SHOT IN THE FOOT

The New York Times keeps shooting itself in the foot. OK, sometimes it shoots itself in the head. Anyway, today's foot shot is a photo of Republican Sen. Trent Lott misidentified in the caption as "the majority leader." Caption errors are so common in so many newspapers that it seems churlish to single this one out. But an error such as this speaks volumes about the Times's reliability.

How could the editors of the so-called newspaper of record forget that Lott was ousted as the Senate's majority leader in December 2002? It was in all the papers. You remember the scandal that led to his ouster. It followed Lott's comment at the 100th birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond that he was proud of Thurmond's segregationist record. That was in all the papers, too. Even in the Times.

The mis-captioned photo accompanies a story by Carl Hulse and David E. Sanger, "Republicans Move Fast to Make Experience of Edwards an Issue." Somebody was alert enough not to include Lott's photo in the online posting of the story. Hooray for the online Times.

Of course, there's no mention of the scandal or the ouster on Lott's Web site, which says merely that he now chairs the Senate's "powerful Rules Committee" and the Aviation Subcommittee, and is a member of the Finance Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence. But that's to be expected.

Nor is there any mention of Lott's "long-term association with a white supremacist hate group, the Council of Conservative Citizens." (The Southern Poverty Law Center's Klanwatch & Militia Task Force calls the CCC "the reincarnation of the infamous White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s," Steve Rendell recounts, terming it "the successor to the 'uptown Klan.'") But that's to be expected, too.

I suppose there's no point going over old ground like this except to suggest that it's time the Times got its act together and that good ol' boy Lott doesn't have it so bad when he can be mistaken for Sen. Bill Frist, of Tennessee, the Republican good ol' boy who replaced him as majority leader. That's in the record, too, even at the Times.