John Ellis, a cousin of George W. Bush who participated in the election-night coverage on Fox News Channel, was criticized in two New York Times columns over the weekend. Mr. Ellis has responded here:

Dear Editor:

Two op-ed columnists, Frank Rich and Paul Krugman, took detours in their columns this weekend to attack me for allegedly "setting off an avalanche" of network projections declaring my cousin George W. Bush the winner of the presidential election. Some points of fact might better inform your readers:

1. My "inappropriate role" as head of the Fox News ChannelÕs decision desk team was well known to New York Times Company management and editorial/news staff. Upon joining the Boston Globe as an op-ed columnist in 1998, I was required to get approval of "outside consulting work" from Benjamin Taylor, then the publisher of The Boston Globe, a wholly owned subsidiary of The New York Times. Taylor personally approved my consulting arrangement with Fox News Channel. In March of 2000, Times reporter Peter Marks interviewed me regarding my role as head of the Decision Desk team and thought it so unremarkable, he filed no story. Also in March, reporter and columnist Mark Jurkowitz wrote an article regarding my role. The article appeared in The Boston Globe. It should also be noted that New York Times Company reporters and editors who called me on primary and general election nights desperate for the latest information made no mention of my "inappropriate" role with the network.

2. Mr. Krugman asserts that I gave Governor Bush "confidential poll information." I categorically deny this charge. It is based on a report in The New Yorker magazine that I regard as reckless and malicious. It should be noted, since we are talking journalistic ethics here, that Mr. Krugman made no effort to contact me prior to publication.

3. Mr. Krugman and Mr. Rich both assert that I somehow "engineered" a network stampede to project Mr. Bush the winner of the presidential election. This will come as news to the presidents of the other network news divisions, as well as to the other members of the Fox News ChannelÕs Decision Desk Team. I suspect it was not the policy of the other networks to "just do whatever John Ellis tells you to do." It was Fox News Channel policy that all members of the Decision Desk team had to agree to a call prior to its broadcast. It was also Fox News Channel policy that no call could get on the air without the approval of John Moody, executive vice president for news. The three other members of the Fox News Channel Decision Desk team are, just for the record, Democrats. All three concurred with the "Bush wins Florida/Presidency" call.

Sincerely;

John Ellis

Gore's Pecs: For those of you wondering why the New York Times has been so tilted toward Al Gore, an article on the fashion page of today's Times is suggestive. The article refers to the vice president appearing in "a dark, cable-knit turtleneck sweater that accentuated Mr. Gore's attractive pectoral mass." Oh, so the Times finds Mr. Gore's pectoral mass attractive, does it? That explains a lot.

The Queen and Utah: The "Tunnel Vision" column in the metro section of today's Times discusses a Web site for riders of the London tube. The column concludes with what is presented as a proclamation written by a London commuter, indicating that in light of America's failure to decide a winner in the presidential election, "Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy." Well, it's nice of the New York Times to finally share this knee-slapper with its readers. The joke appeared in the Washington Wire column on Page One of the Wall Street Journal on Friday, November 17, and it appeared in the Times of India on November 19. It may be that the joke originated on the Web site for London tube riders, but it seems unlikely.

Guillible on Israel: The Times treatment of Israel reaches new lows today. The front-page news story refers to Israel's shelling of "the headquarters of the Palestinian preventive security forces," and it refers to "Israeli peace groups" that have called for Israel to evacuate settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. If the Times wants to call the Palestinian army or Yasser Arafat's goons "preventive security forces," and it wants to call the Israeli appeasement camp "peace groups," fine. But why doesn't it also take the Israeli government at its word when it releases a report on Palestinian Arab violations of their commitments in signed agreements? A news story in the international section today refers to those violations as "alleged" and as Israeli "accusations." Why do we never hear about "alleged" peace groups and the "alleged" preventive security forces?

The inside story also refers to "the proposition that Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are now in breach of agreements signed in Oslo in 1993, in Washington in 1994, in Maryland in 1998 and in Egypt last month." This gets at least two details wrong. The Oslo II agreement was signed in Washington in 1995, not 1994. And there was no agreement "signed" in Egypt last month. After failing to get the sides to sign an agreement, President Clinton went out and read a statement claiming there was an agreement. No one signed anything.

The Times editorial on the Middle East today is even worse than the news coverage: a model of moral equivalence. "With the horror of the bus blast, which left two adults dead and several children mutilated, and the Israeli missile attacks against Palestinian targets in Gaza, there is a strong potential for the spiral of violence to resume," the Times writes. "It is imperative for both sides to try to find their way back to the paths of restraint they were exploring." Only the Times -- or the State Department -- could put a terrorist attack against a bus of schoolchildren in the same category as retaliatory strikes by Israel against military and command and control targets in the Palestinian Authority. In the eyes of the Times, both are "disheartening" examples of "violence." There seems to be no recognition by the Times that an attack on innocent schoolchildren is different than an attack on the terrorists themselves.

A story in the "Counting the Vote" section of this morning's New York Times runs under the headline, "In Stress of Recount, Complaints Get Bizarre." The article reports that "on Saturday, some accusations turned just plain wacky. Matthew C. Rhoades, 25, a research analyst for the Republican National Committee, said that on Friday he saw a Democratic counter in the room eating a chad, the piece of the punch-card ballot that is supposed to fall out when a voter punches in his choice." The Times quotes Mr. Rhoades as saying that "a Democratic counter put one on his finger, joking around, held it up and then threw it in his mouth."

The Times interprets this incident as evidence of the "wacky" and "bizarre" complaints that are cropping up in the "stress" of the recount. But it could just as easily be viewed as serious evidence that the Democrats are trying to steal the election. What are loose chads doing in the recount room, anyway? Who punched them out? And why would a Democrat be trying to make them disappear? In the stress of the recount, the Times coverage is getting wacky; instead of dealing with these issues seriously, it treats them as some sort of entertaining sideshow. Imagine the Times running a similar headline about Democratic reactions to Republican behavior: "In Stress of Recount, Florida Supreme Court's Order Gets Bizarre." There's nothing wacky or bizarre about a Republican complaining about the fact that Democrats are eating chads. What's wacky is not the accusation or the complaint but the behavior that is being complained about -- the apparent lengths that the Democrats are willing to go to destroy evidence.

