A story in the national section of today's New York Times about Lynne Cheney reports that she criticized Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman "for appearing at the fund-raising gala that major figures in the entertainment industry sponsored on Thursday night at Radio City Music Hall, where celebrities performed and spoke and a number of crude jokes were told."

"The Democratic ticket collected about $6.5 million at the fund-raiser," the Times reports.

A story in Saturday's Times reported that at the event, John Leguizamo "proceeded to make sexually explicit jokes about public figures."

For a presidential ticket that consists of Joe "the preacher" Lieberman and Al "regulate advertising for violence-and-sex-filled Hollywood movies" Gore, this would seem like a big campaign blunder. For one thing, it reeks of hypocrisy. For another thing, it sounds like it was in poor taste. If Mr. Gore and Mr. Lieberman are elected, can we expect to hear "crude," "sexually explicit" jokes told from the podium at state dinners in the White House East Room?

But the Times has pretty much let the Democrats get away with this. There's no indication in the Times of what the jokes were or of just how crude or sexually explicit or funny they were. There doesn't appear to have been much of an attempt to get Mr. Gore or Mr. Lieberman, or their spokesmen, to state whether they thought the jokes were appropriate or funny. There doesn't seem to be anyone at the Times asking whether anyone in the Democratic fund-raising operation has been disciplined for allowing the crude jokes to be told. Smartertimes.com has nothing against humor, and it is hard to judge what sort of response is merited without knowing exactly what the jokes were.

But the fact that someone can get up at a fund-raiser in front of the Democratic presidential and vice presidential candidates and tell crude, sexually explicit jokes may be just another sign of the way in which the Monica Lewinsky affair has lowered everyone's standards for bad taste. The Times has handled this all so far in a glancing fashion in stories buried inside the newspaper. Somehow we'd bet if this happened at a Republican fund-raiser there'd be more of a big deal made over it.

Health Insurance Costs: The Times runs on its front page today a story under the headline "Frustration Grows With Cost of Health Insurance." The story consists of whining by ordinary folks about increases in health insurance premiums. The Times says the ordinary folks "express puzzlement and anger at the economic forces driving" the premium increases. Well, rather than simply reporting the existence of puzzlement and anger, the Times might have tried to allay it by including some factual information in this story about why insurance premiums are so high. It might, for example, have mentioned the phenomenon of cost-shifting, in which hospitals shift onto paying customers the costs of treating uninsured patients. It might have included a mention of the way that the costs of medical malpractice litigation end up being paid in health insurance premiums. It might have included a mention of the fact that the American health care system is known for the swift implementation of high-technology innovations, regardless of their costs, because patients want the best care possible. It might have included the fact that the state legislatures are driving up premiums by micromanaging the coverage offered and outlawing cost-saving tactics, passing laws banning "drive-by deliveries" that effectively mandate lengthy and costly and often unnecessary hospital stays. The Times has written sensibly about some of these subjects recently, suggesting that there are no easy answers to the problem of controlling health care costs while increasing quality and access to care. But the stories that probed those complexities of policy were buried inside the paper. The one that gets front-page treatment is the one that features whining unalloyed by any understanding of economics or health care policy.

The Week in Review section of the New York Times today devotes an entire article to the subject of breasts. They are getting larger, the Times reports. The article quotes Valerie Steele, chief curator of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, as saying that before long, size won't matter. "We will up the ante. It won't be just size, it will be perkiness or the perfect nipple."

It's this sort of stuff that makes readers think that the Times is no longer the serious paper it was in the days of Carr Van Anda, the legendary Times managing editor, who never would have stood for this frippery. Times have changed, sure, but a discussion of nipple perfection or perkiness or whatever is still the sort of thing a reader would expect to see -- and probably prefer to see -- in Playboy or the New York Post or Cosmopolitan, not the Week in Review section of the Sunday New York Times.

Smith Street Silliness: An article in the Times magazine today bemoans the gentrification of Smith Street in Brooklyn. It describes the pre-gentrification neighborhood as "happily mired in the 1950's. Dotted with members-only social clubs and old men playing cards in front of shuttered storefronts, the area felt untouched by the relentless pace of Manhattan life. That's what persuaded me, and many people like me, to trade in a hip downtown address for space, charm and refuge across the river." The writer doesn't like the fact that there are now good restaurants and bars and stores and coffee shops on the street, and she has moved out of the Smith Street area to a more desolate neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Her perspective is strange. The "shuttered storefronts" may appear "happily" to the writer, but they mean less tax revenue for the city. They breed crime because they reduce sidewalk traffic and create a climate of fear among those who do walk the street. They create no jobs. Restaurants and stores, on the other hand, pay taxes, create jobs, keep eyes on the sidewalk that prevent crime, and are more entertaining for those who live nearby than are "shuttered storefronts." It's just weird to see the Times rooting for "shuttered storefronts" instead of successful private enterprises. Maybe it's another example of the newspaper's patronizing attitude toward Brooklyn. It's unlikely an article calling for the conversion of Times Square or Fifth Avenue into "shuttered storefronts" would get very far very fast at the Times. On the other hand, given the newspaper's hostile attitude toward capitalism in general (except when capitalism manifests itself in the form of violent Hollywood movies or American companies seeking increased trade with Communist China), it might actually not be that surprising to see the Times come out in favor of shuttered storefronts not only in Brooklyn, but nationwide.

Howard Wolfson: There's an adoring article in the Times magazine this morning about a campaign aide to Hillary Clinton, Howard Wolfson. Never mind the fact that Mr. Wolfson apparently has the Times eating so much out of his hand that it did a profile of him in the magazine today in addition to the front-page story this week about his "war room" and another profile of him that ran in the "Public Lives" column of the Times metro section earlier in the campaign. The article is in a special issue of the magazine about people who have moved to New York in the past year. It identifies Mr. Wolfson as moving to New York from Washington, D.C., but it never mentions the fact that he's been basically a New Yorker his whole life, having grown up in the state and having worked in D.C. for members of the New York congressional delegation. The article has the effect of making Mrs. Clinton look like a carpetbagger -- look, honey, even her spokesman just moved to New York. And it has the effect of making Mr. Wolfson look like a greenhorn when in fact he's basically a New Yorker. Mr. Wolfson, who is a shrewd operative, should have been able to spin this one better.

