Remember James Bennet, the NYT editorial page editor who got shit-canned in 2020 for publishing a guest essay by Tom Cotton, the twitchy MAGA fascist from Arkansas? Of course you don’t because you have a life. But it was a big deal at the time.
It was at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s murder, when the Murdoch Cinematic Universe was telling Americans that hordes of (mostly black!) people were pillaging its cities and setting commercial properties aflame. That was mostly a big fat lie; 93% of the protests were peaceful.
But there was video of troublemakers who used some of the protests as cover to commit crimes and charges against some legitimate protesters who resisted over-the-top police crackdowns. That was enough to scare the shit out of the Fox News shut-ins and give sadistic creeps like Cotton casus belli. Cotton’s op-ed urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and unleash state violence on fellow Americans.
Lots of people upon whom that violence was most likely to be visited objected to the publication of Cotton’s screed, and a few of them were NYT staffers who called for Bennet’s firing.
NYT publisher Sulzberger and executive editor Dean Baquet forced Bennet to resign, and now he’s written a “dishy 16,000-word essay” about it to settle all scores. It’s titled “When the New York Times Lost Its Way,” and it was published in The Economist yesterday.
I confess I have not read it because 16,000 words (I have a fucking life too, you know), but these excerpts in Politico are…bewildering:
Bennet paints a picture of a contentious and often acrimonious generational and philosophical civil war within the Times newsroom between 2016 and 2020. While old guard Times journalists continued to privately support traditional journalistic values like fairness, pluralism and political independence, Bennet writes, they gradually capitulated to their younger, more ideologically motivated colleagues, who pushed the paper to elevate liberal viewpoints and shun conservative perspectives.
“The Times’s problem has metastasised from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favour one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether,” Bennet writes. “All the empathy and humility in the world will not mean much against the pressures of intolerance and tribalism without an invaluable quality that Sulzberger did not emphasise: courage.”
Bennet charges that this gradual leftward shift came to infect the paper’s coverage of a range of issues beyond Trump, gradually undermining its credibility and pandering to its most left-leaning readers.
Oh my fucking God! Is this about “woke” again? Because goddamn, the literal fascists are at the gate, women’s status as first-class citizens and access to modern healthcare has been vaporized by a corrupt and unaccountable court, and voters have demonstrated that they don’t give a flying fuck about “woke.” So can we stop beating that long deceased and thoroughly decomposed-to-dust horse yet? Apparently not!
And even if what Bennet alleges is true, did the Times not hire a woman named Pamela Paul (or Paula Pam?) to cover “woke” oppression of conservatives as a full-time beat? Does the paper not employ noted conservatives Bret Stephens, Ross Douthat and David Brooks to admonish liberals for driving Republicans into the arms of the Proud Boys with “woke” nonsense? I’m pretty sure there’s at least one anti-“woke” black man on the payroll who regularly suggests racism isn’t that big of a deal.
Bennet’s claim that Sulzberger and Baquet initially backed his decision to publish Cotton’s essay and then threw him under the bus when the blowback arrived sounds very on brand. This does not:
Yet even before his firing, Bennet writes, he had grown troubled by a shift in the paper’s editorial philosophy: “The old liberal embrace of inclusive debate that reflected the country’s breadth of views [gave] way to a new intolerance for the opinions of roughly half of American voters.”
Huh. I thought the exact fucking opposite happened — that political desks and op-ed rosters at the Times and other national outlets, including the Post, bent over backwards to amplify and validate Trump voters. That’s what the Cletus safaris were all about. That’s why Gary Abernathy has a job at the Post.
Perhaps ego drove Bennet to reframe his professional garroting to give it world-historical significance. If I ever get around to reading the whole piece (unlikely), maybe I’ll find there’s more to it. But it kinda sounds like he got dumped by flinchy careerists, which would also be on brand. The Times, they ain’t a-changing.
Open thread!
brendancalling
It’s really too bad that James Bennett wasn’t in the WTC on 9/11.
