Wonder no more- it comes STRAIGHT from the top:
So how does the Times negotiate the disconnect? “It is difficult,” Baquet says. “I think the way you do it is you just keep working, you keep trying to break stories, you try to do analysis that explains the moment we’re in, you try to diversify your staff to include different viewpoints. You just try to work very hard.”
If that sounds unsatisfying, it’s because Baquet, the first African-American executive editor of the Times, doesn’t see this moment in American history as particularly aberrant. “I get that people see the phenomenon of someone who says inflammatory statements as a new thing,” he says. “I grew up in the South. I covered Edwin Edwards.” (Baquet was a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune when a candidate for Louisiana governor told him famously: “Only way I lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.”)
“Americans have a way of thinking that nothing like this has happened before,” Baquet says. “Picture what the newsrooms of the New York Times and the Washington Post were like when people thought the draft and Vietnam meant that they were literally going to have to fight a war. The New York Times has a strong view about its role. We are not The Nation, even though I have deep respect for them. I think it’s healthy for each generation to come in and discuss what the rules are. You have to accept that there’s something at the core of the New York Times and the Washington Post that won’t change, but there’s a lot that can change at the edges.”
It takes a lot of work to be simultaneously condescending enough to think that everyone else is wrong about the history of the nation and stupid enough to compare the rise of Trump and the white nationalist right to a corrupt Governor in a relatively inconsequential state with a history of fringe politicians (google the kingfish), but Baquet is up to the task.
In fairness to Baquet, though, he is upholding the NYT’s legacy of being completely ill prepared to deal with fascist demagogues and not adequately recognizing the threat:
But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.
A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: “You can’t expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them.”
The NY Times is fundamentally broken. And Baquet is both a symptom and a cause.
msdc
“It takes a lot of work to be simultaneously condescending enough to think that everyone else is wrong about the history of the nation and stupid enough to compare the rise of Trump and the white nationalist right to a corrupt Governor in a relatively inconsequential state with a history of fringe politicians…”
A governor who specifically ran against David Duke. Interesting that Baquet went to Edwards and not Duke, who is by far the better precedent for Trump–but one that would reveal too much.
Demand this clown’s ouster. Boycott the Times.
SRW1
Were these well-informed sources per chance the same guys that went into coalition with Hitler in January 1933?
Belafon
It seems that he could use this moment to explain to white people the reasons why this isn’t different and that we have to fix all of it. I realize it shouldn’t necessarily be up to blacks to do this, but he’s in charge of the NYT, whose job it is.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@SRW1:
It’s been mentioned here that there were (presumably pre-WW2) former US presidents who thought the US fought on the wrong side of WW2. I morbidly wonder whether they said that before or after the Holocaust was exposed to the world
rikyrah
Mr. Baquet:
Get the ENTIRE Phuck Outta Here ? ?
trollhattan
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Just a few schlechte Äpfel.
SRW1
Stockholm syndrome is not only for Stockholmers.
Roger Moore
Shorter Baquet: We have always carried water for conservatives, and we’re not about to change that.
trollhattan
I know it’s old, old news but re. the Gilroy murderer:
Eljai
I remember hearing Terry Gross interview Dean Baquet shortly after Trump got elected. He seemed to be oblivious to criticism and completely out of touch. I don’t get it, but it’s damn discouraging.
TenguPhule
Today is depressing.
mary s
I only read the excerpted bit of whatever article is being discussed in this post, so I don’t really understand what Baquet is getting at. Is he saying that Trump is no big deal because white supremacy has always been with us — ??
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Roger Moore:
@Eljai:
Baquet infuriates me with his seeming obliviousness but simultaneous condescending way of speaking. He’s a black man too who used to live and work in Louisiana, you’d think he’d wake the fuck up and see where this all potentially heading. But hey, maybe he figures he’ll be dead when all of this reaches fruition?
Anne Laurie
Because I’m petty, I’ll just point out that *some* people here thought I was ‘overreacting’ when I bitched about Baquet being gifted with his current job over Jill Abramson…
(Not the smart commentors, of course. But *some* people… )
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
How’s Hawaii?
SFAW
If only there were some way to rein him in (so to speak). If only there were some person that Baquet answered to — THEN, that person would take Baquet “to the woodshed,” I’m sure, and things would turn around tout de fucking suite, I’m sure.