A story in the international section of this morning's New York Times reports that the Clinton administration is "concerned about the political survival" of Israeli Prime Minister Barak, "who, after defections from his slender majority government, confronts the possibility of having to call a new election when the Israeli Parliament returns at the end of October."

Then the Times states, on its own, in this news story, that "Progress in the peace talks would reinforce his claim to stay on as Israel's leader."

This is absurd. It is "progress" in the peace talks, as the Times defines "progress" -- in other words, unilateral Israeli concessions -- that caused the "defections" from Mr. Barak's government that have put it on the brink of collapse. Such "progress" might reinforce Mr. Barak's claim to power in the minds of the New York Times editorial page, its columnist Thomas Friedman, or even Madeleine Albright, but not necessarily in the minds of Israeli political parties or the Israeli voters, who, under Israel's democratic system, are the ones who get to judge a politician's claim to stay on as Israel's leader. More "progress" in the peace talks of the sort we saw at Camp David may well undermine Mr. Barak's claim to stay on as Israel's leader, not reinforce it. At the very least, the effect of such "progress" on Mr. Barak's political fortunes is a matter open to debate, not a settled question to be tossed off unattributed in the middle of a news article.

Hillary and Lieberman: A story in the metro section of today's New York Times claims that today, Hillary Clinton "plans her first joint campaign appearance with Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut." It's this sort of thing that makes a person whether the editors and reporters at the Times ever read their own newspaper. On December 15, 1999, with Mrs. Clinton's campaign already well underway, the Times reported that Mrs. Clinton met in New York the day before with Orthodox Jewish leaders. It was certainly a campaign appearance. And, as the Times itself reported December 15, "The first lady was accompanied to the meeting by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut." Today's event may be Mrs. Clinton's first appearance with Mr. Lieberman in New York since Mr. Lieberman was chosen to run for vice president, but it is not her first joint campaign appearance with him.

Hillary Clinton made the following accusation against Rep. Rick Lazio last night in their debate, according to an excerpt in the Times: "He voted to cut $270 billion from Medicare."

This is just totally misleading, and the New York Times lets Mrs. Clinton get away with it entirely unchallenged. When President Clinton and the congressional Democrats tried to pull this stunt back in 1995, the Washington Post wrote an editorial stating that the Democrats "have shamelessly used the issue, demagogued on it."

A news story in the New York Times about the issue on September 27, 1996, reported that "Democrats would reduce growth by $124 billion over seven years by cutting reimbursements to doctors and hospitals and using managed care programs; Republicans would scale back by $158 billion and increase premiums and co-payments." If Mrs. Clinton really thinks a reduction in growth is a "cut," even when it means that spending is increasing in absolute terms, she should be attacking her husband for proposing to "cut" $124 billion from Medicare.

Medicare spending skyrocketed to $177 billion in 1996 from $53 billion in 1983, according to a 1996 article in Reason magazine. The Republican proposed "cuts" actually were a 40% increase over current levels of Medicare spending. The Democratic willingness to attack the Republicans for "cuts," when what the Republicans wanted to do was take Medicare spending from $4,800 per recipient in 1995 to $6,700 per recipient in 2002, was so breathtaking that CNN's Wolf Blitzer even asked President Clinton about it at a 1996 press conference: "Mr. President, your most recent Clinton-Gore campaign commercials still speak about Republican cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. Speaker Gingrich points out repeatedly that these aren't 'cuts' in Medicare and Medicaid; they are simply cuts in the projected growth of Medicare and Medicaid, which you in your own seven-year balanced budget proposal similarly propose. Are you prepared to stop calling the Republican savings in Medicare and Medicaid 'cuts'?"

The answer, apparently, was that not only was Mr. Clinton unwilling to stop the Mediscare demagoguery, but that Mrs. Clinton would eventually stoop to the tactic herself in an effort to get elected to the Senate from New York.

While ignoring the Medicare demagoguery, the front-page Times story on the debate does manage to refer to Mr. Lazio as having "voted with Republicans in shutting down the government in 1994." The government shut-down was in 1995.

Times Tower: A story inside the metro section of today's Times reports on possible designs for the new Times headquarters tower near Times Square. But the article strangely omits any reference to the negotiations with the city and state over the Times company's demand for a huge tax break on the tower. We use the word "huge" advisedly; in a news story today, the Times refers to George W. Bush's proposed tax cut as "large" and "huge." The Times story tries to make the Bush tax cut seem large by describing it as a $1.3 trillion tax cut, which is its approximate cost over ten years. The article manages not to mention the projected federal surplus over ten years; it only discusses a much smaller surplus, a $268 billion one-year surplus. In fact, Mr. Bush's tax cut plan is not "large" or "huge" but relatively modest when compared with the ten year surplus or with other Republican plans such as that of Steve Forbes, or even when compared with the tax break the Times is seeking for its own tower.

The New York Times metro section today runs on its front page a remarkably naive dispatch under the headline "Family Needs Far Exceed The Official Poverty Line." The story appears to be based almost entirely on a report by something called the "Women's Center for Education and Career Advancement," and it makes the claim that "getting by" or "meeting bare bones needs" in New York City costs far more than the federal poverty line. In Queens, the report claims, an adult raising two children needs $46,836 a year to just get by or meet "bare bones needs." In southern Manhattan, "the same family would need $74,232, without budgeting a dime for a movie or a restaurant meal."

This is all reminiscent of the Times' Sunday story about that $90,000-a-year family that was having trouble "making ends meet" -- that is, affording a big-screen television. But today's dispatch is even more silly, if such a thing is possible. First off, New York is expensive, but it's just hard to credit the claim that you can't afford to live here on less that $74,232, or that anyone making $74,232 and living in Manhattan has gone the entire year without either going to a movie or consuming a restaurant meal. (Note, by the way, the preciseness. It's not $75,000, but $74,232. This is a classic technique used by professional study-writers to lend credibility to these sorts of cornball studies.)