Partisan Digs: Today's New York Times features a "Public Lives" profile of Newt Gingrich that runs in the national section. The article says, "Still, Mr. Gingrich felt compelled to make partisan digs that characterized his 20 years as a congressman from Georgia. Reiterating his call for Democrats to reach out to conservative white suburban communities and for Republicans to reach out to Latinos and African-Americans, he could not resist the qualifier: 'not to the left-wing political leadership.'" Talk about your partisan digs. A partisan dig is what the Times is engaging in by characterizing as a "partisan dig" Mr. Gingrich's accurate description of the African-American and Latino political leadership.

War Process: Times columnist William Safire, who is usually sensible on Middle East issues, gives Israel's prime minister, Ehud Barak, some bad advice today. Mr. Safire says Mr. Barak "must not use too much firepower, lest he fall into Arafat's wider-war trap." Mr. Safire suggests that "a new Middle East war" is in Mr. Arafat's interest. In fact, a wider war would serve Israel's interests and America's better than would a continuation of the current low-level clashes between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Israel has a qualitative military edge and strategic superiority; a wider war would allow it to degrade the military capabilities of Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Syria and thereby pave the way for the emergence of free and democratic regimes in those countries. It would also put the spotlight on the fact that it is those undemocratic regimes that are coordinating and supporting the terrorist war against Israel and against American interests in the Middle East.

The lead editorial in today's New York Times discusses the dispute over who won the presidential election. "There has been frustration, but no real sense of national crisis," the Times editorial claims.

On the facing page of the Times, an opinion piece by Leonard Garment says, "Consider the country's two most serious recent political crises, Watergate and the Clinton impeachment. . . . We are in something of a similar crisis at the moment."

The Times editorialists may be of the opinion that a sense of crisis is not justified by the reality of the situation. But for them to assert that there is "no real sense of national crisis" is to assert something that is plainly contradicted by Mr. Garment's article and by dozens of others that have appeared in the Times since Election Day. What is the Times editorial trying to suggest, exactly? That Mr. Garment's sense of a national crisis is not "real" but phony?

Sanctions on Burma: The second editorial in today's Times calls for international and American economic sanctions against Burma, which the editorial calls Myanmar. "A good start would be restricting trade and investment in areas of the economy that profit from forced labor," the Times writes in its editorial. "Washington too should consider additional steps like encouraging disinvestment by American companies."

This is priceless coming from the Times, which led the cheerleading effort for the Clinton administration's abandonment of the linkage between human rights and trade with China. China's human rights abuses are of a greater scale than those of Burma, yet the Times wants sanctions on Burma but not on China. When the AFL-CIO, which has a glorious history of fighting for freedom by backing anti-Communist labor unions in Poland and elsewhere, including in Burma, raised its voice against unconditional trade with China and against unconditional trade with Africa, the American labor federation was scorned by the Times and by its foreign affairs columnist, Thomas Friedman, as isolationist. "Shame on them," Mr. Friedman barked at the AFL-CIO back in March. The Times editorial gives no explanation of why it supports linkage of trade and human rights in Burma but not in Africa or China. And the Times gives no explanation of why its preferred method of supporting Burma's people "in their struggle against a destructive tyranny" consists of trade sanctions rather than a more muscular policy such as direct financial and military assistance from America to groups that oppose the current regime in Burma.

The Saturday "Arts & Ideas" section of the New York Times fetches up today with an admiring profile of Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, who says, "I feel absolute about nuclear weapons. I feel they are evil objects." The article runs under the headline, "Champion of Human Survival Tries to Awaken Academics to a Nuclear Menace." The Times says Dr. Lifton is "distressed by the ho-hum attitude toward a threat to human survival." Dr. Lifton's center, the Times reports without even a hint of a smile, "sponsors programs on nuclear weapons, racial violence, the psychology of fundamentalism and animal rights."

No matter what Dr. Lifton and the Times say, nuclear weapons aren't "evil objects." In the right hands, they can be tools to expand freedom and spread democracy. If Israel didn't have nuclear weapons to defend itself, the Jews there would probably all be dead. (Which makes it all the more galling that Dr. Lifton cites his own Jewish background and the Holocaust as the inspiration for his own work. If the Jews had had a nuclear weapon with which to defend themselves against the Nazis, would it have been, to Dr. Lifton, absolutely an evil object? ) If America hadn't deployed nuclear missiles so aggressively against the Soviet Union during the Reagan years, the evil Soviet Communist empire might still be in existence and might still be brutally repressing its own people.

The best the Times can muster as a skeptical voice in this article is the MIT professor Theodore Postol, who has criticized the Clinton administration for being too tough on Russia and who has been a determined opponent of national missile defense. He must be what the Times considers a hard-liner, because he says, "If Attila the Hun is coming through, it's not a matter of being moral. It's kill or be killed." That's right, but it doesn't go quite far enough. If you are America and the Soviets are coming through or you are the Jews and the Nazis are coming through, it is a matter of being moral. The moral thing to do is for the good guys to kill the bad guys.

Anyway, the Times article on Dr. Lifton has a certain time-capsule-like element to it, as if instead of the year 2000 it were 1985 and the left were still confused about the moral nature of the confrontation with the Soviet Union -- and the possibility of victory for America in that confrontation. There are plenty of persons on the left who realized after the Cold War ended, and even some who realized while it was still going on,that the war was winnable and that the menace wasn't nuclear weapons but the very totalitarian nature of the Soviet Communist regime. But the Times article today shows no evidence of any such coming to terms with history; it's as if the themes and ideas and words in today's newspaper were transported magically through the last 15 years untainted by any historical developments.

'Tendonitis': An article in the business section of today's New York Times discusses new ergonomics rules that the Clinton administration is imposing on American businesses. The article refers to workplace injuries like "tendonitis." There's no such thing as "tendonitis"; the inflammation of a tendon is properly known and spelled either as "tendinitis" or "tenonitis."

Back before the election, one of the most frequently heard complaints about George W. Bush from well-educated, limousine-liberal Democrats was that he was too stupid to be president. His "subliminable" television advertisements, his reference to Greeks as "Grecians," the overall fraternity-boy demeanor combined to convey an image of a politician who wasn't exactly Mr. Intelligence. And, at least in the circles that the editor of Smartertimes.com travels in, the Democrats were withering in their conveyance of this assessment, referring openly to Mr. Bush as an imbecile, an idiot or worse.

So what a stunning turnaround it is to see the Democrats now pleading for America to indulge the less-than-smart in their own party, and arguing that Mr. Bush's victory should be overturned and the election should be handed to his opponent on the basis of blemished votes cast by those too stupid or uneducated to understand and follow the simple instructions on Florida ballots.

