kay, so it’s not exactly a news flash that the establishment press is politically tendentious. But Time magazine’s May 29 issue has two examples of liberal bias so nauseating that they shouldn’t be allowed to pass unnoticed.

There is a “cutesy” item about two pictures of Elian Gonzalez, one taken before the raid and another during his present captivity. Here is the text in its entirety: “The Cuban-American community was (again) outraged last week, when a new photo of Elian was released. Was it the Pioneer scarf instead of the TV-show T shirt, the lack of sunglasses or the switching of a $129 scooter for two wooden sticks?” Yes, the Miami Gonzalezes were a tacky bunch — so unlike the tasteful Democratic millionaires Elian can now spend time with.

There is also a three-page hit job on Jesse Helms, in which Douglas Waller has included every dreary cliché you ever read about the senator. So, for instance, Helms’s “lenses haven’t changed much since the 1920s, when Helms was growing up just west of Wingate in Monroe. It was a sleepy town where cotton wagons circled the courthouse every Saturday, where flowers were put on the Confederate memorial to honor Southern chivalry.” The article’s even titled “Senator No.”

As a sidebar, Time includes a quiz — “What Would Jesse Do?” — so that readers can decide if they “agree with his approach.” Each of the five questions, and multiple choices, are stacked against Helms. The question about U.S. dues to the United Nations, for instance, paints Helms as an obstructionist without giving any hint that he was more willing to compromise with the Clinton administration than some other influential Republicans. Similarly, one could read the entire article on Helms’s foreign policy without learning that he, though so often caricatured as an isolationist, is one of Israel’s best friends in Washington. This is the third-rate work — though again, that’s no shocker for longtime readers of Time.

Voices In The Air
It’s a pity, come to think of it, that there is only one Jesse Helms around; quite a few of his colleagues could use a spine transplant. The Senate judiciary committee — Orrin Hatch, chairman — held a friendly hearing a few weeks ago for Bonnie Campbell, a Clinton nominee for the eighth circuit court of appeals. Campbell was Iowa’s attorney general and director of Clinton’s 1992 campaign in the state. After losing a gubernatorial bid in 1994, she was appointed head of the Justice Department office in charge of administering the Violence against Women Act and peddling phony statistics about domestic abuse. You don’t need to be a law professor to know what kind of a judge she would be, and that’s reason enough in our view to reject her.

But even if we’re wrong — as most Republican senators, alas, think — there is evidence that she lacks a judicial temperament as well as constitutionalist convictions. During her 1994 run, she had this to say before the state teachers’ union about Christian conservatives: “I hate to call them Christian because I am Christian, and I hate to call them religious, because they’re not. . . . These are the people that get their orders from God, which is funny because I get contrary orders from God — maybe there’s more than one God.” Shame on Charles Grassley, Iowa’s Republican senator, for supporting Campbell. If Republicans can’t rouse themselves to oppose her lifetime appointment based on her views, they should at least be concerned that she appears to hear voices.

He Said It
In Sunday’s New York Times, Tom Ridge, Pennsylvania’s Republican governor, said, “I’m going to help my old friend George Bush get elected president. And you know? I think he can carry Pennsylvania without me.”