It's getting tougher and tougher out there to be a rich urban sophisticate—especially if you have kids. The New York Times reported last week that New York City public schools are facing severe overcrowding issues, leading to the waitlisting of hundreds of kindergarten students zoned for the city's top schools.

This is a serious issue, one worthy of a major report in the Times. But if all you did was skim the first few paragraphs of the story, you'd be under the impression that it mostly affects wealthy parents in trendy Lower Manhattan neighborhoods. As this writer can attest from years of attending overcrowded schools in solidly middle-class and decidedly not-trendy Staten Island, it does not. Yet the Times's story fails to even mention such areas, such as Queens's Flushing or The Bronx's Soundview, until the 12th paragraph. ("Criticism of the city's schools capital plan is not limited to wealthy enclaves." Gee, thanks.) And, after some admittedly pertinent information from city officials, it barely bothers to interview non-rich people before going right back to the problems of parents who could probably afford to send their kids to private school.

Now, we at Gelf are not exactly class warriors, but the fact is the Times has done this before, too often. Sometimes, it's downright silly, as when the paper's Home section ran a long piece about rich people who dump each other over their apartments (among the piece's subjects are a man who dumped someone because "on her walls she had my two most despised pieces of art," and this guy, who is 70 and has a 22-year-old girlfriend). We understand, of course, that the Times's readership is on the upscale side. Next time, though, would it kill them to find a parent in Flushing?

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