Always Look on the Dark Side . . .
Pound for pound, there may be no more thrilling display of American military pageantry than the show put on several dozen times each year by the Navy's Blue Angels--the team of six F/A-18 Hornets that famously fly in a tight formation, with as little as 18 inches separating their wingtips, among other aerial feats.
Leave it to the New York Times to rain on the parade. Last week the Blue Angels decided to treat Manhattan's tower dwellers to a free show, as they practiced for an upcoming performance nearby. The Times pursed its lips in sour disapproval, running the following caption in local editions, beneath an admittedly dazzling photo: "Too Close for Comfort? The Navy's Blue Angels precision flying team made a close-quarters pass over the Upper East Side yesterday, a preview of their participation in the New York Air Show at Jones Beach on Sunday and Monday as part of Memorial Day observances. The sight of the fighters and their noise startled some residents, who recalled 9/11 in anxious phone calls."
A Scrapbook informant and Blue Angels fan who saw the Upper East Side fly-by begged to differ. He said he'd heard from friends, Columbia students and bankers, who said people lined the windows of their buildings and thought it was "the greatest thing they ever saw."
Dog Bites Man
Fair is fair: Not everything we read in the New York Times curls our hair. Indeed, last Wednesday's edition brought an article displaying originality of
thought and--believe it or not--refreshingly devoid of any implication that President Bush and congressional Republicans are doing their best to wreck the United States of America. Of course, you could only find the article in the "Business" section, not the front page. (That would probably be asking too much.) Still, business columnist David Leonhardt's "This Glass Is Half Full, Probably More," contains many distinctly un-Times-like sentiments, such as this:
The fact is that by most broad measures--wages, average life span, crime, education levels, home ownership, and racial and gender equality, to name a few--life in this country has clearly improved over the last generation. And most Americans think about their lives in these terms. In polls, even low-income people generally say they are better off than their parents were, probably because most are.
Even more daring, Leonhardt goes out of his way to attack lefty icon Thomas Frank, whose What's the Matter with Kansas? spent 35 weeks on the Times's bestseller list.
Frank's book makes the case that his fellow Kansans have succumbed to an angry "backlash" in which lower-income voters elect politicians mouthing social conservatism but whose true agenda is all about enriching the upper crust. Suffice it to say, the book's something of a downer. Lucky for us, Leonhardt is around to set the record straight:
Close inspection uncovers a big problem with Mr. Frank's economic analysis. Wages haven't been falling in Kansas. Up and down the economic spectrum, they have been higher in the last few years than they were at any point in the 1980s or 90s, according to inflation-adjusted numbers from the Economic Policy Institute. The median Kansas worker made $13.43 an hour in 2004, 11 percent more than in 1979, which might help explain why many people don't vote on bread-and-butter issues anymore. . . .
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