If only …
FTFTFNYTaFPST
MomSense
O/T This has been such a shit few days, but I have some good news to share. Pup had her liver tested today and she is much, much better. Her liver enzymes are still higher than normal, but she has made a miraculous recovery. Thank you for all the well wishes. To give some context, normal liver enzyme numbers range from 10-125. Last Wednesday she tested at 1,768 and was in real danger. Today she tested at 388.
Also, too fuck the fucking New York Times. It’s garbage.
MomSense
@Anne Laurie:
But she was so brusque. //
John
@msdc: Baquet had already left New Orleans by the time of Duke’s two statewide runs in 90 and 91. The Edwards live boy/dead girl election was 1983. Baquet left Louisiana for Chicago in 1984, and was at the NY Times by the time of the Duke elections.
SFAW
@Anne Laurie:
You wanted Shrill Abramson over Clean Dean Baquet?? ZOMFG!!! What were you thinking?
Although I have a feeling that, unless Pinche gave her a completely free hand — and meant it — she’d have quit out of frustration in less than a year
Gvg
He also seems to miss the point that the Vietnam war was also a historic important and bad point in our history. Saying that now is just another event like that one actually does not mean now isn’t really serious.
I don’t think he is all that important youth because the times has a history of misreading serious times. He was picked by the owners, and that’s who are to blame. So they managed to find someone whose skin looked different but whose views were what they could use. Clueless editor, but I don’t think the owners are.
SFAW
@MomSense:
Glad to hear about Pup, although I completely missed it that she was not well.
Jay
Anne Laurie
FWIW, Maggie’s old man:
(Yep, Trump’s Fave Steno is as much a nepotism hire as Megan McCain… she’s much brighter than Mrs. Shapiro, but then John McCain III was no innalechual himself… )
Josie
@MomSense:
Such good news. I’m really happy for you.
Raoul Paste
Does he understand that right wing terrorism hates the NYT? And that they’re potentially a target?/? WTF?
(((CassandraLeo)))
@SFAW: This.
Also, thanks for excerpting their Hitler coverage, John. People often think I’m being hyperbolic when I call them the Vichy Times. Even excerpting their actual contemporary coverage of the Nazis rarely shuts up the FTFNYT’s most extreme partisans. It’s rather remarkable, in a completely reprehensible way.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Jay
Ladyraxterinok
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Churchill thought we should have just pushed on through Berlin and the rest of Germany and on into Soviet Union to wipe them out.
Didn’t Pat Buchanon think it was a mistake to condemn the Holocaust?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I kind of wonder whether there’s anything of the New York Times worth saving in all that wreckage, but looking back over its history, it’s hard to find much.
Roger Moore
@Ladyraxterinok:
Yeah, he was willing to fight the Russians to the last American life.
SiubhanDuinne
@MomSense:
That’s wonderful news! I’m very happy for her (and you!), and I hope the liver numbers continue on the downward trendline.
Steeplejack
Bret Stephens is back bloviating with Chris Matthews. (I think someone here said the NYT people were absent from MSNBC last night.)
Earlier, on Ari Melber’s show, senators referring to Mitch McConnell:
– Schumer: “Leader McConnell” (ineffectual insider Chuck sipping the Kool-Aid—probably hoping for the day when he can be “Leader Schumer”).
– Klobuchar: “Senator McConnell.”
– Sanders: “Mitch McConnell, leader of the Senate,” said with Berniesque condescension. Gotta give him style points for that.
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Hot, humid and no wind to cool down since we dodged two hurricanes in a row.
Jay
MJS
Yes, Dean, we’re quite aware America has gone through tough times before. What we’d like to see is us not go through the SAME tough times again, and have the “paper of record” normalize the situation. What’s the next headline going to read, “People of color treated to exclusive comfort facilities, per Executive Order”?
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Krugman, Goldberg, Blow, Collins, Bouie from the current op-ed page. Maybe one or two others. A few current reporters are often good – the ones who did the piece on Dump’s taxes especially. There have some other great reporters too – David Cay Johnston was on their payroll for a while.
