AN INNOVATION

Why hadn’t they thought of that one before? Here’s a classic neologism in Jeff Rosen’s NYT Magazine piece today: “Cass Sunstein, who describes himself as a moderate …” Maybe this was the interpolation of a fact-checker or copy-editor. Sunstein is a big liberal (which is his right), an anyone-but-Bush partisan Democrat, and, in Tom Palmer’s words, “about as radical an advocate of unlimited government as you could find in America.” I wonder if the NYT will expand this practice: “George W. Bush, who describes himself as a fiscal conservative. Joseph Ratzinger, who describes himself as a centrist. Michael Moore, who calls himself objective…” Oh, and those photographs! Several friends who know the men personally say they could not recognize them from the images. So Sunstein gets to describe himself as a moderate; while Epstein gets to see himself portrayed as a mob boss in a horror movie. Next time, the NYT magazine should just doodle in a couple of horns, forked tongue and some hooves. We get the idea. Why not be honest about it? An actual critique of the substance of the piece can be read here.