The claims start to break down when you examine some of the specific cases. The first sob story cited by the Times is that of Carol Williams. She is supposed to be a sympathetic figure, an administrative assistant earning $24,000 a year, with three children "squeezed into a one-bedroom, $600-a-month apartment in the Bronx." She is "broke," the Times tells us, "scrambling to buy food," and there is "nothing wrong with her budgeting skills." But wait a minute. The Times glosses lightly over Ms. Williams' "car payments" and "car insurance." For all the talk of "bare bones" budgets and skipping movies and restaurant meals, the first poor-family sob story the Times can muster is living in a city with one of the most well-developed public transportation systems in the world and has her own car. We're supposed to feel bad for this woman? The Times doesn't tell us what kind of car she drives, but we can only imagine. (Later in the story, we learn that the car is "needed" to get to a job in Westchester, and that the down payment on it was covered by a "tax refund.")

The next sob story the Times trots out is Robbin Davis. She "often helps feed her family by bringing in leftovers from the lunches she prepares for the elderly for $7 an hour at a settlement house." She is "still trying to work her way off welfare." She lives in a public housing apartment and she gets food stamps. Yet if you look carefully at the photograph of Ms. Davis on the front of the metro section, you can discern in the background what looks to be a microwave oven and a washing machine.

The Times story reads like a press release for the Women's Center, which helps women get jobs, apparently by first getting them "unpaid internships" at PaineWebber. Sounds like PaineWebber is getting a pretty good deal on free labor thanks to this Women's Center.

It just so happens that the editor of Smartertimes.com lives in New York City and doesn't own a car or a washing machine or a microwave. It wouldn't bother us one bit if Ms. Davis or Ms. Williams wanted to take their own money and spend it on Cadillacs or microwaves or washing machines or even, perish the thought, those items defined by the Times and the Women's Center as luxuries, "a movie or a restaurant meal." What is bothersome, though, is that the money we earn and that we would otherwise would be able to keep and spend ourselves on a car or fancy appliances is instead being paid in taxes to the government. Those taxes then end up subsidizing the lifestyles of people like Ms. Williams and Ms. Davis. And this is after we've supposedly reformed the welfare system.

Typically, the Times story quotes the executive director of the Women's Center and the supposedly poor women, but it includes not a single quote from a conservative expert on welfare, work or poverty or even from a government official who has been supportive of welfare reform. And left unsaid is the reason for conducting a study showing that it costs $74,232 to live in Manhattan for a year without eating out or watching a movie. The study will be used as a tool to lobby for the expansion of welfare programs and for increases in minimum wages, both of which would probably have the long-run effect of increasing poverty and dependence.

In a wonderful editorial today titled "Unworthy Pandering by Mr. Gore," the New York Times criticizes Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman for suggesting more government regulation of music, movies, television shows and video games that promote sex and violence. The Times says that "advocating new legal restrictions on commercial speech is a dangerous assault on civil liberties and the Constitution." The editorial concludes by saying, "An unwarranted expansion of federal regulatory power over advertising content is not the solution."

Great. They finally get it. So, is the Times now going to renounce its editorial support for restrictions on tobacco advertising? Or, is it going to cease its advocacy of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" bill and of other bills that would impose disclosure requirements on issue-advocacy groups that run television commercials in a designated period before an election? The Times' editorial today puts the newspaper in the absurdly contorted position of opposing any additional regulation on ads for violent or vulgar movies and video games as "a dangerous assault on civil liberties," but favoring new legal restrictions on political speech, which is the very sort of speech that the Founders had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment.

This may be just knee-jerk liberalism at work: defend Hollywood, support campaign-finance reform, oppose tobacco. It's probably just a coincidence that the Times arts section is fat with ads for movies, and that campaign finance reform, by restricting political TV commercials while leaving the Times' news columns and editorials unfettered, would have the effect of sharply increasing the value of the Times and other newspaper companies.

Congestion Pricing: An article in the metro section of today's Times declares that the New Jersey Turnpike will become "the nation's first major highway to use so-called variable pricing. The system that rewards drivers who avoid rush hour by charging them lower tolls."

Leave aside the sentence fragment. A June 24 article in the Economist, which runs under the headline "Tolled You So," reports that there are already variable-pricing schemes at work on two major highways in California, one in Texas and another in Florida. The Economist reports that SR-91 in Orange County. Calif. "allows drivers to pay an amount that depends on the time of day to jump into an HOV lane." The Economist also reports that on Interstate 15 north of San Diego, the toll in a special lane varies from 50 cents to four dollars, "depending on the volume of traffic." There may be some narrow semantic point by which the New Jersey system will qualify as the first of its kind in the nation, but it is not the nation's first major highway to use variable pricing.

Dropping even the pretense of objectivity, the Times runs a top-of-the-front-page news article today asking of George W. Bush "To what degree is he his own man?" and answering, "almost everything he achieved, he did in part because of his name and family connections." Lower down in the article, there is a discussion of the fact that "with regard to the use of a condom," President Bush never told his son "to wear a 'raincoat' or anything."

This is all consistent with the Times' usual practice in political coverage. First, there is the focus on personal details at the expense of policy and substance. Second, there is the tendency to hold Republicans to a more stringent standard than Democrats. So, for instance, Richard Cheney's ties to the Halliburton Corporation are flogged endlessly, while Al Gore's ties to Occidental Petroleum are virtually ignored. And George W. Bush's relationship with his famous father is probed extensively, while Mr. Gore's ties to Mr. Gore's own famous father, who was a senator from Tennessee, are virtually ignored.

Not only is the Times eager to psychoanalyze George W. Bush, but Mr. Bush gets criticized for not being eager to jump on the couch and play along. "Friends and family members say the entire Bush family is exceptionally averse to introspection, in part because of an ingrained notion that excessive reflection is wimpish and also because of a fear that journalists will pounce on any self-searching and exaggerate any vulnerabilities it reveals."

Apparently, any candidate who refuses to do what Mr. Gore has done -- that is, to bare the details of his wife's clinical depression and his own need for therapy after his son was hit by a car -- is now going to be mocked for having an "exceptional" aversion to introspection. A more judicious view would be that Mr. Gore has an exceptional affinity for introspection -- a quality that, hard as it may be for the Times to believe, may not be exactly at the very top of the list of traits Americans are looking for in a presidential candidate.