Overall, though, the paper is Sodom and Gomorrah. Very little worth saving, relative to its size, and I encourage people to unsubscribe if they haven’t already.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
zhena gogolia
@MomSense:
Wonderful!
Jay
@Ladyraxterinok:
@Roger Moore:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
Magnum PI made Hawaii seem a lot cooler than it is….
janesays
@msdc:
I hate to say, “in fairness to Baquet”, but… in fairness to Baquet, he was with the Times-Picayune very early in his career in the late 1970s and early 1980s, well before David Duke had any significant political clout in Louisiana politics. His time as a local journalist in New Orleans was largely between Edwards first stint as governor (1972-1980) and his second stint (1984-1988). He left New Orleans in 1984 to join the Chicago Tribune, 7 years before the gubernatorial contest between the crook and the Klansman.
bbleh
Baquet is an Organization Man. And The Times, like all organizations once they’ve been around for a while, ultimately is most concerned with its own survival and self-defense.
Baquet’s condescension isn’t (primarily at least) because he thinks people are “wrong about the history of the nation.” It’s because The Times, as an institution, is Above It All. The Times, because of its lofty perch and unique history, has a perspective that everyone else — quite understandably, not being The Times — simply lacks.
And of course, because of that lack of perspective, the mob will say their little say, and shout their little shouts, and then things will continue, with The Times sailing majestically on through what turns out to be little more than a minor rain-shower.
The Germans who voted for Hindenburg, and Hitler as his #2, were clear that the Germany of Goethe and Schiller and Bach would never allow someone as obviously crude as Hitler actually to gain power. All the best people agreed, of course, because they had historical perspective.
Anne Laurie
@MomSense: Good news is GREAT! Yay Korra!
zhena gogolia
I didn’t think Abramson was all that hot either, to be honest.
When I’ve written to Baquet in the past, I’ve gotten direct answers, but they sound as if they were written by a sulky 15-year-old. I guess it’s some assistant in the office. At least I hope so.
janesays
@mary s: Worse than that… he’s saying Trump is no big deal because we’ve always had cartoonishly corrupt politicians (like Edwin Edwards, who was Rod Blagojevich before Rod Blagojevich). He doesn’t even address the virulent racism.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Ladyraxterinok:
No idea about Pat, but I believe Churchill had a plan to attack the Soviet Union in the immediate post WW2 period, called appropriately, Operation Unthinkable. Just imagine if the WAllies hadn’t have been as successful at invading Western Europe and the Soviets managed to conquer all of continental Europe during WW2? Unsettling to say the least
Barry
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: “Baquet infuriates me with his seeming obliviousness but simultaneous condescending way of speaking. He’s a black man too who used to live and work in Louisiana, you’d think he’d wake the fuck up and see where this all potentially heading. But hey, maybe he figures he’ll be dead when all of this reaches fruition?”
He got where he is by carrying water for people who didn’t care about that.
He also certainly figures that he’s high enough that it won’t effect him or his family.
He also is paid to think that ‘this is fine’.
ET
He’s right Americans do have short memories and assume things are “new” or whatever. He is wrong in not pointing out that what is going on is wrong and that not being pointed while at the same time also being so academic for lack of a better word, is normalizing the abberant. It makes the NY Times part of the problem. He can balance being truthful, being a newspaper, not rushing off to the hyperbole ridden muckraking. That is called doing his job.
Baud
@MomSense:
Such awesome news.
My work here is done.
janesays
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: He’s not that old – only 62.
Martin
I think this is part of a larger problem when it comes to consolidation of power. Every institution like this – corporations, parties, religious groups, you name it, look back to assess what in the past did or didn’t work for them. So when you are trying to preserve the reputation of the NYT, you look back at what preserved it in the past, and what harmed it.
All institutions are conservative, in that respect. They are always backward looking – all of them. It’s why Nancy is at least a bit more focused on the lessons learned from Clinton’s impeachment more than she’s focused on how the current energy on the ground might shape the future. It’s why new entrants to a market can do things that larger, more established players can’t – they have no reputation to protect and no past to look at for lessons.
That’s why voters often like non-politicians. They tend to reject that rearward view. This just confirms that Baquet is far more focused on reputation protection than anything else. That’s always dangerous for a business.
