Ill Tax Your Feet Ill Tax Your Feet No one ...
No one wants to give Mayor Mike ideas, but as of yet he hasn't decided to tax eavesdropping on curious conversations between New Yorkers.
Just before sunrise last Saturday morning on my ritual coffee run to Morgan's Deli on Reade St., a petite Hispanic woman in front of me purchased a most unusual array of items. There was a bag of Cheetos, four bruised apples, two Three Musketeers bars, a six-pack of Bud and?this was the capper?a dainty peppermint tea. On the sidewalk, as I prepared an iced coffee, the riddle became more complete. A belligerent Keith Moon-lookalike was honking for his consort to get in a dented-up Honda with Georgia plates, motor running, and in a final up-yours flung a loaded car ashtray of cigarette butts and dozens of flip-tops near the gutter. This was one road trip I wanted no part of.
On May 13, my sons and I joined their uncle for Derek Jeter's return to the Yankees lineup for the first of a three-game series against the Angels. We arrived 15 minutes before game time and, perched in box seats by the Bombers' dugout, courtesy of my nephew, Jeter was tossing a few balls into the crowd. Like any pre-teens, my kids were jumping up and down with their gloves, hoping the good-natured Jeter would chuck one their way. I tried to explain that the chances were nil, since they were dressed in Red Sox paraphernalia from head to toe?much to the consternation of three businessmen in the first row who were mostly blasting Bloomberg?but who's as optimistic as 10- and eight-year-olds?
An attempt to ingratiate myself into the anti-Nanny Mike bitch session was scotched in the first inning when I roared upon Angels shortstop David Eckstein reaching first base against the previously undefeated Mike Mussina. After a very satisfying game, in which the Halos crushed the Yanks 10-3, we snagged an off-duty cabbie outside the stadium, and he wouldn't shut up for the entire trip downtown.
He ignored my request to take the FDR and opted for the West Side Highway instead, which kind of pissed me off, but the weirdest part of the exchange was that this character didn't know or care a damn thing about baseball. "So, are the Yankees playing well this year?" was his token nod to the location where he picked us up. I assured the disinterested fellow that indeed the Yanks were in first place, despite a crummy bullpen and Jason Giambi in the midst of a weird season-long slump.
The guy was Mr. Nosy, and after finding out that I contribute essays on occasion to the Wall Street Journal, he assumed a financial expert was in his backseat. I can hold my own in a rudimentary conversation about profit margins, the current state of the Dow and NASDAQ and certainly why President Bush's tax cuts will, if enacted by Congress, spur the economy, but when he solicited advice about arcane stocks, the boys rescued me with some chatter about their school's annual field day.
Next on the agenda with this gabby gus were the perilous living conditions in Israel. Now, this was a topic we could agree on without any back-and-forth digressions. As I told the driver, Bush ought to scrap all this "road map" nonsense?Tony Blair and his political troubles with Britain's alarming number of anti-Semites notwithstanding?until Arafat is bumped off or sharing arroz con pollo with Fidel in the relatively-soon-to-be-liberated Cuba. Daily newspaper editorials, lacking imagination, confuse readers with almost identical proclamations about the "peace process" in the Mideast, as if this ongoing problem will be solved by diplomats and Oslo accords. Nothing will relieve the suffering of both the Israelis and Palestinians until Arafat's gone. Ariel Sharon's a heroic leader governing under almost unimaginable pressure, and it's imperative the Bush administration back him to the hilt, without actually sending military forces to Tel Aviv.
Raines and Sulzberger on the Chopping Block?
A few words about the Jayson Blair whitewash at the New York Times. Don't misunderstand me: Blair conned the bleeding-heart, affirmative-action advocate Southern Man Howell Raines to a new level of embarrassment for that demagogic editor. Blair's forced resignation was far too late, but appropriate. And if, like fellow disgraced reporter Stephen Glass, Blair eventually cashes in on his callous disregard for the truth with a six-figure book or movie deal, so what? That's his right as a sudden celebrity. But Blair is small change compared to the termite-ridden infrastructure at what is still, annoyingly, referred to as "the paper of record" and the "Grey Lady" by journalists cowed by the elitist corporation on 43rd St.
I haven't read every word on the controversy, but I'm sure some dimwit has described it as the "mother of all newspaper scandals" or a series of miscues that resulted in "a perfect storm" blowing away chief culprits Raines, Gerald Boyd and the Bill Clinton-esque Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
In reality, the massive coverage of Blair's deceptions doesn't touch on the true problems at the Times. Remember when former President Bush was lampooned in '92 because he wasn't familiar with scanning machines and current prices at the local supermarket? The Times' upper echelon is far more out of touch with the public than that. Its May 11 front-page 7200-word investigation of Blair's misdeeds was a bald attempt to spin the paper's internal discontent (just look at the attrition rate of Times editorial employees under Raines' regime) as an isolated incident. To close readers, the interminable report simply validated criticism of the paper that's accelerated in the past decade.