And anyway, it's not George W.'s fault that his father was president of America. George W. had no choice in the matter. What did the Times want him to do, run away from home and disown his parents? If the Times editors are looking for some perspective on George W. Bush and this question of whether "almost everything he achieved, he did in part because of his name and family connections," they might check in with their own publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.

A New Industry Targeted: Al Gore has already made his presidential campaign an effort to bash big oil, the pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and tobacco companies. Apparently buoyed by his success with that strategy, Mr. Gore today adds film, television, music and video-game companies to the list. The Times reports this on its front page under the headline "Gore Takes Tough Stand on Violent Entertainment." Is there any sector of America's capitalist economy that Mr. Gore thinks is working properly and that he does not think is in need of additional federal regulation? (Clearly, the high-tech sector doesn't qualify, given the Clinton-Gore Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft.)

Appeasement Watch: In an editorial today, the Times asserts that "President Clinton was right to shake the hand of President Fidel Castro of Cuba when they met at the United Nations last week. Mrs. Clinton made the correct protocol judgment not to have a public confrontation with Suha Arafat during a trip to Israel last year." Unanswered is the question: Is there any dictator so blood-soaked, any accusation so abhorrent and false, that it would justify in the view of the Times a refused handshake or a public confrontation that breached protocol?

An article in the New York Times magazine today reports that "In the last year or so a very different Hillary has come into focus. . . instead of those dowdy Easter Sunday pastels, she favors a much more slimming palette of browns and blacks." The facts don't seem to bear this out. On May 16, when Mrs. Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination in the Senate race at the state Democratic convention in Albany, she was wearing a "yellow pantsuit," according to the New York Daily News. On June 17, when she visited the Roosevelt estate at Hyde Park, she wore a "pale peach pantsuit," according to Newsday. On July 4, when Mrs. Clinton reviewed the tall ships in New York Harbor, she wore a "peach pantsuit," according to the Daily News. And the New York Times itself reported last week that when Mrs. Clinton marched through Crown Heights on September 4 in the West Indian parade, she was wearing a "lemon yellow pantsuit." Smartertimes.com is going to be casting its vote in November based on policy differences between the candidates, not fashion choices. But if the Times is going to make a big deal about what powerful women are wearing, it at least ought to get the facts straight.

Vacation in Lovely Syria: The "Sophisticated Traveler" supplement to the New York Times magazine today carries an article suggesting Syria as a vacation destination. "It occurred to me that during the whole of our tour I had not met a Syrian I disliked. It was certain I would return," the article says. Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that Syria is a dictatorship that is on the U.S. State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism. Nowhere is it mentioned that, according to the U.S. State Department, "Entry to Syria is not granted to persons with passports bearing an Israeli visa or entry/exit stamps, or to persons born in the Gaza region or of Gazan descent. . . . American citizens are cautioned that the Syrian government rigidly enforces restrictions on prior travel to Israel. Travelers with Israeli stamps in their passports, Jordanian entry cachets or cachets from other countries which suggest prior travel to Israel, or the absence of any entry stamps from a country adjacent to Israel which the traveler has just visited, will cause Syrian immigration authorities to refuse the traveler admission to Syria. In one case in 1998, a group of American citizen travelers suspected of traveling to Israel were detained overnight for questioning." Of course, this is unlikely to be an issue for the "Sophisticated Traveler" the editors of the Times have in mind. After all, why would they have ever visited Israel when such alluring destinations as Syria beckon?

In Syria, the article reports in all apparent seriousness, you can visit a "relaxing environment" such as Hama. The Times article describes the town as "graceful," "peaceful," "prosperous" and "overwhelmingly friendly," brushing lightly over the fact that tens of thousands of civilians were brutally massacred there in 1982 by Hafez al-Assad's regime. These kinds of peaceful relaxing environments, we'd be better off without.

Naturally, the map that accompanies the Syria travel article apparently portrays the Golan Heights as part of Syria, when in fact the heights are now under Israeli control.

Making Ends Meet: The Times today runs on the top of its front page an article about what it claims is "a central fact of American life," that "most of the nation's 72 million families feel they cannot make ends meet." This article consists of extended handwringing by members of families earning $90,000 and $62,000 a year about how they have to work long hours and can't afford everything they want to buy. But as the Times article itself admits, "No one argues that middle income families cannot put food on the table, pay the mortgage, own a car or two, take a modest vacation. What stresses them, sociologists and economists say, are the other outlays of middle-class life: new clothes, child care, lessons for the children, restaurants, movies, home decoration, computers, big-screen television sets, stereo systems, Christmas gifts, and saving for college and retirement."

Aha. At last, a national issue worthy of taking center stage in a presidential campaign and prominent Sunday display in the New York Times: The $90,000-a-year family that can't afford a big-screen television set and a stereo system. Or that can afford it but finds paying for it creates "stress." The next thing you know, Al Gore and the Times editorial page will be proposing a targeted, phased-in tax break for families who earn between $88,000 and $92,000 a year and spend at least $2,000 on home electronics.

If "most of the nation's 72 million families feel they cannot make ends meet," as the Times claims, someone should let them know that there is a difference between not being able to make ends meet and not being able to buy everything you want without having to work hard.

The New York Times is no doubt pleased with itself for managing to get into its late New York editions a front-page report of a speech by Fidel Castro at the Riverside Church in Manhattan. The speech began at 10 p.m., which is late for the Times's deadline. What's disappointing is that the news report of the speech reads like it came from Pravda during the darkest days of the Soviet Communist regime. The article is straight stenography of the views of the Cuban Communist dictator and his supporters, without a word of dissent from the free Cuban community or Castro's critics in the American Congress, and without a single reference to the horrible human rights abuses of the Cuban regime. Without, in other words, any intelligent context. It is a sickening dispatch.