Brachiator
Not quite. Baquet is delusional. He would love to have the New Times cover the takeover of the United States by a full on dictator. He is delusional because he simply does not understand that he and every employee of the paper would swiftly be put to death.
He also exhibits the self-defeating cynicism of some oppressed people. He’s seen some bad shit and is actually happy that the squares are getting a taste of the nasty shit he’s seen for years. But he’s been conditioned to watch, duck and cover, and to accept an occasional ass kicking. He’s never learned to fight back. Or to become part of an army of resistance.
ETA. I recall reading the memoirs of European artists from the 1930s. Some of these people wrote approvingly of communism and the Soviet Union even though they knew that the Soviets were executing artists and intellectuals. There was a gigantic disconnect. They could not imagine that their names could ever be on an enemies list. Even though they were.
Anne Laurie
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
For once — much as I hate to sound Sanders-esque — this *may* actually be a problem of class. IIRC, Basquet came from one of the “best (AA) families” in Louisiana, the “creoles” who’d carved out a safe-ish niche for themselves by emphasizing their white French ancestry. Like the “colored” in apartheid South Africa, they didn’t have all privileges of white people, but they could console themselves that at least they weren’t like those miserable black folk, either.
There were a lot of prosperous, long-established Jewish families in Germany who thought Hitler’s minions wouldn’t come for them, because they were good patriotic Germans, not miserable ghetto-dwellers who insisted on clinging to their off-putting cultural heritage. The ones who didn’t wise up in time ended up in the camps, still protesting that there had been some kind of mistake…
Jay
rp
Those are breathtakingly terrible comments by Baquet. The silver lining is that I suspect he’ll get s lot of pushback internally from the writers. (Not his boss of course)
jl
So glad I read the wise words of Banquet to ease my mind. I mean, hey, the US had a civil war before, so if we have one again, then, well… been there done that, huh? And if one side provokes it, and that same side has a sketchy cause, well, need to be very extra careful not say anything that might put them in an unfavorable light, that someone could implausibly claim was unfair. Like, for example, write misleading headlines about them if they give you the slimmest opening.
Don’t know what Banquet’s story is, but he’s become a comfortable self-satisfied suck up to power, which has a long tradition on the editorial side of the NYT, gping at lwast as far back as the 1930s. And hey, no biggy. Maybe some excitable people back then forgot that there had been a world war before.
One thing that irritated me is that Banquet drags in the reportorial side of the NYT’s work to prop up his sorry ass and that of his self-satisfied and comfortable suck up colleagues on the editorial side.
Mary G
After I cancelled my subscription a year or so ago, I thought I’d use my phone, two tablets and PC to read important articles, but I find I don’t bother. Enough of the places I do subscribe to and people on Twitter summarize any big findings. But the attitude of “we should never accept that we did wrong, even if we did” is infuriating.
Aziz, light!
I lived in NYC in the ‘80s and read the Times every day. Even then I understood that the grey lady was an employee of the one percent.
Jay
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BP_EUUWd4kU&time_continue=100
Beto says it,….
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Anyone who still doesn’t believe in global climate instability needs to spend 2 weeks here in the summer without access to A/C or cold water.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@Ladyraxterinok: But that’s not what Goku meant. Not wanting to fight alongside Stalin was not the same not wanting to fight against the Germans.
gorram
I think it’s a double-edged sword. We have to recognize that Trump is a unique threat to the security of millions of Americans (in multiple sense of the word), but without totally absolving the multiple figures and institutions that created the conditions that allowed the movement he heads to rise up. The current political situation reveals deep structural problems with centuries of history.
Where Baquet seems to be tripped up is the opposite end of the problem – that it’s important not to generalize the problems with Trump and the movement into a generic historied problem that’s been solved before and we don’t need to worry about solving once again. The last time the world had to deal with this sort of political movement emerging in a major military power, we had to invent words like “genocide” and weapons like nuclear bombs. It was not easy last time, and anyone meaningfully studied in fascism understands that it’s a mutative class of ideological frameworks more than a specific set of beliefs – we won’t be fighting the same battles as last time, and not just for technological reasons.
David Koch
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
The New York Times are who we thought they were.
