The Great Stonewall of China
Jiang at Harvard is the big story. It's the national lead at the New York Times ,
and leads the Los Angeles Times . The Washington Post leads with the news that the Republicans
have a huge money-raising and spending edge over the Democrats for the
elections coming up, but also gives Jiang plenty of top-front coverage.
The Jiang headlines at both the WP and LAT emphasize his
reference to past "mistakes," while the NYT headline focuses instead on
the applause he received during his speech. The "applause" and "laughter"
( NYT ) or cheers ( WP ) came when Jiang said his current trip to the
U.S. gave him a more specific understanding of American democracy than he'd had
previously. (The protests at Harvard yesterday were the largest there since
Vietnam.) The "mistakes" came in this way: when Jiang was asked why the
Communist Party had chosen confrontation over dialogue in 1989, he replied, "It
goes without saying that naturally we may have shortcomings and even make some
mistakes in our work, however we've been working on a constant basis to improve
our work."
The Times seems to take the applause as crowd approval of Jiang, but
isn't it more likely that the crowd was applauding the power of raucous
American protest instead? Similarly, the Post and LAT make much
of how Jiang's mention of mistakes was an unprecedented policy concession, but
since he didn't say anything at all about Tiananmen square or political
prisoners when he used the phrase, why couldn't it be taken to be no more than
the Chinese version of Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra "mistakes were made"--in
other words merely a simulated apology, not a real one? After all, within
minutes of speaking of mistakes, Jiang was adamant in his defense of his
country's actions in Tibet. (Interestingly, the NYT doesn't even mention
the "mistake" line.)
According to the papers, here's what academic freedom means at Harvard where
the president of China is involved: The questions asked of Jiang were chosen by
a committee of four scholars. The Chinese insisted that there be no questions
from the floor (although Jiang ended up taking two anyway--one of the people he
called on turned out to be a Newsweek reporter). The WP says that
the professor moderating all this "was almost apologetic" when repeating
non-softball questions.
A NYT editorial includes a list of former political bigshots who are
now against soft money: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George Bush, Bob Dole,
Howard Baker, Bob Michel, Bill Brock, Alan Simpson and Nancy Kassebaum Baker.
Isn't it amazing that they all waited to retire before telling us how they
really feel?
The WP reports that the Supreme Court has agreed to address for the
first time ever the validity of polygraph evidence. The argument isn't coming
from prosecutors, but from a defendant who claims a polygraph result would have
cleared him and hence the current prohibition violates his right to present
favorable evidence.
A front-page NYT piece reports an attempt by family farms to create
new revenue streams by staging, for an admissions fee, demonstrations of
various farm activities, from branding cattle to making cane syrup. The
Times calls the trend "agritainment."
The NYT reports that a certain segment of the population is furious
about the case of the 19-year-old woman convicted of killing the baby in her
charge and wants to do something about it. The International Nanny Association,
says the Times , issued a press release recently with the headline:
"Journalists Make Horrendous Mistake. Hurts Entire Multi-Million Dollar
Industry--It's an Au Pair Not Nanny on Trial!"
