An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on how bloc voting may affect the upcoming primary elections in New York. "Besides, the question of Latino turnout is uncharted territory, the grim lessons of Los Angeles aside," the Times reports. "There, earlier this year, a Latino mayoral candidate lost in a run-off against a white candidate. The Latino proportion of the Los Angeles electorate had grown to 21 percent, compared to 18 percent four years ago, according to an independent analysis by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a California research group. But black turnout grew slightly as well, and the vast majority of them voted for the white man."
This is a classic example of how the New York Times is dropping even the pretense of keeping its own opinions out of the news coverage. What is "grim" about what happened in Los Angeles? Is the Times news department admitting that it was rooting for the Latino candidate? There was nothing "grim" about the lesson for those who voted for the winner. In fact, there may even be some people out there who think that it is not a grim lesson but an encouraging one when people vote on a basis other than sheer racial determinism.
Some editor could have fixed this with a few keystrokes by ending the first sentence after the word "territory" and beginning the next sentence with the words, "In Los Angeles earlier this year." But the grim lesson of this example is that the Times no longer seems to care about maintaining even a pretense of objectivity in its news columns.
Conservative Stalwarts: A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports on a dinner in Washington "attended by conservative stalwarts including David Keene, Haley Barbour, Kenneth M. Duberstein, Vin Weber, Charles Black, Linda DiVall, Bill Paxon and Ed Gillespie." Smartertimes.com doesn't mean to cast any aspersions on Mr. Duberstein or Mr. Paxon, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to call them conservative stalwarts. When Mr. Paxon retired, the Times types were bemoaning the loss of a Northeastern moderate from the congressional Republican leadership. And Mr. Duberstein has recently been actively promoting embryonic stem-cell research, angering the anti-abortion conservative stalwarts. Mr. Duberstein is also very close to Senator McCain and to Colin Powell, both of whom are not exactly conservative stalwarts. Mr. Paxon and Mr. Duberstein may strike the Times news department as conservative stalwarts, but conservative stalwarts would probably consider them moderate centrists.
Lost in New York: The travel section of today's New York Times carries an article about New York City. "New York's distinctive neighborhoods extend from the vivid street life of the East Village and Lower East Side to the architectural splendors of upper Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive," the Times reports in this article. You don't say. It is sentences like that that make actual New Yorkers long for a newspaper that seems written for them rather than for a nationwide audience. After all, if you live in New York City rather than Berkeley or Cambridge or Ann Arbor or wherever the Times reader that the editors have in mind lives, you don't need to be told that the East Village and Lower East Side have a "vivid street life."