Spanky
@TenguPhule:
Yes it is, and if you’re someone who feels like it’s only going to get worse – it’s not. There will come and end to the Trump era, so keep putting one foot ahead of the other. Endure. If you feel like you can’t go on, tell someone. Talk it out. We’re in this together and pulling for one another. Don’t withdraw into despair.
(Jumping over comments, so forgive if someone already put these sentiments up.)
Thanks, Tengy, for putting words to the zeitgeist.
Another Scott
@rp: “Democracy Dies in Darkness. But That’s Ok.” – Dean Baquet, probably.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
G’damn! “I grew up in the South. I’ve seen this before, so meh.”
This white guy yells, “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” FTFNYT!
Barbara
Baquet has at least two flaws in his logic. The first is assuming that he knows the end of this story because he has seen others start like it before. The second is that the not the worst thing that ever happened endings were the result of anything other than luck. We don’t always have to be lucky. It’s like hurricanes or floods or going into combat. If it happens often enough your odds of being unscathed go down. He might also consider that Louisiana has hardly been unscathed by its corrupt populist politicians, and that, like weaponry, people who have more power inflict greater damage. Trump has an AK47 while Edwin Edwards never had more than a hand gun. What a fucking, preening pile of pumped up egotistical idiocy.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: “Vermont Capital! The bigliest, most classiliest Vermont Capital ever! Tremendous!” -Dump
Jay
laura
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I will defend the the cooking and recipes section till my dying day. The NYT Cookbook is my happy place.
Roger Moore
@Barbara:
Baquet’s logic is classic conservative motivated reasoning: we can continue to behave as we always have because doing so got us to where we are now, which isn’t so bad.
Jay
Y’all, the FTFNYT told you who exactly they were and that they wern’t going to change one iota, with their “review” of their coverage of the run up to Gulf War Too, Electric Buggerall.
Roger Moore
@laura:
They advocated putting peas in guacamole. They can burn in hell with the rest of FTFNYT.
JaySinWA
@Roger Moore: It sounds like a version of “the poor will always be with us” argument against doing anything that might help a poor person.
Jay
Jay
laura
@Roger Moore: while you make an excellent point . . . It’s, dang,.you got me.
Peas in guacamole is def of the devil
rikyrah
@MomSense:
Yeah ?
Continue to heal, pup???
Roger Moore
@JaySinWA:
Very much so.
BTW, I hate that argument particularly, because it requires looking at the quote in isolation rather than in context. Jesus wasn’t saying that the poor will always be with us on a random day while out preaching. He said it right before the Last Supper, where it is clear he knew that he didn’t have much time left with the apostles. He wasn’t saying that you shouldn’t bother doing anything for the poor because they’ll always be there. He was saying that it was OK to set aside their normal mission of helping the poor for a special occasion.
Cameron
How unfair to smear the NYT for excusing Hitler. Back then they had hard-hitting reporters like Pulitzer-Prize winner Walter Duranty, and…oh. Never mind….
RAM
Baquet is, and has been for years, a cancer on American journalism.
Villago Delenda Est
Baquet needs to be put out to pasture. And never heard from again.
debbie
@MomSense:
Great pup news!
patroclus
Well, to push back against John a little, it is also somewhat condescending to refer to Louisiana as a relatively inconsequential state (google “oil”) which certainly seemed consequential when Bush was ignoring Hurricane Katrina. Nor do I consider Huey Long all that “fringe” given that his Share Our Wealth rhetoric was enormously popular and he was (briefly) considered to be a legitimate challenger to FDR before his murder.
But on the main point, John is, of course, right. Baquet seems to be missing that we’ve never really had a white supremacist POTUS that constantly engaged in race-baiting tactics like Trump does. Wilson was certainly prejudiced and some of his policies (segregating the Commerce Department) were quite racist, but even he wasn’t a public race-baiter like Trump. Maybe some of the pre-Civil War Dems (particularly Jackson) are comparable, but that was, you know 180 years ago. In modern times, this is entirely unprecedented. We’ve certainly had Members of Congress, Governors and Senators who have race-baited and loads of unsuccessful candidates who have done it (Duke), but lately, that’s been a career-ender or at least resulted in ostracism (from institutions like the NYT). Why not here, with Trump? Why do they (and others) normalize him? The headline is just the tip of the iceberg – they’ve been doing it since (at least) 2016. Why does Baquet not realize this? To point that out constantly and consistently is not “joining the Resistance” or “becoming the Nation.”
