Let it never be said that THE SCRAPBOOK is a Negative Nelly, just carp, carp, carp all day long, with scarcely a kind word for anyone. This week we have a kind word for the New York Times.
But first, a kind word for THE SCRAPBOOK. Three weeks ago in Philadelphia, we criticized the Times for greeting Republican delegates on the opening day of their convention with a front-page story of stunning obviousness. "Poll of Delegates Shows Convention Solidly on Right," said the headline. The Times had actually gone to the trouble of commissioning a poll of Republican delegates, only to discover that most of these people who had traveled hundreds and thousands of miles to attend the convention of America's conservative party were . . . it's hard to believe . . . conservative! More conservative than most Americans! The story and its dramatic placement struck us (and not only us) as a sly bit of GOP-bashing -- a signal to readers that George W. Bush's vaunted redefining of the Republican party was merely a scam.
We patiently took the trouble of explaining matters to the Times: People who go to political conventions are activists, and activists are ideological, so you can bet that people who go to a party's convention will exhibit, in concentrated form, that party's ideology. And we closed -- rather cattily, we see now -- by saying that we looked forward to reading the Times's story at the Democratic convention, explaining to its readers how all those ultra-liberal delegates were so far to the left of the American mainstream.
Which story, to our delight, appeared on the first day of the convention last week in Los Angeles. "Poll Finds Delegates to the Left of Both Public and Party," read the headline. "The delegates arriving here . . . think of themselves as moderates, but their views on issues . . . are more liberal than those of the public or even Democratic voters generally." Once again, the gist of the story is so . . . so duh. But in placement and substance, it is just about a mirror image of the article written for Philadelphia. The larger point of the Republican story -- that the delegates are more extreme than the image their nominee is (hypocritically) hoping to cultivate -- was missing from last week's story about the Democrats. But that's understandable. For the Democratic nominee himself has yet to decide what image he wants the party to present. Firebreathing Jacobin? Techno-geek New Democrat? When the Times figures that one out, it'll have a real story.