Understating Religiosity: An opinion piece in today's Times purporting to discuss how religion thrives in America in fact sharply understates the extent to which it is doing so. The Times article says "Polls have shown that a remarkable 40 percent of Americans claim to worship in various churches, synagogues and mosques." That's the number of Americans who claim they went to religious services the weekend before they were polled. But it understates the extent of religious participation. A 1994 USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, for example, found that 70 percent of Americans belonged to a church or synagogue and that 66 percent attended services at least once a month.

A Miss on Moynihan: The "Arts & Ideas" section of the Times publishes in all apparent seriousness a story this morning on the alleged debate over whether Daniel Patrick Moynihan is "a flawed social scientist, even a lightweight." The article attempts to be evenhanded, quoting Mr. Moynihan's defenders such as James Q. Wilson and William Julius Wilson and also his critics such as Frances Fox Piven and the Nation magazine. But the very premise of the article -- that there is still a quarrel over this among any serious people -- is mistaken. This debate was settled a long time ago in favor of the view that Mr. Moynihan is a giant. In scholarly prestige and accomplishment, the two Wilsons far exceed Ms. Piven and the Nation. Today's Times article lets Ms. Piven get away with attacking Mr. Moynihan for his political involvement without disclosing Ms. Piven's own political involvement -- she has spoken at conferences organized by far-left socialist groups and is a backer of the campaign to free convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Misspelled Name: An article in the national section of this morning's Times quotes a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission. The Times renders the man's name as "Ian Sturton." In fact, his name is spelled "Stirton."

Misspelled Name: An article in the metro section of this morning's Times about the "portly plutocrat" Saul Steinberg spells his company's name two different ways. The company is first referred to as "Leaseco," but the second reference is to "Leasco."

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes his column today in the format of an imaginary conversation between Saddam Hussein and the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Discussing the American presidential campaign, Mr. Chavez is said to say, in a sentence that appears to reflect Mr. Friedman's thinking: "If either of these candidates was a real leader he would be telling Americans that they actually need to push energy conservation immediately, by raising gas taxes and aggressively reducing their dependence on us."

Well, for one thing, as a Spanish speaker, Mr. Chavez would understand the subjunctive tense and would have said, "If either of these candidates were a real leader. . . ." More substantively, though, what a bundle of contradictions there is here, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Friedman is writing in his own column and not in one of the newspaper's editorials. For one thing, the Times has been bemoaning the fact that a flawed transition to deregulation has caused some spikes in energy prices in California. You don't see those articles praising the higher prices for encouraging conservation and a reduction in dependence on foreign oil. Is the principle here that the Times likes higher energy prices only if they are the result of taxes and not the result of deregulation? For another thing, the Times has opposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off other stretches of pristine coastline. If reducing dependence on foreign oil is as important as Mr. Friedman suggests, why the opposition to developing domestic sources? For another thing, the lead editorial in today's Times judges Al Gore's economic plan by how it helps "families most in need." The gas tax Mr. Friedman proposes would presumably affect the poor as much, if not more than, the rich -- as a percentage of income, a ten-cent-a-gallon gas tax hurts a commuter earning $25,000 a year more than it would hurt a million-dollar-a-year investment banker.

Maybe Mr. Friedman's next column will propose a system in which drivers would enter their social security numbers at the gasoline pump and then automatically would be charged a sliding tax based on their annual income and whether the gas they would be using came from America or from overseas. If the gas came from America, the tax would be higher if the gas came from an area that the Times previously regarded as a pristine environmental jewel.

Gore's Gas: While we are constructing the Times's ideal energy tax, we could also insert a discount for energy that comes from Occidental Petroleum, the company that is the source of a hefty chunk of Al Gore's family fortune. An article on page one of today's Times about George W. Bush's campaign lets a Gore spokesman get away with attacking Mr. Bush for his ties to "the big oil industry" without mentioning the Gore stake in Oxy Pete.

Here's a way to make sure no one reads past the first sentence of a news story. Start it with the following sentence: "The opening salvos were predictable."

Yawn.

If it's predictable, why bother reading any further?

Well, Smartertimes.com soldiered on, and 14 paragraphs into an otherwise mind-numbing story in this morning's New York Times about the opening of contract talks between the New York City teachers' union and the Board of Education, we found a fascinating piece of news: The teachers' union wants relief from the onerous work rules that the union itself bargained for in its previous contracts.

The New York Post, appropriately sensitive to the irony and man-bites-dog newsworthiness of this union proposal, made this its front-page headline this morning in screaming tabloid type. It interpreted the union proposal as asking for what essentially would be union-run charter schools. Since one of the main points in favor of charter schools is that they supposedly allow schools to escape from the unionized regimentation and bureaucracy of the Board of Education, the fact even the teachers' union is so enthusiastic about them is a big deal.

The Times, however, finds it predictable, which is, well, predictable.

Yeshiva and Gays: Another fascinating story buried deep in the metro section of the Times is that the state attorney general of New York is joining a lawsuit against an Orthodox Jewish university, Yeshiva University, for refusing to allow a lesbian couple access to married student housing. Since the state of New York doesn't recognize gay or lesbian marriages, and since two courts have already ruled against the lesbian couple, it's hard to fathom the legal theory under which the state attorney general is operating. Orthodox Judaism doesn't recognize gay marriages, either. The state attorney general's attempt to force Yeshiva University to do so is just one step on a course that would logically lead to the state forcing the Catholic Church to ordain women as priests and forcing Yeshiva University to serve pork in its cafeteria. The Times relegates this news item about the attorney general and Yeshiva University to a single paragraph, an un-bylined brief.

Instead: So, if the Times's editors don't find the Yeshiva University lesbian housing issue and the teachers' union's rebellion against its own work rules worthy of prominent display in today's paper, what are they choosing to emphasize instead? Well, there's a substantial dispatch on the fact that Robert Kennedy Jr. is endorsing Hillary Clinton for U.S. Senate. Hello? A Kennedy endorsing a Democrat in a Senate race qualifies as news? Talk about predictable. The story that gets the most space in the metro section this morning, though, is about some Belgian princess who is arriving in New York for a visit on -- get ready -- Saturday. The Times breathlessly reports that the princess is "a friendly, radiant 27-year-old" who "resembles the model Claudia Schiffer." Well, we're sure the sober folks at the Times consider the New York Post to be the un-serious, sex-obsessed tabloid newspaper in this city, but they might ask themselves this question: Which newspaper led with a substantive education policy story this morning, and which one gave the massive display to a story about the impending visit of a princess whose main news appeal seems to be that she "resembles the model Claudia Schiffer"?