OK, that’s a little harsh, but ghood lord I fucking hate the FTNYT.
Old School
One: Conservatives are always being attacked!
Two: If not being attacked, see #1.
SW
Lifespans are finite. You will never get back the time it takes to read that garbage.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think Bennet’s upset that the dirty hippies punch back now.
Thor Heyerdahl
I would love to see a Tony Jay letter to the editor of The Economist (either the first flamethrowing draft, or a muted British passive aggressive one attempting publication).
Harrison Wesley
Yeah, I think he has it just backwards. Perhaps NYT leans “liberal” in some nineteenth-century sense, but leftist it sure as shit ain’t.
J.
I must be reading a different version of the NYT. The version I see leans right/MAGA.
OzarkHillbilly
Shorter Bennett: “Wah.”
Matt
Shorter Bennet: “I knew exactly what that editorial said, and I ran it because I agreed with it. Now I’m sad because people noticed I’m a fascist!”
Thor Heyerdahl
My response if The Economist sends me subscription offers.
Scout211
Yes, that’s how I read the original article. Well, at least the part of the article that I could tolerate. He needed an editor for that long screed. LOL
My take:
Shorter Bennet: “Wah! But let me tell you in a million words why I am brilliant.”
Kay
Yup. It is their very favorite subject. These are very conventional people who were so rattled by BLM, Me Too and covid that they lost their minds. They don’t handle change or challenges well. I think we are in for a rough ride the next couple of years and we need to look for resilient, flexible people who can surf the waves without going insane. You won’t find them at the NYTimes. BRITTLE. They break.
RaflW
16,000 words to say “I’m old and scared of the youths of today” while making himself out to be a victim.
The only surprise is that I generally think of The Economist as being more discerning, and way more succinct!
Thor Heyerdahl
More wanking than to his OnlyFans subscription.
HumboldtBlue
Sweet Jesus beating Mary Magdalene’s ass with a protractor, 70 million people is about a fifth, 20 percent of the country’s population you innumerate fucksticle and even when accounting for all eligible voters it maybe gets to 30 percent.
Kay
I think the NYTimes has devoted more words to the existential threat of The Woke than they have to real women being denied health care due to abortion bans.
This isn’t even what the public is interested in! DeSantis ran on anti woke. The public yawned. Anti woke tanked nationally in elections in 2022. But it doesn’t matter! Our Public Intellectuals fucking LOVE this subject and you cannot get them off it.
Kay
Also- can I just say one more time that media people talk about themselves too much? You’re not that fascinating and neither is your industry. This is a circle jerk.
brendancalling
@Kay: I feel so sorry for that chicken they keep fucking. That poor bird.
Bugboy
There’s a gated community I drive by every morning on the way to work, full of McMansions (2 story 6 bedroom on a zero lot line. I WANT IT!!!!11!!!) whose main entrance is a street named “Woker”. I chuckle every time..
ETA: Have I long-last become a misanthrope? Yes, I think I have…
Harrison Wesley
“A new series, featuring a courageous young governor desperately trying to save his state from…The Woking DEId….”
Barbara
Did it really escape Bennet’s attention that Tom Cotton was calling for armed forces to open fire on protesters? Does he consider that to be an acceptable point of view? Would he feel the same way if said statement were made in a different context in a different kind of conflict (use your imagination — Israelis and Palestinians). How has that worked out for other societies that are supposed to be open and democratic? Ever hear the term “Bloody Sunday?”
If Bennet really can’t fathom how that “point of view” strips out debate by subjecting one side of the debate to lethal violence then he’s an idiot.
sab
Bennett was published in the Economist? I knew there was a reason I let my subscription to that rag lapse.
RaflW
@sab: As mentioned up thread, it’s worse than we thought
Can we expect Jeffrey Goldberg (eic at The Atlantic now) to fail upwards similarly?
Thor Heyerdahl
Wokekake?
Betsy
Where can I find a balletomane husband??
