(FORTUNE Magazine) – The senior Keeping Up correspondent on the social issues desk looked up from a New York Times editorial the other day and barked a command. ''Instantly procure the unabridged file of Times editorials about comparable worth,'' went his woof, ''so that yours truly can maybe figure out by triangulation what these characters are trying to say on the instant subject, also known as pay equity, as it is definitely impossible to discern an argument propelled by linear logic anywhere in this morning's turgidities.'' Yes, the world's possibly greatest paper is still Sisypheanally laboring to develop a coherent position on comparable worth. Having now reviewed the record of the editorial boarders, we think we understand their problem. This doctrine they have to keep writing about is dopey beyond belief and fundamentally incompatible with Economics 101, not to mention the rest of postmedieval thought, since at bottom it tells us that every job has some kind of ''just'' wage that ought to be paid no matter what the labor market says -- all of which naturally works to constrain editorial enthusiasm. And yet comparable worth has a fatal fascination for the median Times scrivener because it is considered to be, er, progressive. Inevitable outcome: the editorials clunkily back and fill. In the paper's first major pass at the subject in February 1984, the climactic final paragraph had three sentences beginning with ''But . . . '' and another beginning with ''Still . . .'' The editorial's basic argument, assuming it had one, was that comparable worth is a good thing, and the job evaluation schemes needed to implement it are really quite practical, and it isn't as hard as some folks think to demonstrate that probation officers and senior secretarial supervisors should receive the same pay, and yes, it's true that some skeptics say we'd create a mess if we tried to apply this broadly throughout the economy, and actually the skeptics have a point here, and maybe we should think of comparable worth as an ''experimental'' approach. Clunk. The paper's latest pass at the subject has six sentences beginning with ''But . . . '' and was triggered by certain recent non sequiturs in Los Angeles. It seems that the city government has caved in to the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and in the name of comparable worth has granted special wage increases to typists and others in ''female- dominated'' jobs, the idea being that it is discriminatory for these girls to be making less than the boys with comparable work in the warehouse. The Times editorial states early on that the raises are ''probably a victory for social justice and surely one for common sense,'' a distinction implying that someplace out there in the great universe of labor relations is a class of raises that reflects common sense but not social justice. Can you imagine which raises these might be, dear reader? Why should we think of lower pay for the typists as ''discriminatory''? The Times's explanation: ''One way some employers discriminate is to distinguish between different job categories that demand similar skills -- and then channel women into the lower-paying category. For example, the state of Washington paid beauticians who worked in state institutions less than barbers.'' Friends, what you are seeing is the New York Times standing there stating that ladies have these jobs as typists and beauticians because the employers have sneakily ''channeled'' them away from the warehouse and barber jobs to which they would otherwise have naturally gravitated. Why the employers are not also channeling the gents into low-paying jobs is a question not dealt with. Does its endorsement of L.A. logic mean that the Times is now unqualifiedly for comparable worth? Far from it. Having forgotten about probation officers and secretarial supervisors, the editorial board now proclaims that it is ''just not possible'' to compare different kinds of jobs. So the Times is now lined up with the critics of comparable worth? No, that's not quite right either. The approach in the latest editorial is to avoid any up-or-down judgment call on the doctrine, but instead to complain that it has become a ''divisive distraction,'' has been turned into a ''caricature'' by extremists, and is preventing us from getting on with the job of eliminating discrimination. The fellows get offstage with a line that could appear only in a Times editorial: ''But job discrimination against women is no caricature.'' Clunk.