With his coattails "a wee bit short this year," George W. Bush has had to pick his opponent carefully as his party had into mid-term elections, writes Jon Carroll in
The San Francisco
Chronicle--and has "chosen to campaign against
The New York Times." And it's a good target, he continues, as people who think the media is left-wing believe the
Times is leftiest of
all. And those who believe the media is mainstream think it excels in that department as well. "Hardly anyone has a good word to say about it, except that it's the best newspaper in the country," he
says. And the paper also contains the word "New York," he continues, which many members of Bush's base consider "a nifty code word" for "Jewish." It is "very nice for the president to be able to
campaign against the Jews without (a) actually saying the word 'Jew' and (b) without irritating the Israelis." And to complete the trifecta, some Jews think the newspaper is not anti-Palestinian
enough--and therefore, not sufficiently Jewish. Carroll remarks that evangelical Christians can get along with ultra-Orthodox Jews because both groups are eagerly anticipating the end of the world.
And, "since the Bible sets forth certain conditions for the end times, both groups are working hard to fulfill those conditions." But not so the Gray Lady: "We may assume that the
New York
Times is, implicitly at least, against the end of the world. That's "a controversial position--death of the human race: aye or nay?--and is another good reason to make the
Times a target.
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Read the whole story at San Francisco Chronicle »