(reading Anne Laurie’s post below)
UncleEbeneezer
@Harrison Wesley: Anything to the left of the NYPost or WSJ Op-Ed page = Liberal Bias!!1!
UncleEbeneezer
@Thor Heyerdahl: I am intrigued and would like to sign up for your newsletter, etc.
Chris
And even that makes it sound worse for BLM than it actually is, because it tells you nothing about how many of the 7% of violent protests turned violent because of the protesters and how many turned violent because of cops or “counter-protesters.” I’m sure sometimes it was the protesters; you can’t have a movement that wide without a few assholes. But as we saw especially in 2020, it very often isn’t. Cops simply start attacking people, and the media euphemistically reports it as “riots” and lets you connect the dots and assume that those crazy out-of-control blacks went crazy and out of control again.
Betsy
@Kay: Amen!
But I’m told that no one wants to read about issues or local politics in our cities, because the editors of our largest newspaper say that’s just “insider baseball.”
jonas
What idiots like Bennet (and the heads of major networks like CNN) can’t seem to gronk is that our political landscape is no longer divided between “conservatives” and “liberal”, or Democratic and Republican, but between center-left and jet-screaming fascism. There may have once been legitimately two sides to an argument that could be hashed out in the pages of the Grey Lady, but now it’s effectively, in the words of our esteemed blogfather, Italian food vs. tire rims and anthrax. Why a professional journalistic outfit should feel obligated to twist itself into pretzels pretending that the tire rims and anthrax (or say, siccing the military on unarmed BLM protestors) just represents a “different perspective”, I’m not sure.
For a news organization that has gotten genocidal authoritarianism wrong so badly in the past (“Germans Find New Chancellor’s Little Mustache, Straight Talk Charming”), you’d think they would step back and think this over for a minute, but apparently not.
Betsy
@Chris: In the cities near me, fascists and neo-nazis went specifically to the protests to get window-smashing and vandalism started. There are photos and video of specific, known skinheads smashing things and trying to initiate that process (I guess it can take hold and then others participate) but they were only partly successful.
RaflW
In unsurprising Trump-toadying news, Elise Stefanik is a gobshyte.
The complaint was submitted to D.C. Court of Appeals Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan.
brantl
@Thor Heyerdahl: Why not both?
UncleEbeneezer
@Chris: Yup. And there were also a couple examples where violence was sparked by (likely Nazi) assholes posing as Antifa.
Harrison Wesley
@RaflW: Guess she’s feeling pretty frisky after collecting the scalp of a university president.
RaflW
@Chris: I seem to be a lone kook on this, but based on photo comparison, method of operation, and timing, I firmly believe that Derek Chauvin was the infamous Umbrella Man who smashed the AutoZone near the MPLS 3rd Precinct to inflame violence.
He got convicted of enough that I don’t push it much, but he had plenty of motive to do that crime, and whoever Umbrella Man was, the video is chilling in its precision and methodicalness. It was certainly not some Antifa dude on a spree.
Chris
And it isn’t even true. There has been absolutely no sign of a leftward shift at the New York Times, which has spent most of the last couple years uncritically signal-boosting every person worked up about the transgender panic, desperately trying to manifest a Ron DeSantis presidency (or Republican candidacy) into being, and repeating with ever-increasing hysterics that JOE BIDEN IS OLD DAMN IT THIS IS HISTORY’S GREATEST SCANDAL. No sign of a leftward shift, and every sign of a rightward shift.
This happens constantly in mainstream institutions. Every new moon cycle, somebody pops up and shrieks that the institution has lost its way, it’s being captured by the woke-politically correct-hippie-Bolshie-abolitionist-[insert Enemy Of The People of the day here], and it’s in grave danger unless it rediscovers its conservative roots and reassures the good conservative people that it’s still on their side. Sometimes it’s a reaction to something the institution has done, but usually not even that; it’s just something right-wingers do, to keep and tighten their grip on society.
