The metro section of today's New York Times carries a news story about the New York City parks commissioner, Henry Stern. "Although he grew up a Democrat who spent part of the summer of 1964 working for civil rights in the South, Mr. Stern has since moved politically from left to center and has become a strong opponent of affirmative action and racial quotas," the Times article reports. The word "although" in that Times sentence is incredibly telling about the Times' view of affirmative action and racial quotas. Outside the world the Times editors inhabit, there are many that argue that the color-blind vision of the 1964 civil rights effort in the South is entirely consistent with opposition to racial quotas. The word "although" clearly suggests that the Times is taking a stance on that argument. The Times' stance is apparently that support for civil rights in the South and opposition to racial quotas are somehow contradictory or inconsistent.
Moreover, the notion that it is Mr. Stern who has "moved politically" is itself debatable. It's quite possible that Mr. Stern stayed exactly where he was and that his allies in the civil rights struggle have since veered off into a far-left vision of a society in which people are judged by their skin color.
Racial Profiling: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on Hillary Clinton's plans to introduce a bill to ban racial profiling by police. The article claims "Federal prosecutors also concluded that the New York Police Department's Street Crime Unit, which is now defunct, had engaged in racial profiling." Federal prosecutors concluded no such thing, and the Street Crime Unit, much as the Times may wish it to be defunct, still exists.
Excessive Length: A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports on touch-screen voting machines used in California. "They can easily handle, at no extra cost, ballots of excessive length, which are common in California," the Times reports. How long must a ballot be, one wonders, for the New York Times news department to judge its length to be "excessive"? Long enough to contain a single question asking voters whether they want to ban the use of racial quotas and preferences in state programs?
Pawns of the Strategists: One of the tackiest phenomena in American politics these days is the one in which the celebrity campaign consultant or political strategist acts as though he outranks the actual candidate or elected official. The New York Times plays into this today in an article that runs in the national section under the headline, "Gore and Bush Strategists Analyze Their Campaigns." In a section of the article referring to George W. Bush and his aide Karl Rove, the Times writes, "Mr. Rove said he wishes now that he had not let Mr. Bush skip the first debate in New Hampshire." It's hard to tell whether this language comes from Mr. Rove directly or from the Times, but tacky is exactly the word for it. The word "let" suggests Mr. Bush is some sort of infant who has to ask Mr. Rove for permission to control his own schedule, like a child asking a parent to let him stay up late and watch television. If Mr. Rove is actually going around saying this stuff, President Bush would be wise to cut him down to size, and the Times would be wise to seize on it as newsworthy in its own right. If the phrasing is the Times', it's just another example of the newspaper's attempt to portray the president as some kind of half-wit.