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Problems in Common

NEW YORK, MAY 9

The French have other distractions than the U.S. victory in Iraq. They will have to weigh in on the U.S. proposal to reorder the economic scene in Iraq to conform in some way with post-Saddam realities. There isn't any way in which France can throw itself upon the scene to benefit itself, but it could certainly use help, because France is just about on the rocks. Successive governments have encouraged a lifestyle in France which is more suitable to the sheiks of Araby than to the French working population.

The problem in France revolves, to begin with, on the huge size of the public working sector. It is one-fourth of the working population. That means that for one quarter of the French, pensions are dictated not by economic realities, but by political contrivance. It is pleasant to the French public-service worker to grow up knowing that he can retire with full pension at age 55; in some situations, at age 50. Some retirement programs permit full pension benefits after only 15 years of contributing to the pension fund.

That would be okay if the French died at age 65, but of course they do not, and modern health measures keep them alive longer than the men and women who enacted the pension plans. It boils down to this: As things are now going, in the year 2020, one French working man would have to devote his entire pension contribution to sustain one Frenchman on pension. The analogy to U.S. Social Security is of the same order. When Social Security was launched, 16 working men contributed to every recipient. As that ratio changes, the imposition on those who work, for the benefit of those who do not, becomes onerous and, finally, inordinate.

Apparent wealth achieved by funny money is everywhere attractive. Californians face a budget deficit awesomely large. A French-style reform is required, but the Democratic governor, Mr. Davis, is wondering out loud how to effect reforms. In the past few years, revenues shrank, hard hit by the dot-com implosion, and public spending did not reduce correspondingly.

The cop on the beat here is Moody's. That august institution hands out ratings to potential creditors, and California rates from Moody's an A2, the lowest state rating, shared with Louisiana and New York. In California, what is needed is a great big sum of money to pay off looming obligations. How do you raise such money? You borrow. In order to provide a measure of concealment about what you are up to, you issue bonds which attach directly to the distress loan, on the model of what New York did in 1975 with the Municipal Assistance Corporation.

But potential bond underwriters look to Moody's to inquire after the degree of the risk they are running. And if Moody's, surveying the situation in California even as it might the situation in France, comes in with a low rating, then Californians are going to pay heavily to finance their distress. The money is raised by higher taxes, a diminution in state services, or some combination of the two. Republicans in Sacramento are against higher taxes, which bring on, ultimately, a traffic in dollars flying everywhere from everywhere else, militating toward the kind of senselessness the French face: one father and mother retiring on the earnings of one son and daughter.

The French national strike is set for May 13. California has until early summer to shape up.

Even at the Times!

NEW YORK, MAY 16

The Big Story featuring the New York Times and Jayson Blair is grounds for twittery -- look what happened to the Gray Lady! But the reproaches give satisfaction only because of the high standards of the newspaper, and the sense of it that slippages in such a fortress make for great waterfalls.

Those who worked their way through the 4-page recitation of what Mr. Jayson Blair did came only, toward the end of the story, to the question that immediately came to the inquirer's mind. It was: Did he get away with it because he is an African American? Answer: We don't really know.

And the reason we do not is that Mr. Blair is a polished con man. Anyone born Jason who became Jayson, entered the world with a little swagger. Any suggestion that affirmative action was responsible for his appointment goes instantly away. A blind reading of his dispatches would see nothing in them to suggest the amateur, let alone an incompetent. He wrote fluently and with an eye for detail, even when it proved that the detail was fiction of his own imagination. Indeed the filigree established him as especially resourceful, even as the counterfeiter might be so judged who contributes by special ingenuity to the imposture he is engaged in. If every black 25-year-old applying for a reporter's commission had equivalent talent, the Times would have more than its current 5 percent representation of black Americans on the staff.

No, the question had to be of preferment, not election. Jayson is a likable fellow, and his boss Mr. Boyd -- singled out, at the Times's general, closed meeting, for encouraging him -- replied that he encouraged everybody, that is his manner. Still, there is a cloud of a corporate scandal. We have a young reporter about whom a senior editor warned a year ago that he should not be permitted to write, who went on doing so, ending with a passage of flat plagiarism, but at least it involved a mother who did exist in Texas whose son was in fact missing.

Having said as much, nobody has concluded that affirmative action does not play a role at the New York Times. Indeed, the executive editor Mr. Raines acknowledged that it does, and defended the practice in the name of diversity, while insisting that it was not responsible for the apparent immunity of Jayson Blair. What the Times was responsible for, and accepted the blame for, is insufficient superintendence, especially following such warnings as the City Desk had. One thinks of Saudi Arabia and its measures against terrorists. Insufficient.

On the question of affirmative action, one hears an off-beat complaint, this from a seasoned publisher who smiles, though not entirely indulgently, at the Times's sports coverage. "About eleven percent of the readers of sports sections are women. National sports competition is, pure and simple, a man's world." He went on to say that the Times's subscription to equality results in all but equal space given to women's sports as to men's.

That indictment, if correct, is affirmative action athwart journalistic realism, with no Jayson Blairs on the scene, just stolid fem-movement entrepreneurs who will perhaps never be fully satisfied until a woman wins the National Heavyweight Championship.

Well, let it be. The Times will easily survive Jayson Blair, and its devotees will survive whatever neglect there is of all-male soccer.

Tee-Hee Time

NEW YORK, MAY 20

The story featuring the grandmother in New York City who at age 19 sported about with President Kennedy is attracting about as much attention as the proverbial "Small Earthquake in Chile." There is this difference: When small earthquakes are reported, they aren't met with smiles and half-giggles. There goes Talcahuano again! is met with fatalistic acceptance of fractious acts of nature. What we got in the matter of the grandmother was tee hee time, led by Nora Ephron in the New York Times.

The tone of her op-ed tells it all, the accepted view of presidential intern-sex by worldly Americans. Ms. Ephron begins her story by saying that there was no desk, in the presidential press office of Pierre Salinger, for her to sit at. She repeats that several times, to suggest the aimlessness of her mission in the White House. But did she spend any time with him? Just 15 seconds in the Oval Office, when introduced. Ten seconds outside the Oval Office when JFK was heading for the helicopter. What he said in greeting, as he passed by, she couldn't hear, for the noise of the rotor blades. It was not, as far as she could tell, a summons to his bed that night. Indeed, Ms. Ephron wondered why she hadn't been invited to a stall in his harem, wonders whether it's because she is Jewish: " -- don't laugh. Think about it, think about that long, long list of women JFK slept with. Were any Jewish? I don't think so."

Maybe that suspicion should have been explored by one of the civil- rights acts, demanding that presidential concubinage not discriminate by race, color, creed, or religious affiliation.