Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned, and that may be why
the New York Times has turned so nasty. All year the
editorial page did its best, but hardly anyone paid attention, and
for the publisher and his high editors it was one disappointment
after another. Most painful of all, of course, was the November
election. The Republicans had no business winning, but somehow they
did. Then Bush went ahead with his conservative judicial nominees,
and now he’s calling for draconian tax cuts. Consequently the
editorial page is beside itself, and it grows increasingly
shrill.
A few Sundays ago, for example, the lead editorial began, “Now
that Trent Lott has reminded the nation that ugly, antiquated
racial attitudes still exist in this country, even in the highest
ranks of government,” and went on to warn us about Bush’s judicial
nominees. “Their views on race,” it seems, “raise troubling
questions.”
But if the Lott affair reminded us of anything at all it was the
emptiness of political rhetoric. Liberals and conservatives vied
for the moral high ground as they denounced Lott’s indiscretion.
The Times assertion about “ugly, antiquated racial
attitudes…even in the highest ranks of government,” by which
it meant the White House, was simply untrue. The accusation was
inspired only by mean-spiritedness.
Then last Sunday the Times was at it again. An editorial
charged Bush with complicity in the deaths of some unknown number
of women. The White House, it seems, is not only racist; it is
misogynist, too, and it hands drip with blood. According to the
Times, President Bush’s policies are “crippling the
international family planning programs that work to prevent
hundreds of thousands of infant and maternal deaths worldwide each
year.”
The lengthy editorial — the only one on the page that day, a
sign of the importance the Times attached to it —
appeared under the headline “The War Against Women.” Indeed it said
the war was a “major preoccupation of his [Bush’s] administration,
second only, perhaps, to the war on terrorism.” Bush’s “assault on
reproductive rights,” it seems, is “part of a larger ongoing
cultural battle,” and whether it stems from his “moral or religious
beliefs” or only caters to “extreme elements within his party” is
unimportant. What is important is that here and abroad, “some women
will needlessly die.”
Meanwhile other than the one lone reference to “moral or
religious beliefs,” there was nothing in the editorial to suggest
that a great many Americans have genuine qualms about abortion.
They are neither bigots nor fanatics, but they believe in the
sanctity of life.
The Times dismisses them, however, and when it does it
also points up its own irrelevancy. It is not serious, and it wants
only to attack the White House. Meanwhile it recognizes no middle
ground, and so it disqualifies itself as a serious critic. The Bush
Administration, in fact, can be quite legitimately criticized for
often surrendering to the ignoramus wing of conservatism. It sends
delegates who think condoms are tools of the devil to international
conferences on family planning, AIDS and related matters in
impoverished Third World countries.
But the Times is more interested in rallying dispirited
liberals, and putting fire in their bellies. The nuts and bolts of
policy is not that important. The election was a wake-up call, and
Bush must be stopped before he gains more ground; and if the
Democrats themselves can’t do this, then the press must do it for
them. David Remnick was explicit about this in a recent issue of
the New Yorker. A principal reason for Bush’s success, he
wrote, is that “the Democrats — cowed, confused, incoherent — too
often end up speaking, when they speak at all, in the helium voice
of a Warner Bros. pipsqueak.”
Remnick is editor of the New Yorker, which, of course,
believes as the Times does: liberals enlightened,
conservatives benighted, and so forth. Meanwhile Remnick’s
characterization about the cowed Democrats appeared in a Talk of
the Town piece he wrote about Czech President Vaclav Havel.
Havel, Remnick wrote, had triumphed over a totalitarian system,
and restored the “dimensions and vigor of the liberal idea.”
America’s Democrats, presumably, should now do the same. Remnick
seemed to think the old Evil Empire and the Bush Administration had
a great deal in common.