Procopius
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I’ve been racking my brain and can’t think of one. Were “they” named? I think Douglas MacArthur believed that, and yes, even after the Holocaust was revealed. Certainly Father Coughlin believed that. Neither of those men, although celebrities in their time, were ex-presidents. Actually, a lot of Americans before Pearl Harbor believed that we should ally with Germany to attack destroy the Soviet Union and Communism in general. I don’t think they wanted us to fight against Great Britain (some surely did, e.g. the Ambassador to The Court of St. James) or France (more probably did). Memory of what popular sentiment was has been carefully eliminated.
marv
Gotta be a contrarian here, and say Baquet’s position makes perfect sense to me. For good people my age (66), sometimes it seems like nobody ever knew a racist or tolerated racism, except oh yeah, jim crow in the south was a fact when I was a child, and the number of times in bars and job sites and just casual conversations I’ve heard the word nigger and just let the cock crow, O lord have mercy on me, a sinner
patroclus
@Procopius: Uh, Dugout Doug had his faults, but I’m reasonably sure that he was on the U.S.’s side against Japan.
@marv: In casual conversation, yes, Baquet has a point. From the lips of a POTUS, he’s way off-base.
joel hanes
@Roger Moore:
IMHO, in saying that they were “with us”, he meant that the poor are people like us, not different, not deserving of their fate, not othered, but part of what’s meant by “us”.
Dr Ronnie James DO
@Procopius: I mean, Reagan laid a wreath at a cemetery for Nazi soldiers, including members of the Waffen SS. “Very fine soldiers on both sides,” I guess was the thinking; Ron’s actual quote was:
“They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.”
It is worth noting that Helmut Kohl, the West German Chancellor he was visiting, originally suggested they visit a concentration camp, and Reagan turned it down.
Shameful details here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitburg_controversy
joel hanes
@marv:
Jim Crow
I know, right?
And a while before that, some Americans held slaves, and it was considered no big deal then, so it would be no big deal now if the President of the United States were to advocate chattel slavery for black people, right?
/s
Miss Bianca
@marv: uh…wtf?
Procopius
@Roger Moore: Patton wanted permission to take his 3rd Army all the way to Moscow. He seriously believed the Red Army, which had just taken Berlin, was on its last legs. I admire Patton a lot, but he was seriously anti-Communist, and anti-semitic. He believed the survivors of the Holocaust were suffering because of their own faults, and employed ex-SS soldiers as concentration camp guards (yes, the displaced persons camps were concentration camps).
Procopius
@patroclus:
Well, sure, and he was a tactical genius. His decision to make an amphibious landing at Inchon undoubtedly turned the war around and saved the trapped troops in the Pusan perimeter. That does not overcome the fact that he was a seriously flawed person. FDR once said the two most dangerous men in America were Huey Long and Douglas MacArthur.
misterpuff
@mrmoshpotato:” Obviously, its Stowe. I should build a course there.”
WereBear
@Anne Laurie: I remember.
low-tech cyclist
I didn’t know two of our classic political lines had their origin in Edwin Edwards. I had had no idea that the ‘dead girl or live boy’ line was his. And of course, “vote for the crook – it’s important” was about him, which is close enough AFAIAC.
pluky
@Anne Laurie:
from wikipedia:
According to Baquet’s colleagues, he prefers to be known as “Creole”, as opposed to African-American. His brother, Terry, has stated, “Creole in New Orleans is black. We’re descendants of Haitians. We’re black; Creole is not a race.”[31]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/
see also “gens de coloured libres”
David Wallace
Finally found the Hitler article on page 18: New Popular Idol Rises in Bavaria. Here’s a direct link to the article: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1922/11/21/98786796.pdf
Aside from misreading the depths of Hitler’s anti-Semitism (which analysis is coming from third-party sources, since the reporter never got his requested interview with Hitler), the article doesn’t seem too bad for an early look at his career c. 1922. It makes it clear that he’s a demagogue leading a bunch of violent followers who are quite disciplined about following his orders, and are a threat to civil society and his political opponents.