A prime example of this comes on the front page of today's New York Times, in an article that runs under the headline, "Democrats Rue Ballot Foul-Up In a 2nd County." Despite the headline, the article is not about a ballot foul-up, but about a voter foul-up; that is, about foul-ups by voters who were too dumb or careless or uneducated to read and follow the instructions. And, just to mark the point for all those folks who have spent the last year making snide remarks about Mr. Bush's alleged lack of intelligence, those folks who were overpowered by the overwhelming intellectual challenge of a Florida ballot turn out to be overwhelmingly those who intended to vote for Mr. Gore.

The Times article tries to blame some of the confusion on the Democratic voter turnout effort, but it seems pretty clear that the ultimate blame rests with voters who, when it comes to supposed lack of intelligence, could give George W. Bush a run for his money. The Times article today contains a priceless quote from one such voter, who was "taken aback" by the two-page presidential ballot. "It was confusing to me," the Times quotes her as saying. "It was my first time voting."

The Times reports that "she does not know which precinct or district she voted in; she had gone to the polling station the Democrats had shown her. After first making a mistake and voting for Mr. Bush, she managed, after considerable assistance, to get a new ballot, she said. But she still was not certain what to do."

She tells the Times, "I kept looking around, pleading for help. But they just kept saying, 'read it, read it.' I wanted to get out of there, but I was determined. So I just punched whatever. When I got home, I told my husband, I don't know who I voted for."

The "The Big City" column in the metro section of today's Times actually claims that the fact that Democrats are more likely to botch their ballots than Republicans creates "a stronger case for a recount." The column makes the argument that "the machine count is unfair because one party's voters happen to be less adept at following the machine's rules."

The Times column points out that "It's awkward for Democrats to impugn their own constituents' skills in the voting booth." It sure is, but that doesn't seem to have stopped them, notwithstanding all their earlier comments about Mr. Bush's supposed stupidity.

Arafat and Pinochet: An editorial in today's Times calls for America to indict the former leader of Chile, Agusto Pinochet, in connection with a 1976 assassination in Washington. Well, while the Times is on the subject of indicting foreign leaders for crimes committed in the 1970s, how about indicting Yasser Arafat? Senator Arlen Specter said this month in remarks at the Zionist Organization of America dinner in New York that, personally, he would like to see Mr. Arafat tried in America for the murder of the U.S. charge d'affaires in Sudan in 1974 and for the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, an American murdered on a cruise ship hijacked by Arab terrorists. While the Times editorializes in favor of holding right-wing anti-communist murderers accountable for their crimes, it hardly ever favors holding Soviet-backed Arab murderers accountable for theirs.

Acela Fares: How much is a ride on the new Acela train that runs from Washington to Boston? "Not cheap," the Times tells us in an article in the national section today. The article reports that a ticket is "$143 for business class from Washington to New York, and $217 for first class. New York to Boston is $162 for business class and $248 for first class." A graphic alongside the article says the Acela ticket price for "one-way coach" is $143 for Washington to New York and $120 from New York to Boston. It's difficult to make any sense of this. Does the coach class ticket from Washington to New York really cost the same as the business class ticket? Why does the article mention only the first-class and business-class fares but not the coach class fares that are mentioned in the graphic? And why does Amtrak charge more for the Washington-New York trip than for the New York-Boston trip in coach class, but less for the Washington-New York trip than for the New York-Boston trip in business class and first class?

The lead story in the "Counting the Vote" section of today's New York Times offers thumbnail descriptions of the lawyers involved in the fight over the presidential election recounts in Florida. The Bush lawyer, Ted Olson, is described as "a friend of the former independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr." The Times tells readers about Olson that, "In November 1998, he helped ABC News get an interview with Monica Lewinsky." Interesting material, perhaps, for a profile of Mr. Olson. But of all the highlights of Olson's long, substantive and distinguished career, is the Starr-Lewinsky connection really the most relevant or interesting?

Compare the treatment Mr. Olson got to that received by Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer for some Palm Beach voters. Mr. Dershowitz is described simply as "a Harvard law professor." The Times omits any mention of Mr. Dershowitz's role as a vocal defender of President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and the Times also omits any mention of Mr. Dershowitz's role as a lawyer for O.J. Simpson. The Times does slip into snideness at the fact that Mr. Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe, another Harvard Law School professor, "In a race that was not particularly close," beat another lawyer "to the television cameras outside the courthouse."

If the Times wants to write about these lawyers, straightforward and evenhanded profiles world be a better way to do it than catty asides.

Bush's Florida Problem: A story in the national section of today's Times on the influence of Republican governors on the presidential election quotes an anonymous "Republican strategist." The Times says "the strategist noted that a governor can cause harm and pointed to Florida, where the heavy turnout of black voters came after Jeb Bush's efforts to roll back affirmative action in that state." The Times quotes the strategist as saying, "The real problem in Florida was Jeb's whole thing about affirmative action." This is so far from the truth and unsubstantiated that it is just downright irresponsible of the Times to pass it along on the basis of a quote from an anonymous strategist. Jeb Bush's One Florida plan wasn't an attempt to "roll back' affirmative action, but to save it. A Federal circuit court ruling had undermined racial preferences, and Ward Connerly was poised to put a referendum on the Florida ballot banning racial preferences, a referendum similar to one that Connerly successfully championed in California. Bush pre-empted both the court challenge and the referendum by instituting a plan to guarantee the top 20% of every public high school class admission to state colleges. As John Leo wrote in his April 17 column in U.S. News & World Report, such a plan "would clearly raise the number of blacks and Latinos in the colleges." The are plenty of possible explanations for a high black turnout in Florida, if indeed there was one. One explanation could be the demagogic ads aired by the NAACP linking George W. Bush to a brutal racist murder in Texas. But on affirmative action, Jeb is a soft-liner, especially compared to Ward Connerly.

The New York Times today runs a front-page story under the headline "G.O.P. Questioning Bush's Campaign," about complaints by Republicans that the Bush team made tactical errors in the closing days of the presidential campaign. The story relies heavily on two sources. One is Bill Dal Col, "who ran the losing Senate campaign of Representative Rick Lazio in New York." It isn't until the 23rd paragraph of the story that the Times discloses that Mr. Dal Col "was the campaign manager for Steve Forbes, who lost to Mr. Bush." The other main source in the story is Roger Stone, who is identified only as "a Republican strategist." The Times doesn't tell us at all that Mr. Stone spent the presidential campaign season this year advising real estate developer and casino tycoon Donald Trump on Mr. Trump's Reform Party presidential bid. The Bush campaign probably did make some mistakes, but Mr. Dal Col and Mr. Stone are pretty thin gruel for the Times to offer up. Also carping in the Times story is Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's losing campaign in 1996. If Dal Col, Stone and Reed are such political geniuses, why didn't their candidates win?