It’s literally our version of how the Soviets kept the entire government on a war footing with panicked admonitions about counterrevolutionary activities, when anybody who wasn’t a complete lunatic could see that all they had was a totalitarian system with no counterrevolutionaries within miles of it.
(Note also the dishonest comparison of “the old school liberals,” as if any of the people pushing this bullshit had ever been liberals even in the 1780s sense).
sab
@RaflW: The main reason that I let my subscription lapse was the anonymity ( sic???) Nobody had a byline so we never knew which asshole was writing whatever.
One of my pet peeves at BJ is we complain about what the NYT or NPR says without naming the actual author/reporter. Yet those outfits allow bylines that tell us who said what. And they have other people who are excellent. The Economist, on the other hand, has absolute anonymity. Everyone, even their remote stringers, speak as the Economist. I find that problematic.
Thor Heyerdahl
@brantl: agreed. What can the Tories, nu-new Labour and English football results also add for an outpouring of creative juices?
teezyskeezy
@Thor Heyerdahl: I would hope so. That, I assume, would be a pretty niche interest. Gawd I hope anyway.
Chris
@Betsy:
One of the things that recurred several times on the videos coming out in 2020 was that
1) the people protesting and the people smashing and breaking things are very distinctly not the same crowd. Like, you’d have a protest in one place, and a full block away you’d have people breaking and stealing shit.
2) the police was perfectly aware of the two groups, and choosing to ignore the latter in favor of the former. Like, you’d see the protest gradually moving away from the area being looted, and you’d see the cops dutifully following the protesters, and not one of them turning back to stamp out the looting.
RaflW
@jonas: Most bizarre is that they don’t read Trump’s plain threats to jail journalists as applicable to them.
He is 100% steaming resentment, keeps long lists and endless grudges. Even full flattery gets one nothing if there has ever been even one perceived slight.
IOW they don’t even have self-preservation thought through. It’s f’ing weird (and distressing).
SiubhanDuinne
Just heard some guy in Iowa talking about why he’s voting for DeSantis and not Trump: “Trump won’t do a good job this time because the Democrats won’t let him.”
Such dazzling logic.
RaflW
@Harrison Wesley: Of course. That’s one of many reasons I’m mad that so many Dems went along with that House vote.
I’m also pissed because why the flunk should Congress meddle in the choice of leaders of private institutions? Andy Kim and a whole bunch of others who should know better caved in and set bad precedent while empowering ethically vacuous Elise.
sab
@Chris: So do you believe that when Liz Cheney blathers on that Antifa burned down Portland and Minneapolis that she believes that Antifa actually did that (they did not) or that she is just lying and saying they did when she knows they did not
ETA I phrased that badly, saying you believe what obviously you don’t. Sorry.
Barbara
@RaflW: “Ethically vacuous” is a charitable way to describe what Stefanik is.
schrodingers_cat
99 years ago NYT vouched for Hitler, they haven’t changed since then.
strange visitor (from another planet)
oh give me a fucking break. first of all, fucking tom cotton, (“the bobble-throated slap dick”) demanded a military response against the protesters with NO QUARTER….
…you know, a WAR CRIME. sooo, yah. there’s that. but tell me again how BLM is a threat to the constitutional order, tommy.
also, you know, we’re in a country with like three hundred forty million fucking people. last time i checked, seventy four million isn’t CLOSE to half of that number. more like a quarter. i mean, i know we were told there’d be no math, but FFS.
Miss Bianca
@Harrison Wesley: OK, I snortled. That’s the best you’re going to get out of me before my second cup of coffee!
Miss Bianca
@Kay: One of the rarely-discussed advantages of being a lowly local government journalist, as opposed to a big NYT government journalist, is that *in no way* can I delude myself that anyone gives a shit about my so-called Deep Thoughts.
A useful ego check, as it were.
BigJimSlade
Good lord, “intolerance and tribalism” is exactly the conservative goal. EAIAC, again.
sab
@strange visitor (from another planet): More than a quarter (and I haven’t done the arithmetic) , more like the magic 27%.
