of high-income families" and that it would not help the poorest who need insurance the most. But the Times has been criticizing George W. Bush's plan on drugs for the elderly on exactly the opposite grounds, arguing that it concentrates too narrowly on the poor at the expense of everyone else, especially in comparison to Al Gore's plan on drugs for the elderly, which spreads the medicine money around to more prosperous seniors. It's this kind of stuff that gives readers the idea that the Times doesn't really care much about the substantive issue of whether federal health care subsidies should be concentrated on the poor or should become a universal entitlement. It could even give readers the idea that what is driving the Times' editorial stance is a reflexive opposition to any health-care policy ideas being pressed by Republicans, no matter what the substance of the ideas.