An article in the "Counting the Vote" section in this morning's New York Times contains the following sentence describing Republican reaction to the decision by the Supreme Court of Florida to extend the vote-counting and relax the guidelines: "Some Bush advisers said they were surprised by the decision tonight -- and even suggested that it was tainted because the court was dominated by Democrats." The word "even" is a clear nudge from the Times to readers, a way of saying, "Gosh, can you believe those Republicans? Not only were they surprised, but they even stooped to smearing an honorable court as partisan." The sentence would be more fair without the word "even."
Beyond the fairness issue, though, there's a hypocrisy issue. The Democrats have spent the past several days attacking an honorable public servant, the secretary of state of Florida, Katherine Harris, as a partisan. Even the New York Times got into the act. A November 18 editorial in the New York Times referred to the "biased reasoning" of "Florida's partisan secretary of state," who, the Times noted, "is co-chairwoman of the Bush campaign in Florida." A Times columnist the same day referred to Ms. Harris as "that Sunshine State Evita, Katherine Harris -- a political gift who will keep on giving."
There's more than a whiff of sexism about the demonization of Ms. Harris -- male Democratic partisans such as James Carville or Ron Brown or Andrew Cuomo get a lot more slack. The fact that Ms. Harris's critics get off easily, while the critics of the Florida Supreme Court get the "even" treatment, is just another example of the double standards applied by the Times.
Bandwidth Giveaway: An article in the metro section of today's Times reports that the New York City schools chancellor wants to "turn over operation of the Board of Education's radio and television stations" to two existing non-profit networks in the city, WNYC and WNET. What is the city's public school system doing in the TV and radio business to begin with? The article reports that "the board's television station now turns over much of its program time to ethnic broadcasters." Why are the tax dollars New Yorkers pay to support the public schools being used instead to subsidize "ethnic broadcasters"? And why are the TV and radio stations, which could presumably be sold to for-profit companies for substantial sums, being instead turned over to non-profits? Is the city going to get any money in return? The Times story doesn't raise these questions, let alone answer them.