Update: Another Republican quoted in today's "G.O.P. Questioning" story, John Ellis, writes:

In today's NYT, Richard Berke quotes me at some length concerning how the Bush campaign approached the final six days of the campaign. I do not take issue with any of the direct quotes, but I take exception with the characterization of what I told Mr. Berke and the context in which those quotes appear.

As I repeatedly explained to Mr. Berke, the principal reason for the Bush campaign's confidence going into the final weekend was that polls of "likely voters" conducted by the Bush campaign and major news organizations showed Bush doing well nationally, well enough in swing states and surprisingly well in a large number of traditionally Democratic states. As I also explained repeatedly to Mr. Berke, the reason for this was that both campaign and news media polling organizations were employing "likely voter" screens that were too tight and therefore undercounted Democratic strength.

I never said to Mr. Berke that the Bush campaign did not "have to worry much" about Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Iowa. Indeed, Governor Bush campaigned in two Pennsylvania media markets during the final weekend of the campaign. Pennsylvania is a swing state which the (people I talked with in the) Bush campaign believed it might win. Wisconsin and Iowa were traditionally Democratic states where Bush campaign and local polling showed GWB running surprisingly well.

When I spoke to Mr. Berke on Sunday (yesterday) afternoon, I never imagined that I would appear under a jump-page headline that said "Allies Fault Bush Campaign's Endgame." This leaves the distinct impression that I fault the Bush campaign for its endgame strategy. I did not, do not, will not. Indeed, based on the data available at the time, I agreed with the Bush campaign team's assessment of the race.

Had I known that Mr. Berke would use me to further an analysis which I believe is inaccurate, I would never have agreed to speak with him.

Why Peres Lost: A front-page story in today's New York Times about a hijacked plane that landed in Israel says Israeli "politicians and analysts" warn that Israeli retaliatory strikes against Arab terrorists may backfire. "They cited the assassination of a Hamas mastermind, Yihye Ayash, in 1996 that provoked a wave of terror and cost Shimon Peres the prime ministerial election." When will the Times ever realize that it is not Israeli actions that "provoke" terrorism, but the mere existence of the Jewish state and of Jews, which the terrorists are determined to eradicate? The notion that Mr. Peres lost the prime ministerial election because he was too tough on terrorism is a typical Times misreading of Middle East history. In fact, Mr. Peres lost because he was seen as too dovish and soft on terrorism, and because the Israeli public wanted a prime minister who would pursue a peace with the Arabs at a more deliberate and cautious pace and with a greater emphasis on reciprocity and Arab compliance. It's just bizarre for the Times to claim that Mr. Peres lost the election because he approved the assassination of Ayash. Probably not even Mr. Peres would use that excuse.

Peace in Jordan: A cut-line that runs today with a photograph accompanying the Times obituary of Leah Rabin says, "In 1994 she accompanied Prime Minister Rabin, right, and Shimon Peres, walking behind them, on their return home from Washington after the signing there of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty." The Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty was signed in a valley between Israel and Jordan; what the two countries did in Washington was issue a preliminary declaration.

The lead story in the Sunday Styles section of this morning's New York Times reports on the development in the world of fashion of "fascist chic," featuring brown shirts and police-state style uniforms. The article passes along in all seriousness a quote from a professor at the City University of New York who says, "The fascist style exhibits a grandiosity apt to an era of high and maldistributed prosperity. We're in the adulthood of the Reagan youth. I guess the people who grew up in that era bring their taste with them." The quote captures the political agenda of the New York Times just about perfectly. First there is the reference to "maldistributed prosperity." How would the professor and the Times like to redistribute the prosperity? By taking the money away from the people who work hard and giving it to those that don't? Then there is the casual suggestion -- made without any explanation, as if none were needed -- that President Reagan's program was somehow akin to fascism, that "Reagan Youth" are just another kind of Hitler Youth. Those readers who believe that Reagan was a great defender of liberty might take offense at the Times' suggestion. But a close reading of the article suggests that, in context, the Times means this all not as a condemnation of Reagan, but as praise. After all, the article asserts that "the ponderous style identified with tyranny retains an allure," and the Times quotes another fashion authority as saying, "Fascism -- I hate to say it, but it's sexy."

Jewish Socialists: Today's New York Times book review section reviews a new book about the Jewish Lower East Side of New York City. Writing about the neighborhood's achievements, the reviewer asks, "Is it impolite, in this hour of stock market ecstasy, to mention that one of those achievements, back in the old days, had to do with socialism?" The review says, "socialism made Grand Street grand, in its day. And when the modern American Jews look back at the old East Side through a veil of tears, aren't they looking back on a set of ideals, too, and on a passion for social justice that managed to thrive in the semi-European streets of New York for a good many years?" Social justice, perhaps, but socialism, no. As Henry Feingold points out in Volume Four of the five-volume 1992 history "The Jewish People in America," during the 1920s only about a tenth of Jewish voters cast their ballots for socialist candidates. The share of Jews voting socialist peaked at about 38 percent, for Eugene V. Debs, the socialist candidate for president in 1920. As Mr. Feingold writes, "it was often precisely such radicals who were least knowledgeable and committed to the Judaism in which they imagined such values to be embedded." Yet, in looking back on the Lower East Side, the Times reviewer dwells on socialism, dismissing authentic Judaism as a kind of retrograde kitsch.

Apologists for the British: The Times book review gives its cover slot and a glowing review today to a new book by Tom Segev. The Times tells us that the book tells us that "the British were the friends rather than the enemies of the Jews," and the review says the book "will doubtless become the authoritative text for the pre-state history of Israel." If that account of the British role is indeed the book's message, it would be a shame if the book became the authoritative text, because it is wrong. The review, for instance, refers to "The Arab rebellion of 1936-39, which British soldiers suppressed with brutal force." This seems logically inconsistent on its face: if the British really suppressed the Arab rebellion with brutal force, how did the Arabs manage to carry on the rebellion for three years? In fact, as Shmuel Katz records in his magnificent two-volume biography of the Zionist leader Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky, at one key point in the Fall of 1936, the British had reinforced their troops in Palestine to 17,000 from 7,000, and they were poised to deliver a knockout blow to the Arab troops led by Fawzi Kaukji. The Arabs were saved by a last-minute decision by the British high commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope. As Katz tells it: "When the defeated Kaukji with his battered followers, aiming to retreat across the Jordan, were surrounded on the approaches to the river, and the army prepared to deliver the coup de grace, the Arab Higher Committee protested to Wauchope, and the administration thereupon, as a final chord to the farce, ordered the army chiefs to open the road. Kaukji crossed the Jordan unhindered, to rest, to regroup and to prepare for the next round."

