The "Lessons" column on the education page of today's New York Times says, "the last thing we should want is to inhibit professors and teachers from exploring Islamic fundamentalism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the politics of oil, the role of authoritarianism in the Persian Gulf region, how American mass culture is marketed internationally or anything else that might help to understand and prevent recurring terrorism."
Well, far be it from Smartertimes.com to want to inhibit the study of anything, but someone ought to study just why it is that a New York Times columnist would conclude that studying "how American mass culture is marketed internationally" would help to understand and prevent terrorism. Surely American fashion and music and television and books are threats to unfree and undemocratic Islamic regimes, and those regimes would want to lash out at America in self-defense. But this dynamic has a lot more to do with "Islamic fundamentalism" and "the role of authoritarianism in the Persian Gulf region" than with "how American mass culture is marketed internationally." American mass culture is marketed internationally pretty much the same way it is marketed domestically, and you don't see Americans turning to terrorism in response. Nor, aside from the rare anti-McDonald's attack in France, do you see people or governments in free countries outside America resorting to terrorism to combat the marketing of American mass culture.
False Light: A headline in the "metro briefing" column in today's New York Times says "Manhattan: Official Charged With Larceny." Directly under the headline is a photo of an official. But the official pictured has not been charged with larceny. The pictured official is the special commissioner for investigations for the New York schools, Edward Stancik. He has not been charged with anything and in fact is apparently the one who apparently announced the charges against the alleged thief. The article makes that clear, but the juxtaposition of the headline and the photo of Mr. Stancik is the sort of thing that makes libel lawyers shudder.
Untimely Attack: An editorial in today's New York Times calls for American involvement in "maintaining some sort of equilibrium in relations between Pakistan and India." The Times calls an Indian response to a terrorist attack "untimely." This is a variation on the Times editorial position that America should take a balanced and evenhanded approach to mediating between Israel and the Arabs. Just as the Times ignores the fact that Israel is a free democracy and the Arab states are terrorist-supporting, unfree dictatorships, the Times ignores the fact that India is a democracy and that Pakistan is a military dictatorship that sponsors terrorism. In the subcontinent as in the Levant, the Times's concern with "equilibrium" seems to exceed its concern for the spread of freedom, democracy and rule of law.