Reading the print edition of The New York Times can bring the paper's strange priorities into focus. Both the left-hand and right-hand columns on Sunday's op-ed page warned of the "carcinogenic" hazards and moral turpitude of owning cell phones.
On the left, the text box to Nicholas Kristof's Sunday column "Death By Gadget [1]" warned: "That smartphone you're using may be financing killers and rapists." Kristof was warning his readers that their fancy phones may contain tantalum (a rare metal) "peddled by a Congolese militia."
On the right (or actually, the other left), Maureen Dowd's column "Are Cells The New Cigarettes? [2]" warned that cell phones could be giving you cancer. Dowd defended San Francisco's crusading leftist mayor Gavin Newsom against the "brazenness of Big Business," when a wireless association announced they may not hold their convention in San Francisco.
They should be sending Mayor Newsom a bottle of good California wine for caring about whether kids' brains get fried, not leaving him worried about whether they'll avenge themselves in his campaign for lieutenant governor.