That incident is just one in a series of facts that contradicts the notion contained in the Times front-page book review headline that, "The British mandate in Palestine was the single biggest factor in the making of Israel." The British chief justice in Palestine at the time, Sir Michael MacDonell, was hailed by the Arabs as "the defender of the just Arab cause," according to Katz. Wauchope at the time was prepared to offer the Arabs limits on Jewish immigration to Palestine and a ban on land sales to Jews. He was also pressing for the establishment of a Legislative Council in Palestine that would have had 14 Arab members and eight Jewish members.

Anyway, a signal of where the Times reviewer is coming from should be clear from this sentence in the review: "Tragically, the creation of a Jewish state just three years after the near-total destruction of the Jewish diaspora by Nazism led to the creation of a Palestinian diaspora, whose fate has yet to be determined." This is the classic anti-Israel moral equivalency; the Jews as victims of the Nazis; the Palestinian Arabs as victims of the Jews. Of course, the Times fails to mention the fact that most Arabs left of their own volition, or as the result of the Arab-initiated war or as the result of pleading by Arab leaders outside of Palestine. In some cases, as in Haifa, as Commentary magazine has recorded, the local Jews even pleaded with the local Arabs to please stay.

An article in the national section of today's New York Times slimes two of the newspaper's largest advertisers, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's. The article, about the newly named next president of Brown University, Ruth Simmons, reports that as a black woman, "Dr. Simmons says she has been under surveillance in Bloomingdale's, Saks Fifth Avenue and Ferragamo in New York, and, just a couple of weeks ago, in the gift shop of a hotel in Syracuse, where, she says, she apparently lingered too long near a sprawling display of Beanie Babies." Never mind the indignity to Saks and Bloomingdale's of being lumped in with a hotel gift shop in Syracuse. (The Times ad salesmen are probably having heartburn at the thought of it.) The clear implication is that Saks and Bloomingdale's engage in racial profiling. This is a grave accusation, which, if true, could subject the department stores to boycotts and, potentially, to legal action. The Times has devoted countless front-page stories and editorials to allegations of racial profiling by the New Jersey state police (controlled by a Republican governor) and by the New York Police Department (controlled by a Republican mayor.) Funny, the allegation of racial profiling by the security teams at the big department-store advertisers doesn't get the full-court investigative treatment. That's not surprising. What is surprising is that today's Times article doesn't even bother to convey a response to the allegations from Saks or from Bloomingdale's. Such a response would probably include a statement to the effect that at such stores, all shoppers -- not just African American ones -- are subject to surveillance in order to combat theft, which is a multimillion-dollar-a-year problem in the retail industry. If the Times is going to pass along these charges against Saks and Bloomingdale's based on the recollections of the incoming president of Brown University, the least the newspaper could do would be to give the retailers a chance to respond.

S. Daniel Abraham: A story in the national section of today's Times refers to "a handful of wealthy Democratic contributors, including Danny Abraham, the West Palm Beach billionaire founder of Slim-Fast Foods." Mr. Abraham lives in Palm Beach, not West Palm Beach.

Moral Equivalence Watch: A story in the Arts & Ideas section of today's Times claims that "being able to cite American critics of globalization and contemporary American capitalism -- among them, besides Mr. Rifkin, the economists Lester C. Thurow, James K. Galbraith and Robert B. Reich -- is, for the European left today, a bit like the anti-Communists of the 1970's quoting Russian dissidents like Andrei D. Sakharov and Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn." This is a classic example of the Times' moral equivalence. To the Times -- not just to "the European left today," for the Times passes along this argument with all full respect -- a critic of American capitalism and a critic of the Soviet Red Communist regime are "a bit like" each other. The fact that American capitalism is one of the most successful and free political and economic systems ever devised and Soviet communism was one of the most evil and brutal and failed political and economic systems ever devised is entirely lost on the Times.

The same article goes on to refer to the "Archer Daniel Midland" company. It's Archer Daniels Midland, after one of the founders of the company, who was named John W. Daniels.

The lead editorial in this morning's New York Times is, by Times standards, pretty harsh on Al Gore. It calls his rush to court in an effort to litigate his way to a victory the voters would not grant him "worrying." But on a second reading, the Times' pro-Gore sentiments in the face of the facts become clear, as an astute Smartertimes.com reader in Los Angeles, Henry Fetter, pointed out in an e-email early this morning. The Times editorial says "Both Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush need to be asking themselves whether a scorched-earth legal strategy" serves "the broad national interest." "Both"? It is only the Gore campaign that has announced that it will pursue a scorched-earth legal strategy.

The editorial also likens Mr. Gore's scorched-earth legal strategy to Mr. Bush's entirely appropriate desire to begin planning for the next administration. "Neither the prospect of legal warfare not Mr. Bush's rush to put together a transition team is helpful at this point," the Times says. In this case, the Times is holding Mr. Bush to a higher standard than Mr. Gore. Funny, there hasn't been a Times editorial condemning Mr. Gore for starting work on the transition. Yet a news story in the Times on November 4 reported that Mr. Gore had gotten his own transition team up and running even before the election. That article reported, "Despite the uncertain outcome of the race, Mr. Gore has started low-level, low-profile planning for a presidential transition. Last summer, he asked a longtime adviser and former aide, Roy Neel, to lead a pre-election transition operation that would focus on process but not on personnel. Mr. Neel, a former chief of staff for Mr. Gore in both his Senate and vice presidential offices, is now on unpaid leave from his job as president of the United States Telecom Association. Gore aides said that Mr. Neel had been working in Washington, with occasional visits to the campaign headquarters in Nashville, for several months. He and a collection of current and former Gore aides have been researching the history of previous transitions and writing memorandums about how a transition should be organized."