The Times' deluded and self-aggrandizing management actually believes that consumers have complete trust in the daily's content. How is that possible, one imagines, when R.W. Apple soils his past reputation every time he issues a grandiose report on the state of Beltway politics, or, even worse, the war coverage in Iraq? In early March, Apple, reprising his malarkey on the takeover of Afghanistan, quickly qualified the U.S./UK-led invasion of Iraq as a similar quagmire. Yet, soon after, as the small coalition's victory became apparent, the political/culinary columnist reversed course and described the American military's might.
With few exceptions, you can't believe the writing of the Times' wartime correspondents. When looting overtook Baghdad after Saddam's government was in tatters, the paper blamed the U.S. for allowing the city's museum to be fleeced of priceless antiquities. When a large percentage of the contents were recovered, and it was revealed by other newspapers that some of the thefts were planned in advance by sophisticated thieves, the Times had already moved on to other supposed acts of the Bush administration's perfidy.
As for the op-ed page?which stands in stark contrast to the Washington Post's ideologically balanced roster of contributors?it's now a joke. Skip Maureen Dowd, who demonstrates her anger at the world and desire to score in Hollywood twice weekly, as an old joke. It's Thomas Friedman, whose wishy-washy views are championed by ancient arbiters of journalism, and Paul Krugman, a man who writes like a Democratic-party hack still smarting after the Florida recount of 2000, who represent the Times' warped view of the world. Frank Rich and Nicholas Kristof are easy to ignore. The former, while writing for his Upper West Side friends, is no longer a threat now that he's been banished to the arts pages, where he unsuccessfully tries to conjure correlations between Tony nominations and tax cuts. Kristof, the Alan Alda of contemporary journalism, changes his mind so often that his occasional smart snippets of writing go unnoticed.
Oh, and Bob Herbert, the op-ed page's lone black writer. His May 19 piece completely ignored the larger problems at the Times and concentrated solely on race. I did like this passage: "I've seen schmoozers, snoozers, and high-powered losers in every venue I've been in. Most of these rogues, scoundrels and miscreants were white because most of the staffers in America's mainstream newsrooms were white."
Ultimately, however, Herbert sidesteps the journalistic sins of his superiors by focusing on "diversity." He concludes: "A black reporter told me angrily last week, 'After hundreds of years in America, we are still on probation.' I agree. And the correct response is not to grow fainthearted, or to internalize the views of those who wish you ill. The correct response is to strike back?as hard and as often as it takes."
I'm not sure who Herbert will "strike back" at, but it'd be worth 10 bucks to see the rumble.
I admire token conservative William Safire, but his May 12 column, which might've been dictated by Raines, was appalling. He wrote: "Just about everyone at this newspaper is sick at heart at the way one Times reporter betrayed our readers and all of us with his sustained deceit and plagiarism...
How could this happen at the most rigorously edited newspaper in the world?"
Please. The Weekly Standard's May 12 "Scrapbook" section put that falsehood to rest. (Not that it's a surprise to anyone who's ever commented to imperious Times reporters.)
The writer said: "Since Blair's name first appeared in the Times on June 9, 1998, he has had 725 total bylines there. His 50 corrections therefore constitute a 6.9 percent discovered-error rate. That's not so great. But it's not nearly so bad as the factual strikeout average posted, to take one random example, by Times Washington-bureau stalwart Adam Clymer over the exact same period: 400 bylines with 36 corrections (9.0 percent). Or how's about Times associate editor R.W. 'Johnny' Apple Jr., whose 327 bylines with 46 corrections (14.1 percent) would seem to label him?the numbers don't lie?less than half as reliable a newsman as the hapless youngster Howell Raines is now banishing to Purdah."
Granted, no examples of outright plagiarism have been pinned to Clymer or Apple (or Krugman, Patrick Tyler, Alessandra Stanley, Jon Pareles, Murray Chass, Rich, Gail Collins, Elisabeth Bumiller, Richard Berke or Clyde Haberman) as of yet. But there's time since the paper's implosion will be an ongoing story probably for the remainder of 2003.
My favorite quote from the now infamous closed-door meeting for employees last Wednesday at the Loews Astor Theater was captured by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, who relied on a Times participant's notes. Sulzberger, in a statement that wouldn't be printed in his family newspaper, said: "If we had done this right, we wouldn't be here today. We didn't do this right. We regret that deeply. We feel it deeply. It sucks."
Yes, I'm sure it does "suck" for Sulzberger, who's accountable to shareholders, but he'd be wise to take the first step toward recovery, and realize that in fact his entire newspaper sucks.