The Greenhouse Effect

In June, Linda Greenhouse, the New York Times's veteran Supreme Court beat reporter, visited the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where she accepted the 2006 Radcliffe Institute Medal. As part of the ceremony, Greenhouse (Radcliffe '68) delivered a lachrymose speech entitled "A Bridge Over Troubled Water" in which she related the story of how, shortly after the Iraq war began, she went to a Simon & Garfunkel concert--"two of my favorite musicians from my college days"--and, as the duo sang the chorus of "America"--"the one about the two kids riding through the night on a Greyhound bus"--burst into tears.

Now, don't get me wrong, Greenhouse told her audience, "I'm not a person who bursts into tears at the drop of a hat." And yet she cried throughout the second half of the show. This caused her much consternation, and Greenhouse thought for a while about what had moved her so. Finally, she realized it. Even though, back when she was in college, "there were many things that divided my generation," including "how actively we should commit ourselves to the great causes of civil rights and the antiwar movement," most everyone she knew, at least, was "absolutely united in one conviction: the belief that in future decades, if the world lasted that long, when our turn came to run the country, we wouldn't make the same mistakes" as the previous generation.

Not true, Greenhouse realized that night at the concert, as the unfolding war in Iraq made abundantly clear. "Our generation had not proved to be the solution. We were the problem." What's more, "my little crying jag" was before "we knew the worst of it": before we knew "the extent to which our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha and other places around the world." Not to mention the "sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom" and the "hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism" and--

You get the idea. Truth be told, there wasn't much surprising in Greenhouse's speech, which went on for another 1,500 self-indulgent words, though the talk was particularly revealing of the sort of platitudes and clichés that pass for conventional wisdom at the Times. What's surprising is that it took so long for a reporter to ask Greenhouse whether she thought it was a little, you know, biased for her to report on the Supreme Court while it rules on cases pertaining to, say, the "sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom."

The first questions came two weeks ago, when National Public Radio ran an article on Greenhouse's speech, and once more on October 2, when the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz asked Greenhouse about her talk. Couldn't you impute bias to someone with such outspoken opinions, Kurtz asked? No, not at all, Greenhouse replied. Her musings in the speech were all "statements of fact."

There's not too much new here, really. Greenhouse is, after all, the reporter who was rebuked by her bosses for participating as a protester in a 1989 abortion-rights march on the Supreme Court--at the same time she was covering the Court as a supposedly dispassionate professional reporter. Of course, those same bosses didn't remove her from the beat, thus proving that it was her biases that recommended her to them in the first place. They simply were embarrassed she hadn't kept those biases better concealed.

Even the Good News Is Bad

A blogger known as "Sensible Mom" noticed a curiously downbeat headline in the Chicago Tribune last week heralding the new record high for the Dow Jones Industrial average: "As Dow Surges, Many Left Behind."

How, she wondered, had the Tribune covered the last such Dow breakthrough in 2000 when Bill Clinton and not the hated Bush was in the White House? Wonder no more: "Guess what I found?" she writes. "An article with a very different tone. Starting with the exciting headline, 'Bull Market Spreading the Wealth in America.'"

Welcome to our world, Sensible Mom.

Giving the Oldest Profession Its Due

Being a member of the European Union is not always fun and games. For instance, if your country's budget deficit rises by more than 3 percent each year, Brussels can subject you to some pretty stiff fines. Greece could have been one of those countries if not for a stroke of genius: By taking into account earnings from the black market, the Greek government will be increasing its reported GDP by 25 percent to roughly 194 billion euros. The increase thereby has the effect of shrinking the budget deficit well below the E.U.'s 3 percent limit. Yet more genius from the land of Socrates and Plato!

As the head of the national statistics service, Manolis Kontopyrakis, told Reuters, "The revised GDP will include some money from illegal activities, such as money from cigarette and drinks smuggling, prostitution and money laundering."

Brussels remains skeptical of the move, but it seems clear to us that the Greek government simply wants to be sure it counts every single hard-earned euro, from Athens to Crete to Santorini and even Lesbos.

The Great Depression

You might have noticed the full-page ads for the Depression Is Real coalition in recent issues of this magazine (visit DepressionIsReal.org to find out more about the coalition's important campaign).

Prophetically, these ads began running in our September 25 issue, two full weeks before the news of ex-congressman Mark Foley's extracurricular activities plunged the Republican party and conservatives nationwide into a deep funk. Inquiring minds want to know: What did the coalition know, and when did they know it?