(For the record, we're not saying the New York Post is without its flaws. And, in the interest of disclosure, we should also note that the Post has agreed to pay Smartertimes.com a one-time nominal fee in exchange for the right to reprint an excerpt from a recent edition of Smartertimes.com on the opinion page of its September 6 paper.)

A dispatch in the international section of today's New York Times about the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs contains the following sentence: "Mr. Arafat, the experts say, has been putting forth the compromise position of United Nations resolutions that call for Israeli withdrawal from all territory occupied in the 1967 war -- which includes all of East Jerusalem."

In fairness to Israel, the Times might have pointed out that the operative U.N. resolution and the one to which Mr. Arafat is apparently referring, U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, explicitly does not refer to "all territory." The key sentence in 242 speaks of "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict."

That small three-letter word "all" may seem like a minor point, but it has a long history, as anyone who knows anything about the Arab-Israeli conflict would understand. As the book "Myths and Facts" recounts, when Resolution 242 was being debated, the Soviet Union's delegate at the U.N. and the Arab delegates wanted the key clause to say "all the territories." As the book records, the American ambassador to the U.N. at the time, Arthur Goldberg, explained, "The notable omissions -- which were not accidental -- in regard to withdrawal are the words 'the' and 'all' . . . the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal."

Now, 33 years later, after Israel, the British and the Americans won a hard-fought diplomatic victory to get this language, Mr. Arafat and the Times are collaborating to obscure this point.

Women's Figures: The Times today carries in its national section a story about Al Gore's economic plan. The Times article includes the following sentence: "Women now earn 73 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to the Council of Economic Advisers."

This is both wrong and false.

It's wrong because, as the Independent Women's Forum has exhaustively shown, that statistic is based on "a crude comparison arrived at by simplistically comparing women's average wages (without regard to age, education, experience, full- or part-time status, or even type of job) to the average wages of men." The IWF cites data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth showing that "among people ages 27-33 who have never had a child, women earn 98 cents on the male dollar." Now, two cents on the dollar is not nothing, but it isn't the 27 cents cited by the Times, either.

But even on the most plain, non-ideological, simple, basic, level, the sentence in the Times is false. The Times cites the Council of Economic Advisers for the 73 cent statistic. Yet a June 1998 report by the Council of Economic Advisers on "Explaining Trends in the Gender Wage Gap" states plainly "The gender pay ratio is on the rise again, surpassing 75 percent in 1997." If the Council stated in 1998 that women had passed the 75 cent mark and were rising, how is the Times today claiming that "now" women are earning 73 cents on the dollar?

Monument to Tyranny: Citing speeches at the U.N. by Fidel Castro and Nikita Krushchev, the Times declares in an editorial today that the United Nations "is as much a monument to New York's heritage as Ellis Island is." No. Ellis Island is a symbol of the journey to freedom from tyranny. The United Nations is the place where dictators go to bloviate and criticize Israel, and where international bureaucrats waste American taxpayer money. The Times just doesn't understand the distinction.

Cheney's Generosity: Today's Times carries a story on Richard Cheney's charitable giving, which the Times seems to consider unduly paltry. While the article compares Mr. Cheney's giving to that of "average taxpayers," one whose giving level isn't mentioned in the story is Al Gore, who earned $197,729 in 1997 and gave a whopping $353 of it to charity, according to news reports about his tax return.

'Issues' vs. Character: The Times today prints an analysis of a new Democratic television ad attacking George W. Bush's record on children's health care in Texas. The analysis draws a distinction between the Democratic ad, which it says takes on Mr. Bush "on the issues," and a recent Republican ad featuring Mr. Gore and the Buddhist monks, which the analysis claims "takes a swipe at Mr. Gore's character." This is a false distinction. Mr. Gore's character -- and his raising money from straw donors who were foreign nationals organized by a woman that a Congressional committee found had been an agent of Red China -- is an issue.

Families USA: The executive director of Families USA is quoted in each of the front-page stories in today's Times on George W. Bush's Medicare plan. The organization is described once as "a consumer advocacy group," and a second time as "a nonpartisan, nonprofit group for health care consumers." Families USA is a nonpartisan consumer advocacy group about as much as the National Rife Association is a nonpartisan consumer advocacy group; in other words, it may well be, but that description alone doesn't tell you very much useful. One thing that might be useful would be finding out how much of the group's funding comes from the AFL-CIO and its affiliate unions, which have endorsed Al Gore and have long been advocates of increased government spending on health care.

'Anglos': A news story in the national section of today's Times reports from Miami that "many people here, especially blacks and Anglos," said they felt pushed aside by the city's mayor. What is an "Anglo"? Permissive dictionaries record that the word is used in the Southwestern U.S. to refer to a white person of non-Mexican descent. But, given the reference to England or Anglo-Saxons, it seems a strange term for use to describe all non-Hispanic whites in Miami, who presumably include plenty of Jews and Italians who don't trace their ancestry back to Anglo-Saxons.

Racial Beating Buried: The Times today reports a Staten Island hate crime in which six teens were assaulted and robbed by 10 others shouting racist epithets. In this case, it was blacks assaulting whites, and the news of the crime is buried in a tiny, un-bylined story inside the metro section. The Times devotes more space today to a recipe for "grilled shrimp with ginger shrub" than it does to the brutal, racist beating of the Staten Island youths. It's hard to believe that a crime like this committed by whites against blacks would have gotten the same restrained treatment in the Times. Then again, we haven't yet seen the Rev. Al Sharpton calling a press conference to inflame the situation.

Under a six-column headline, the New York Times leads its national section today with an alarmist story about how "Urban Sprawl Threatens the Solitude and Fragile Lands of Georgia's State Parks." Upon further examination, it becomes clear that the article is not about parks at all, but about development, which the Times implacably opposes. The article today comes complete with a chart titled "A Closer Look -- Parks in Trouble," listing about 60,000 acres of parkland in ten states that are "threatened."