The Science of Counting: An article by a Times science writer quoting statisticians about the disputed ballots was so good that the Times apparently saw fit to run it twice in today's paper. In my New York edition, the article appears once on page A24 under the headline "In Research, Recounts the Norm," and again on page A28 under the headline "Question of Numbers No Longer Is Academic." Both times, the article is slugged "The Science of Counting." One, two. Some science.

Big Time Scenario: An intriguing story in the national section of today's Times runs under the headline "President Could Be Picked Without Florida." The article outlines a scenario under which the Gore campaign could use legal tactics to delay the certification of electors in Florida, meanwhile claiming a victory in the electoral vote by winning a majority of all non-Florida electoral votes cast by the December 18 deadline. The article quotes "Walter Dellinger, professor of law at Duke University," as supporting the legality of this scenario, which would favor Mr. Gore. But in a big-time omission, the article fails to inform readers that Mr. Dellinger was solicitor general in the Clinton administration and is not exactly an impartial authority.

L.A. Riots Explained: An article in the national section of today's New York Times manages to do in a single paragraph what it took other newspapers months of investigative reporting and hundreds of inches of copy to do: explain the Los Angeles riots. The Times blames the riots on the district attorney of Los Angeles County, Gil Garcetti. "The failure of his office to gain convictions against four white officers who were videotaped beating Rodney G. King, a black motorist, led to riots in which more than 50 people were killed and property damage totaled nearly $1 billion." The leap of logic here is breathtaking. As if the jury's verdict and the popular reaction to it were already determined, and as if the only variable affecting whether there was going to be a massive race riot in L.A. were the performance of the prosecutors. Really.

Death Takes a Holiday: An article in the business section of today's Times about the "Funeral Business's New Look" passes along wholesale a quote from a Wall Street analyst who claims that the stock prices for funeral home companies are down because of "weakened death rates." Think about this for a second. (The Times editors apparently didn't.) "Weakened death rates"? In the long run, everyone dies. The death rate is 100%. This should be already priced into the stocks of funeral home companies. If the death rate has really weakened, the story belongs above the fold on the front page of the Times, not buried, so to speak, in a quote from a stock analyst midway through a business-section story about the funeral home industry.

Bilingual Education: Wednesday's Smartertimes.com commented on a column on the Times education page about bilingual education. Today's Times carries a correction of the column. The correction reads as follows: "Because of an editing error, the Lessons column on Wednesday, about bilingual education, misstated the writer's view of when that system is most useful in the teaching of English. The column was intended to say that bilingual teaching of English is warranted when it intellectually challenges students in a language they understand. He did not say it should be promoted because most often it teaches English more effectively." This correction obscures more than it clarifies, but what it seems to suggest is that the columnist isn't really interested in having students learn English; he just wants them to be intellectually challenged "in a language they understand." He's certainly entitled to his view, but it seems as if the vast majority of taxpayers who support the public school system -- not to mention the parents of the Spanish-speaking students who are the main victims of the current system -- are interested in having students learn the American language. There's no correction today of the original column's dismissal of those English-immersion advocates as ideological crusaders.

A story in the international section of today's New York Times reports in all seriousness on a mock election held in Beijing in which Chinese communists favored Al Gore over George W. Bush, 762 to 396. The article quotes one of the Chinese as saying, "I think Clinton has been good to China, and I think Gore will continue that." You can say that again. There's no sign in the article that the Times realizes a quote like that resonates in an ominous way among those concerned about the Clinton administration's technology transfers to China, about the leakage of nuclear-missile secrets to China, and about the effort by Chinese communists to sway the American election in 1996 by making illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic Party.

Probity and Judgment: The lead editorial in today's New York Times comments in passing on the two former secretaries of state, James Baker and Warren Christopher, who are overseeing the Florida recount on behalf of the Bush and Gore campaigns. "Their reputations for probity and judgment provide a reasonable hope that contentious issues can be resolved without lengthy litigation," the Times says. "Judgment"? Probity, maybe, but only the Times could manage to consider Warrren Christopher a paragon of judgment. This, you may recall, is the state secretary who traveled to Damascus more than a dozen times to prostrate himself at the feet of the Syrian tyrant, Hafez al-Assad, in pursuit of a Middle East "peace" deal to prop up that tyrant, and who hemmed and hawed while the Balkans, Rwanda and Somalia deteriorated. As for Mr. Baker, maybe the Times considers his stint running President Bush's losing campaign in 1992 to have been evidence of his good judgment. Or maybe the reference is to Mr. Baker's pressure on the democratically elected government of Israel.

Unfair from Day One: The Times prints on its op-ed page today an article from a Yale Law School professor claiming that the Electoral College was "unfair from day one" and that it does not resonate with "the American value of one person, one vote." The same argument could be used to dismantle the Senate. After all, the votes of the senators from Rhode Island, Montana and South Dakota are worth as much as those as the senators from the far more populous states of California, New York and Texas. That's not exactly "one person, one vote." Though the Constitution begins "We the people," not "We the states," the name of the country is the United States of America, not the United People of America, and our political system is a hybrid of individual rights and states' rights. The folks attacking the Electoral College all of a sudden now that it is working against Al Gore's chances of winning the presidency are going to have to reckon with the fact that the logical conclusion of their argument would also dictate a dismantling of the Senate. There may be arguments for doing that, but it would be a radical reform to a system that has served America pretty well over the years.

A front-page news analysis in today's New York Times asks, "Is American politics entering a nonideological or an anti-ideological phase? Only six years ago, the Republicans swept into control of the House on a radical right-wing program. But they were able to enact relatively little of it, and in this election, Congressional and presidential candidates alike did their best to skitter toward the center." There was nothing particularly "radical," or even particularly "right-wing," about the 1994 Republican House program, as expressed in the Contract with America. As Newt Gingrich has pointed out, President Clinton's own 1996 presidential nomination acceptance speech in Chicago claimed credit for at least seven items that were part of the Contract With America and that were passed by the Republican Congress: an adoption tax credit, a tax cut for small businesses, the line-item veto, making Congress adhere to the laws that apply to the rest of the country, stopping unfunded mandates to state and local governments, welfare reform, and tax incentives for the purchase of long-term care insurance. Virtually all of these items were carefully poll-tested and were at the core of the Contract with America. If they were so "radical" and "right-wing," why was Bill Clinton taking credit for them? The 1994 House Republicans didn't enact "relatively little" of their program; they enacted a great deal of it. And as for the supposed skittering to the center, the idea that this is some new "phase" that American politics is just "entering" is sort of strange, considering Mr. Clinton's 1992 Democratic campaign, which featured his vow to end welfare as we know it, not to mention his promise of a middle-class tax cut and his departure from the campaign trail to fly back to Arkansas to personally order the application of the death penalty to a quasi-retarded convict. If anything, Mr. Gore, with his rhetoric about "the people" versus "the powerful," his demonization of the medicine, health insurance, oil and tobacco industries, and his attacks on the richest one percent of Americans, was more ideological and less centrist than Mr. Clinton.

