How hysterical was Friday's New York Times editorial on "The Mayoral Race and the Poor"? The one that instructed, "The growing number of distressed poor families has to become one of the main points of discussion in this campaign. Voters who do not ask about it now may find themselves demanding answers later, especially if desperate New Yorkers begin to spill out of the shelters and back onto the sidewalks and streets."
So hysterical that even the New York Times editors and reporters themselves apparently ignored the editorial's advice in their 90-minute interview Friday with mayoral candidate Alan Hevesi, as reported and transcribed in today's Times. The words "poor" or "hungry" don't appear once in that coverage, and it appears that, aside from one question about affordable housing, the Times editors ignored the poverty issue in their conversation with Mr. Hevesi, as they have apparently also done with the other mayoral candidates that the Times has been having in for interviews.
Now, some may see a virtue in a separation between the news and editorial departments. And it is true that some of the other issues the Times asked Mr. Hevesi and the other candidates about, like crime and education, have effects also on poverty. Smartertimes.com in fact agrees with the Times editorialists that poverty is an excellent issue for the mayoral candidates to address. But it's at least slightly absurd for a newspaper to be thundering on about how voters should ask the candidates "now" about "the growing number of distressed poor families," when, in 90-minute interviews with each mayoral candidate, the newspaper's own reporters and editors have themselves barely pressed the poverty issue, or, if they have raised it, have declined so far to share the answers with the paper's readers.
Managing Expectations: "Mr. Bush has done surprisingly well in his dealings with a divided and sometimes difficult Congress," a New York Times editorial today says. "He has shown far more skill in handling Congress than many people expected." Well, the only ones surprised were those, like the Times, who had unreasonably low expectations going in.
Note: The letters pages of the Smartertimes Web site were updated yesterday. In Letters about Smartertimes, readers react on antibiotics, nude dancing, Manhattan bike paths and Alabama's Vulcan statue. In Letters About the Times, https://www.smartertimes.com/letters_times.html, how about that Lucent coverage? And what century was Joseph Conrad's?