What, exactly, is the threat to these parks?

Well, in the sixth paragraph, the Times gets around to telling us: "The parks said to be in jeopardy, in states including Nevada, Florida and Ohio, are not themselves at risk of disappearing. Rather, they are ringed, or soon will be, by buildings, rushing traffic and neighbors who may consider fragile areas extensions of their backyards."

"The solitude you expect in a park is now being lost to high-rises," whines the president of an outfit called the "National Park Trust."

Hello? Two of the finest parks in the entire world -- Central Park and Prospect Park -- are situated right in the Times's own supposed hometown of New York City. They have survived quite nicely being ringed by rushing traffic and high-rise buildings, thank you, and they are even known to provide moments of solitude to those who know the right spots and times to frequent them.

Sexists: In an editorial today on "Technology's Gender Gap," the Times bemoans the lack of women in the technology sector and calls for policy reforms to encourage women to enter the world of high technology. But the editorial evinces sexist stereotypes of the sort that the Times would ordinarily bemoan. The Times states "Most computer games are male-oriented." What does that mean? That the games are mostly about war, auto-racing and hockey? Does the Times consider women unfit for such activities? What, in the view of the Times editorialists, would constitute a "female-oriented" computer game? One that featured cookie-baking and dress-making?

The Clymer Affair: The Times today handles in a pretty sober way the incident in which George W. Bush was overheard on an open microphone describing a Times reporter as a "major league" sphincter ani. (The governor used a more earthy term not fit for repeating in a family newspaper.) For what it's worth, the view here is that Mr. Bush might have used more dignified language, and he picked the wrong target in Adam Clymer. Mr. Clymer, who I know casually from serving with him on the Graduate Board of the Harvard Crimson newspaper, is actually a nice enough guy on a personal level, and at any rate, ultimately, it's a newspaper's proprietors, not its reporters, who are responsible for what is printed. But Mr. Bush is right to be upset with the Times's coverage of the presidential campaign, which, as Smartertimes.com has been pointing out over the past few months, has been slanted and error-ridden.

Out of Control on Gun Control: The Times manages to write an entire lengthy lead editorial today about gun control without a single reference to the Second Amendment of the Constitution. The Times is refreshingly forthright about its goal: "In an ideal world, a central agency would oversee the manufacture and distribution of guns in the way that government regulates other potentially hazardous products, like drugs and pesticides." The problem is, just about any product is "potentially hazardous" -- tires, glue, scissors, silverware, fertilizer. The Times's ideal world is what we used to call a state-controlled economy.

Lieberman Loses It: One of the problems with staying up all night is that it affects a person's brain the next day. So, descending into self-parody during a 28-hour campaign swing, Senator Joseph Lieberman is quoted in this morning's New York Times making the following remark: "If the labor movement were a religion -- and, in some ways, it is -- Flint, Mich., would be a holy city."

Two N's, Two T's: A front-page Times story on the agenda in Congress misspells the name of the director of congressional relations at the Heritage Foundation, Marshall Wittmann. The Times renders it "Wittman." Of course, Heritage is identified as a "conservative" organization, while the Times hardly ever identifies the Brookings Institution as "liberal" or "appeasement-oriented."

If there were any doubt that the New York Times got the message from Al Gore's acceptance-speech attack on the HMOs, check out the news story on the front of the metro section of this morning's Times. The story runs under the headline "An Achiever's Unraveling," with the subheadline, "Fall of Doctor Accused of Killing Her Parents." The article tells the story of a woman with manic depression who lost $250,000 in an attempt to start a hotel on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. The woman has been divorced twice and was arrested once for showing up at a "go-go bar" in New Jersey in a "go-go outfit" and attempting to perform a "birthday dance on the bar for her husband." Her husband's birthday had been four months before and he wasn't at the bar.

So, who is to blame for this woman's apparent murder of her own parents, aged 92 and 86? (The woman's lawyers say they are preparing a defense "based on her questionable mental state," the Times reports.) Well, naturally, it is the fault of the HMOs.

In fact, in today's Times story, before we hear about the failed hotel, before we hear about the manic depression, before we hear about the go-go bar episode or the second divorce, we learn that "like so many doctors, she grew disenchanted with the direction of medicine under the penny-conscious strictures of managed care."

Her second husband is quoted in the article as saying that the accused murderer "felt a whole lot of people were involved in medical decisions who shouldn't be. Instead of providing care to people, she was dancing to some of the tunes that insurers and whatnot played."

Well, if the alternative is to leave the medical decisions entirely in the hands of accused murderers, there may be something to be said for getting the HMOs involved.

Gore Operative Identified: An article in the national section of today's Times identifies Michael O'Hanlon as "a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington who has informally consulted for the Gore campaign." That's an improvement over the August 31 issue of the Times, where Mr. O'Hanlon was quoted on the front page criticizing Richard Cheney and was identified only as "a defense policy specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington." Now they tell us he's a Gore operative.

The lead editorial in this morning's New York Times offers a stunning account of Al Gore's adventures at the Buddhist temple. Here's how the Times editorial handles it: "The vice president's implausible denials that he was aware that this was a fund-raising event are, of course, fair game as an issue. But Mr. Gore is right to remind Americans that he favors campaign finance reform and Mr. Bush does not. There may be no similarly awkward pictures of the governor meeting with donors, but Mr. Bush has been a prodigious fund-raiser from special interests this year . . ."

For the Times to draw a parallel between George W. Bush's legal fund-raising and Al Gore's Buddhist temple fiasco is just breathtaking. At the Buddhist temple event, a non-profit organization illegally funneled at least $65,000 to the DNC through straw donors -- the monks -- who were reimbursed with temple funds for their political contributions . Two of the "donors" were foreign nationals, and the event was orchestrated by a woman, Maria Hsia, who a Senate committee found has acted as an agent of the Chinese communist government and who has since been convicted of felonies stemming from the fundraising scandal. As detailed in a report of the Senate committee on governmental affairs, the Buddhist temple activity "clearly violated federal election laws barring political contributions made through 'straw donors' and meets the legal definition of a 'criminal conspiracy.'" In addition, federal law, 2 U.S.C. Sec. 441e(1), prohibits foreign nationals from contributing to American political campaigns. What the Buddhist temple event was about was not simply "awkward pictures" and the definition of a fund-raiser, but serious violations of federal law. There is no evidence that Mr. Bush has engaged in this sort of behavior. And there is no reason to believe that Mr. Gore and his campaign would pay any more attention to the rules after the passage of campaign finance "reform." If Mr. Gore's campaign didn't obey the existing laws the last time around, why should we trust him to write new laws or to obey them once they are passed?