Now They Tell Us: Now that Hillary Clinton has safely won a seat in the U.S. Senate, the Times editorialists finally see fit to share with their readers the fact that "Mrs. Clinton launched a harsh last-minute commercial that accused Mr. Lazio of trying to gut funding for breast cancer treatment. The ad, meant for the suburbs where Mrs. Clinton was not doing as well as expected, distorted Mr. Lazio's record on breast cancer." Funny how the Times never got around to editorializing about this commercial before the election was held.

Tendentious: An article in the international section of today's Times reports on the impending resignation of America's special Middle East coordinator, Dennis Ross. "Mr. Ross has been at President Clinton's side at the two major Middle East diplomatic drives this year: the meeting in Geneva with President Hafez el-Assad of Syria, and the Camp David summit meeting in July. Neither produced the results Washington had hoped for, though the Camp David talks pushed consideration of the most tendentious issues further along than expected," the article reports. This is a misuse of the word "tendentious." The Times means to say the most difficult issues, or the most controversial issues. Webster's Second defines "tendentious" to mean "characterized by a deliberate tendency or aim; especially, advancing a definite point of view or doctrine; as tendentious writings." It just doesn't make any sense, in English, to write about "tendentious issues."

Patronizing: Speaking of tendentious, check out the column on the education page of today's Times defending bilingual education. The article runs under the headline "Debunking Double Talk," but double talk is what the article is, and of a particularly patronizing variety. The article discusses the distinction between bilingual education and English-language immersion, and it asserts, "Decisions about which method to use in particular cases should be made by educators studying facts, not by politicians or voters on ideological crusades." Just who are the voters on "ideological crusades" that in fact are responsible for the efforts in California and Arizona to teach immigrant children English rather than ghettoizing them in bilingual education programs that mire them in non-English instruction? Well, you wouldn't know it from reading the Times column, but the Arizona statewide chair of the English for the Children campaign is Maria Mendoza. The statewide co-chair is Hector Ayala. Another co-chair is Margaret Garcia Dugan. The Maricopa County co-chair is Norma Alvarez. As it was in California, this is a movement of Hispanic parents who want their children in classes with English speakers and who understand the importance of English skills to the success of their children. But the Times columnist pays no heed to the Hispanic parents. One indication of why comes in the following passage, which is a stunning example of the Times' arrogance: "Of course, children from literate homes who are taken abroad can learn a new language by being immersed in it at school. And immigrant pupils here whose families are more literate in their own language (like many Jews early in the 20th century, or Asians today) can learn English quickly without bilingual help. But they are unlike children from less literate homes who immigrate without the background in any language that teachers expect of children their age." In other words, Jews and Asians can learn English through immersion, but Hispanics can't because they are from "less literate homes." As for those Hispanic parents who are agitating for their children to be allowed to learn English -- well, in the mind of the Times, they must be illiterate ideological crusaders who would be better off leaving decisions about their children's education in the hands of "educators studying facts." Breathtaking.

A "media memo" in the national section of yesterday's New York Times mocked a cable news channel for talking about the weather forecast in connection with the election. The article ran under the headline "All News, All the Time, Even if There Isn't Any." It began, "With the race so tight and the finish line so near, it was time to consult the map. No, not the Electoral College map. The weather map." The article spoke drily of the map's coloration in "areas where the network's experts in the obscure science of politico-meteorology predicted conditions would 'strongly favor' one candidate or another." And the article sympathetically quoted an anchorman at the network as skeptically calling the whole effort "the ultimate trying to read the tea leaves."

So what should crop up in the lead, front-page presidential election story in this morning's New York Times, just one day after the Times published its "media memo" mocking "politico-meteorology" as an example of "all news, all the time, even if there isn't any"? Sure enough, two paragraphs reporting on the weather.

"In fact, Democratic strategists are deeply concerned about the weather, fearing that rain could suppress turnout in crucial Midwestern states like Michigan and Wisconsin," today's Times article reports. 'The weather will always be a factor in turnout in Democratic neighborhoods,' said Donna Brazile, Mr. Gore's campaign manager and meteorologist for the day. 'There's a Canadian cold front, there's some rain, there's a storm that started in the Pacific, there's a storm that came out of Texas.'"

I.R.S. Envy: In a fulsome ode to Washington published in today's New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman claims, "Indeed, had Mr. Bush actually traveled abroad more than twice he would have discovered that what foreigners envy us most for is precisely: Washington. That is, our institutions, our courts, our bureaucracy, our military, and our regulatory agencies -- the S.E.C., the Federal Reserve, the F.A.A., the F.D.A., the F.B.I, the E.P.A., the I.R.S., the I.N.S., the U.S. Patent Office and the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

Mr. Friedman might consider, for one thing, that "our military" is not based in "Washington," but at the Pentagon, which is in Northern Virginia. But for another thing, what "foreigners" is he talking to? Probably not any who have had personal dealings with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which is one of the most unfriendly and red-tape-laden bureaucracies in the entire federal government. The editor of Smartertimes.com has traveled the world some, though admittedly not as much as Mr. Friedman, and the editor is hard-pressed to remember a conversation with a foreigner in which the foreigner said, "You know, what I really admire and envy most about America is the Federal Emergency Management Agency." If the foreigners Mr. Friedman talks to really say things like this, maybe word hasn't reached them of the fact that the Federal Aviation Administration has failed miserably to prevent massive delays in air traffic; that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's crime lab has been embroiled in a massive scandal; that thousands of Internal Revenue Service employees are tax scofflaws; that the Federal Emergency Management Agency totally botched the rebuilding effort after the big Los Angeles earthquake. An intelligent foreigner would say, "What I really envy most about America is that its founders created a constitutional system of checks and balances designed to limit government so that the people would be free of the tyranny of unduly powerful courts, bureaucrats and regulatory agencies."

The lead editorial in today's New York Times says "Yesterday Senator John McCain estimated that the truly obscene sum of a billion dollars has been spent in this campaign on television ads." The Times finds this "out-of-hand" and says it demonstrates the need for campaign finance reform to put an end to "huge unregulated campaign donations."

