Let’s begin, in a discussion of The New York Times’ relentless class warfare, with a civic-minded editorial on April 1. It was a pitch to readers for contributions to the Fresh Air Fund, an organization that finances short vacations for youngsters to escape the city and go to sleepaway camps upstate or other spots of nature that are more conducive to their well-being than frolicking in front of an open water hydrant. A fitting gesture of noblesse oblige, certainly, but with the Times it’s impossible to per-form a decent task without a whiff of condescension.
The edit starts out: “Who wants to go swimming? We do, too. With the first note of spring our minds jump to summer. Can we get out of the city? If we manage, where will we go?” This isn’t exactly startling—the pose of “we’re just regular folks”—but it’s fairly nauseating nonetheless. Hey, I’m also wondering if Times editorial and business executives will “manage” to get out of the city to go swimming. As for “where will we go,” the answer is to Westchester or Long Island, where a pool awaits them once the driver has pulled up to the gates and notified the staff to set out the seersucker swimming trunks.
April 4 was a humdinger even for the Times, as the paper ran several eat-the-rich pieces. One editorial, “It Didn’t End Well Last Time,” implying that a reprise of the Great Depression is around the corner, hammered away at, what else, tax cuts. The opening tells the story for those who read just one sentence, grasp the forthcoming barrage and move on: “Not since the Roaring Twenties have the rich been so much richer than everyone else.” The writer, citing no specific evidence, beefs that America’s top 10 percent of wage earners took home 48.5 percent of the income in 2005. What portion of taxes did this group pay? That’s of no concern to the Times.
After paying homage to the Clinton administration’s era of “shared prosperity,” which the paper ascribes to tax hikes and a minimum wage increase, ignoring the 1990s technology boom that collapsed in 2000, it’s time to zero in on the current administration. “[T]he economic policies of the Bush years have failed to benefit most Americans. The tax cuts have overwhelmingly benefited the richest. As a result, the tax code does less to narrow the income gap now than it did as recently as 2000 … The nation needs an administration that will offer solutions for the scourge of income inequality.”
I’m not sure if the Times is slowly formulating a redistribution-of-wealth policy (and judging by its hysteria on this issue for the past couple of years, who’d be surprised?), but a few facts are in order. First, Bush inherited a recession that began at the end of Clinton’s tenure—which wasn’t his fault (aside from his Justice Department’s vindictive and market-shattering suit against Microsoft), since economics is cyclical—which was obviously made far worse by the 9/11 terrorism. In fact, it would be hard to find many people who’d have predicted five years ago that not only would the United States not be attacked again, but that in 2007 unemployment would remain under five percent. And guess what? Bush’s tax cuts of ’01 and ’03 are a major reason that so many people do have jobs, since it made more capital available for large companies and entrepreneurs.
If the Times was really concerned about “income equality,” its editors would advocate a flat tax—with an exemption, say, for those Americans who earn less than $25,000 per annum—which eliminated all the loopholes that the very rich (such as Times Co. executives) pay accountants to figure out.
The same day, another editorial, detailing the financial woes of mass transit, advocated an increase in the gasoline tax, which surely would be described by middle and lower class Americans, if not the elite media, as “regressive.”
On the April 4 op-ed page, author Richard Conniff contributes a piece—“The Rich Are More Oblivious Than You and Me”—that makes the obvious point that some people are real jerks. He just happens to focus on those with a lot of money. He writes, after citing a few examples of obnoxious behavior by wealthy men—Mel Gibson and Steve Wynn are singled out—that money causes atrocious manners. Conniff: “The bottom line: Without power, people tend to play it safe. Given power, even you and I would soon end up living large and acting like idiots. So pity the rich—and protect yourself.”
Never mind that the vast majority of wealthy Americans aren’t celebrities and often, without clamoring for publicity, do good deeds and spread their dough around, such as making the Fresh Air Fund possible. But do the rich have a monopoly on “idiocy”? Of course not, that’s a trait that really is distributed equally: take wife-beaters and parents who sexually abuse their children, for example. I think that’s a crime that cuts across all class, racial and gender barriers.
Who knows if the Times editorialists, owners and executives actually read much of their own paper, but it was a tickle to read, also on April 4, Frank Bruni’s restaurant review of The Four Seasons, that institution that’s known more for networking and being seen than the food itself. Bruni writes about entrée prices that would fit nicely into an editorial about the income gap: breast of pheasant for $55 and a $45 order of short ribs.
Here’s a passage that most New Yorkers undoubtedly relate to: “There are lofty peaks. The fillet of bison is one, because it’s so tender, and it’s cloaked in the epicurean equivalent of a mink: sautéed foie gras and a reduction rich with black truffles. The roasted duck, which emerges from a Peking-style sequence of many days and steps, is as astonishing as ever, a knockout of crunchy skin and succulent meat that plunges three friends and me into a gastronomic fugue state.”
No knock on Bruni—who can blame a guy for landing a cushy, if demanding, job—but maybe, when the Times opinion writers think about swimming and disadvantaged kids, they could suggest to management that every time Bruni goes out on an assignment he takes along one of those “ordinary” Americans who’s been screwed by the Republican administration.
