The New York Times should have lost its credibility when, in the 1930s, its Walter Duranty became a mouthpiece for Joseph Stalin and lied to the world about the Soviet dictator’s genocide (instead, Duranty won a Pulitzer). But the Times is still doing its thing in our time, giving us all the news that’s fit, oh, well, critics might say, for the DNC’s public-relations arm. The latest example of such is leaked comments by the paper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, indicating that the Times intends to pivot from the debunked Russia/Trump/collusion hoax to an effort to paint the president as a racist.
Unsurprisingly, this revelation evoked a strong response from President Trump. As he tweeted Sunday:
The Failing New York Times, in one of the most devastating portrayals of bad journalism in history, got caught by a leaker that they are shifting from their Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism Witch Hunt…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2019
…..”Journalism” has reached a new low in the history of our Country. It is nothing more than an evil propaganda machine for the Democrat Party. The reporting is so false, biased and evil that it has now become a very sick joke…But the public is aware! #CROOKEDJOURNALISM
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2019
Alluding to the Enemedia’s (mainstream media’s) power to shape public opinion, Trump also tweeted:
With all that this Administration has accomplished, think what my Poll Numbers would be if we had an honest Media, which we do not!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2019
Trump had “used Twitter all weekend to draw attention to leaked comments from the Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, who addressed staff at a town hall meeting [last] Monday[,] and [to] a recording of his remarks [that] was leaked to Slate,” reported the New York Post.
“Baquet talked about coming out of the Mueller investigation ‘a little tiny bit flat-footed,’ but then the paper transitioned and began writing about Trump and race.”
“‘And I think that the story changed. A lot of the stuff we’re talking about started to emerge like six or seven weeks ago,’ he said,” the Post also informs. “‘How do we cover America, that’s become so divided by Donald Trump? How do we grapple with all the stuff you all are talking about? How do we write about race in a thoughtful way, something we haven’t done in a large way in a long time?’ the editor continued.”
Of course, if the Times handled its discussion about handling things in a “thoughtful” way in a thoughtful way, it would understand that “division” is impossible with “only one number” — it takes two to tango. After all, we wouldn’t be divided if everyone agreed with Trump, would we?
This isn’t to say that a given individual is never responsible for division. But the litmus test for responsibility isn’t “whether you have the temerity to disagree with liberals.” Rather, we all have a duty to seek, embrace, and profess the Truth. When people fail to do so — thus creating a chasm between themselves and the truthful — they bear the blame for the division.
The Times ought to remember this when it pushes the false Trump-as-racist narrative.
As for conservatives, they “latched on to Baquet’s comments, suggesting the Times was deliberately trying to cast Trump as a racist in a pre-ordained storyline now that the Russia investigation was wrapped up,” the Post also tells us.
For sure, the Left needs another attack strategy now with the Russian-collusion con’s collapse. Moreover, Trump has enjoyed support among blacks unprecedented for modern Republicans, with a Rasmussen poll last year finding that he had a 29 percent approval rating among that demographic. Given that Democrats generally win, and that their electoral strategy is dependent upon capturing, upwards of 90 percent of the black vote, such a number in the 2020 election would assure their loss. So they aim to alienate blacks from the president by painting him as racist.
Yet there’s a deeper issue here: We only talk about the above incessantly, and the bigotry boogieman only works, because we have “racism on the brain.”
Consider: “Racism” is not the end-all and be-all, but just a sub-category of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, wrath. And is it really our greatest characteristic sin?
Considering our sexual devolution’s metastasis, with everything from schools to entertainment to media to personal conversations infused with sexual content — and with traditional sexual mores under withering attack — lust is certainly a greater problem. With demagogues appealing to masses with welfare and class-warfare and claims that success can be unfair, sloth may also be a bigger issue, and envy certainly is.
Yet as C.S. Lewis once observed, evil always tries to persuade us to exaggerate our flaws, telling (for instance) the militant he’s too pacifistic and the pacifist that he’s too militant. Today there are radical egalitarians convinced they’re too “racist.”
To illustrate this askew sense of proportion, imagine that society considered gluttony the ultimate disqualifier. We might then scrutinize a person, asking “What are his food bills?” “Do cookbooks figure too prominently in his library” “Does he wile away excessive time watching Emeril Live?” “Is he the one who cleared the buffet table like a hurdler?” And imagine we visited pariah status on the person after deeming him guilty.
Would you think this society’s greater fault was gluttony — or being hung-up about it? I’d think it exhibited a gluttonous zeal for eradicating gluttony.
Speaking of which, there also are gluttons for power, and it’s arguable that every Democrat candidate qualifies. Another fault common today — as opposed to the “racism” nonsense — is perversion, though it generally goes unnoticed. And who would qualify? Well, you can start by asking yourself: Who advocates putting sex in schools and boys in girls’ bathrooms?