But what is "obscene" about political parties and factions spending money to appeal to voters in a democracy? That is what free speech is all about. The Times has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on newsprint and ink for its editorials and news stories praising Al Gore and bashing Ralph Nader and George W. Bush. Why is that spending any less "obscene" than that spent by non-New York Times interest groups attempting to influence voters? Both the Times editorials and the activities of the political parties are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Yet you don't see the Times referring to the "unregulated" press. You see it referring to the free press, which is one of America's great strengths. Somehow, when it comes to non-New York Times free speech, or to donations spent on political commercials, which are free speech, the Times uses the term "unregulated" as opposed to "free," suggesting that there should be some regulation. In fact, donations to political parties are already regulated; they are just not limited. Disclosure is required. Political expenditures by independent groups are unregulated and unlimited, but to regulate or limit such expenditures would be to trample the First Amendment and restrict political speech. Such restrictions would give the editorial page of the Times, which would presumably still be unregulated, even more power than it already has. The New York Times sells about a billion dollars a year worth of advertising for products ranging from perfume to BMWs to luxury condominiums. Is that "obscene"? Why is it obscene for such a sum to be spent on engaging in political discourse rather than on encouraging consumption of consumer goods?

A Threat: Another editorial in today's Times, on the rise of President Chavez of Venezuela, asserts that "the rise of a demagogic leftist leader in Latin America need no longer be considered the threat it was during the cold war." This is almost comical coming from the Times, which, even while the Cold War was raging, never considered any demagogic leftist leaders in Latin America to be threats worth fighting.

Metro Matters: The "Metro Matters" column in today's Times also refers to "the obscene cost of campaigns." But this column manufactures additional nonexistent flaws in the campaign, namely, "the demonization of Muslims" and "the pandering on breast cancer." It's not demonization of Muslims for the press to call Hillary Clinton to account for taking $51,000 from supporters of terrorism. Terrorism is wrong, and the Hamas and Hezbollah groups supported by the Muslims for Mrs. Clinton are enemies of America and of America's ally, Israel. If anything, claiming that such support for terrorism by American Muslims should be overlooked is an example of the soft bigotry of low expectations. What about the Muslims who are courageous enough to condemn terrorism? No one is demonizing them. Then there's the alleged "pandering" on breast cancer. It's not "pandering" to address issues that voters are concerned about. It's democracy. When politicians address issues that the Times is concerned about, like campaign finance "reform" and universal health insurance, the Times doesn't dismiss it as pandering. Why does it qualify as "pandering" if a candidate wants to spend more government money on screening for breast cancer or on research to help find a cure? The column doesn't say. But if the objection is that the attention and proposed spending on breast cancer are disproportionate to attention and spending for other diseases that are more deadly and more common, well, victims of those diseases have every right to form potent political lobbying groups the way that those concerned about breast cancer have.

News Blackout: An article on the front of the business section of today's New York Times considers the plummeting circulation of Sunday newspapers. The article mysteriously omits any reference to the Sunday New York Post, which began in April of 1996 and has grown to a circulation of 365, 276. The Post is omitted even from a chart purporting to show the five newspapers with the largest gains in Sunday circulation. The Sunday New York Post's growth from zero to 365,276 outpaces any of the five newspapers shown in the chart.

In a long editorial today that is directed at undecided voters, the New York Times claims that George W. Bush's "anti-government statements are out of sync with the public." As evidence, the Times cites a poll by the Pew Research Center that found "54 percent of Americans view the federal government favorably and rate it as more trustworthy than pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and health-maintenance organizations." Well, the election's outcome will be a good indicator of whether Mr. Bush's anti-government statements are out of sync with the public. But the idea that some cornball poll about trustworthiness undermines Mr. Bush's positions on the government's role in medicine, energy policy and health care is just flaky. Imagine the poll results that could be gotten if the Pew Research Center asked the following questions: "Do you believe the federal government should set prices for medicine and limit the profits of drug companies, even if that meant the drug companies would be less likely to develop new drugs to cure cancer and other diseases?" "Do you agree with Al Gore's position in his book, Earth in the Balance, that there should be a new federal tax on energy that would make your gasoline costs and electric bill even more expensive?" "Did you agree with Hillary Clinton's 1993 plan to massively expand government control over the health care system, a plan that Al Gore loyally defended at the time but that he now claims he opposed?" Those poll results might give a good indication of whose view of the role of government is more "out of sync with the public," the Bush view or the Times-Gore view.

Unpalatable: An article in the Week in Review section of today's Times says, "It could be that Mr. Bush's talk of 'compassionate conservatism' was merely a way to repackage his genuine conservative beliefs in a more palatable way." More palatable to whom? What's unpalatable about genuine conservatism? The answer is apparently obvious to the editors at the Times, so much so that they just take it for granted that genuine conservatism is unpalatable.

Obesity: The Times weighs in today with another long front-page article in its series on obesity. Today's article buys into the notion that fat persons are the victims of "discrimination," "prejudice" of a sort that should be outlawed. The article quotes, in all seriousness, a physician complaining about people who see weight "as almost like a moral issue -- it's like you are virtuous if you restrain yourself and you're sinful if you give in." The Times essentially lumps this moral view in as "fat discrimination." But an aversion to gluttony and a preference for moderation has long been a part of the Western moral tradition, from Aristotle through Maimonides. It's just strange the way the Times is willing to dismiss this moral view as "fat hatred" and "fat discrimination." The Times treats fat persons with the sort of slack the newspaper rarely displays toward others who can't control their vices, such as, say, cigarette smokers. The Times article complains about "plane seats that are too narrow" for fat persons. Never mind the question of whether it's the plane seats that are too narrow or the persons that are too wide. When was the last time the Times had an editorial or a news story complaining about the horrible "discrimination" and "hatred" that motivated the decision of airlines to ban smoking on most commercial flights? The argument could be made that the situations are different because second-hand smoke imposes costs on non-smoking passengers and on flight attendants. But making larger seats available to obese passengers at the same costs as the regular seats would also impose costs on the other passengers, who would have less space of their own in the plane and would wind up subsidizing the overweight passengers.

Wrong Date: An article about "Why Newspapers Endorse Candidates" that runs in the Week in Review section of today's Times refers to "Michael Gartner, who won a Pulitzer in 1977 for his editorial commentaries in The Daily Tribune of Ames, Iowa." Mr. Gartner's Pulitzer prize for his work in Ames came in 1997.