Estate Tax Pinch: There's some rich language in an article in the Times magazine today by a writer explaining why he opposes repealing the estate tax, also known as the inheritance tax or the death tax. "The inheritability of great wealth is a scandal," the article says. "What freedom-loving American wants to serve a parent for the decades it will take the old coot to retire?" Elsewhere in the magazine, an article decries the "corruption" of "nepotism."

Well, since the newspaper published by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. is apparently unwilling to defend the publisher's own financial or family interests, we guess it falls to us to put a word in against the estate tax and on behalf of all those families that would like to hand their businesses down from one generation to the next. We could mention that, according to the Tax Foundation, the estate tax hurts New York particularly hard: New York has 6.7 percent of the nation's population but is expected to generate 12.4 percent of the total federal estate tax receipts this year. New York generates more federal estate tax revenue -- $3.79 billion estimated in 2000 -- than New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts combined. Per capita, the federal estate tax in New York is $209. The national per capita average is just $111.

Of course, the Sulzbergers are rich enough and clever enough to have hired rafts of lawyers and accountants and estate planners to set up trusts and classes of preferred shares so that they haven't had to sell the family business to cover the estate tax. Not all small-businessmen or family farmers are so lucky. But the Times apparently would consider it a "scandal" if the estate tax were repealed and those less august families were allowed to pass their companies along to future generations in the way that the Times company has been passed along.

Income Inequality: One of the favorite issues of the socialists over at the Times is "income inequality." We get clobbered with the issue at least twice in today's paper. First, in the book review section, a reviewer writes that if America had developed a strong socialist party, "We might not have levels of income inequality and relative poverty that are almost triple those of other rich nations." Then, in the week in review section, an article attempts to stoke concerns about "the nation's growing income gap," marshaling "daunting" statistics. The article says that "Last year, it took 100 million of the lowest earning Americans to equal the after-tax earnings of the top 1 percent. In 1977, it only took 49 million of the lowest earners to equal the top 1 percent." The article continues: "Another politically embarrassing nugget: the bottom four-fifths of households -- numbering 217 million -- took a thinner slice of the nation's economic pie last year, 50 percent, than in 1977, when it was 56 percent."

These statistics are "daunting" and "politically embarrassing" mainly in the mind of the Times. In the long run, most Americans aren't terribly bothered by the fact that some Americans are really, really rich; they understand that there's plenty of income mobility in America as well as income inequality -- in other words, that they have the chance to get rich, too. Sure, it's a matter of concern that some Americans live in conditions of poverty. But what should bother us is the absolute nature of those conditions, not the "relative poverty" invoked by the Times' book reviewer. Compared to Microsoft's Bill Gates, your average million-dollar-a-year investment banker with a house in Greenwich Connecticut is mired in "relative poverty." So what? Why should we be bothered by Gates's wealth, as long as we are living in relative comfort? As long as the Times is on the subject of income inequality, why doesn't it consider the "income gap" between the bottom four-fifths of Americans and the top fifth of Africans? Even the poorest Americans for the most part have color televisions and indoor plumbing. But you don't see a lot of hand-wringing in the Times about the "relative affluence" of the poorest Americans compared to residents of Africa. In America, the statistics aren't even there to make the "the poor are getting poorer" argument. The Times's complaint, as the week in review headline puts it, is "A Rising Tide, but Some Boats Rise Higher Than Others." In other words, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting richer too, just a little bit more slowly than the already-rich people. That is "daunting" and "embarrassing"? Come on.

On Drugs: Refreshingly, the Times today takes a break from its usual political coverage focused on personalities and tactics and makes an effort to tackle a serious policy issue. The article runs in the national section under the headline "No Simple Answers to Rising Cost of Drugs for the Elderly," and it actually shows some encouraging signs of understanding health-care economics. Don't get too excited, though. In the middle of a generally sensible article, the Times lets loose with this whopper: "Perhaps no issue touches as many lives as the price of medication, which is one reason the issue is dominating the political debate." Invoking the word "perhaps" seems to give the reporter free rein to follow with an assertion that is perhaps wishful thinking by the Gore campaign.

Scout's Honor: Commenting on the Boy Scouts, a Times editorial today lets us know, implicitly, what it thinks about the Catholic Church, Orthodox Judaism, and other religions that adhere to the biblical view of homosexuality. The editorial says, "In today's world, children cannot learn about honor from an organization that views homosexuality as a moral defect."

The editorial also lets us know how such organizations should be dealt with: "The swift reaction of public authorities to the Scouts' defense of its right to discriminate has been heartening. Prodded by local anti-discrimination laws, Chicago, San Francisco and many smaller communities have revoked the Boy Scouts' access to public facilities such as schools and campgrounds. This is especially appropriate where such access was granted on preferential terms."

Try to figure out what that phrase "especially appropriate" means. It seems to suggest that the Times also considers it appropriate for governments to bar the Boy Scouts from public facilities even when the facilities are being made available to everyone on equal access terms. Is the Times also proposing to bar Catholic and Orthodox Jewish youth groups from picnicking in public parks?

The Times has defended the rights of hatemongers such as Khalid Muhammad and the Ku Klux Klan to march in New York and has criticized Mayor Giuliani for trying to restrict their activities on city streets and in city parks. When it comes to denying the Boy Scouts the right to camp in state forests, however, the Times seems to think that that is an "appropriate" step for the government to take.

Dry Creek: An article in the travel section reports that Dry Creek Vineyards "is famous for its cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc." Well, not to knock the cabernet sauvignon or the sauvignon blanc, but in recent years the winery has in fact been better known for its fume blanc and its chardonnay.