Pardon my punctuation.
Sloegin
Right / Left really isn’t a good way of looking at it. The NYT is not a paper for the proles. The NYT is classist. Always has been.
sab
@Miss Bianca: Yet those guys are the lifeblood of local journalism. I will never cancel my local paper, however many USA Today bullshit stories they run, because in between they have stories by the local reporters. God those guys work hard. They are everywhere.
Rusty
The NYT is only progressive in a very limited way, the paper represents a Manhattan-ite version of what I think of as limousine liberalism. On LGBT+ issues it’s generally good because their own children, or their college friends might be gay and they are supportive of them being able to marry and not experiencing discrimination (but with a blind spot for trans issues where they need to “ask questions” because they are uncomfortable with the whole idea). They are basically good on environmental issues, and broadly ok with everyone getting healthcare but if it’s shitty in rural areas or the inner city, then life is tough. They are mediocre on racial issues, against outright discrimination but secretly happy with the demise of affirmative action because it makes it easier for their own kids to get into the Ivies now. That Hispanic girl down the hall at college or that black guy at work really didn’t deserve to be there when they were younger. They are indifferent at best to public schools, the general idea is ok but they send their own children to exclusive private schools and resent school taxes and so privatization or vouchers are fine. On every other tax they are silent at best and secretly gleeful and feel they deserve it every time the Republicans cut them. On labor issues they suck, because they like cheap and good services. Overall they are pro-business because it helps their portfolio. NYT coverage broadly falls along these lines.
Dave
@Harrison Wesley: It leans conventional and because it’s in NYC that means it has a strong gloss of socially liberal in the leave people alone sense (with a fair number of exceptions) and a modest one in the economic sense as (with a great many exceptions) as long as that doesn’t upset or make uncomfortable anyone upper middle class and above.
Kay
@Miss Bianca:
It seems to me they have big communication problems and trust issues in their workplace. They should stop extrapolating that dysfunction to the whole country.
I don’t think it was a coincidence that some of the biggest me too stories came out of the media industry. They seem to have trouble adjusting to changes in societal norms.
trollhattan
@RaflW: “Even the liberal” is the lazy adjective for NYT held by most, which papers over [heh] their countless pro-Republican-fascist assists. “This Hitler fellow has some intriguing ideas about diet and who is and is not human.”
Chris
@sab:
No worries.
I think the line between what conservatives actually believe and what they don’t believe but are lying about for tactical reasons is blurry as fuck, and they themselves aren’t increasingly unaware of it.
NotMax
When said opinions advocate simplistic nonsense, blatant illegality, demonstrably unconstitutional methodology and/or clear threat (whether physical or ideological) to the bedrock of the commonweal or a portion of its inhabitants, intolerance of them is the very minimum which will suffice.
Giving credibility to both sides in the misplaced guise of above the fray neutrality don’t cut the mustard.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the political press treated Hillary Clinton like shit. I mean, look at the media gatekeepers who subsequently got torched by Me Too!
sdhays
Did he address the fact that he supposedly didn’t even read the Cotton piece before publishing it? I recall that as being one of his preposterous defenses back when he was trying to save his job (that he was too busy to do?).
Old Man Shadow
Objection! Asserts facts not in evidence.
Kay
I love how insulting and patronizing the anti abortion politicians are. Women just don’t understand their own health and health care. Once the men of the Right EXPLAIN it to them it will be fine.
They’re so much more clueless than I thought they would be, especially because there’s an enormous and lavishly funded “pro life” lobbying industry that is full of fancy lawyers and communications people. They suck at their job.
Donald Trump is going to explain abortion bans to women while they’re bleeding out in the hospital parking lot having been refused medical care. Good luck with that.
Dave
@RaflW: Sufficiently sheltered they can’t imagine he really means it and that it could happen to them.
My brother is part of the Silicon Valley tech bro set and they collectively seem to be falling into the classic trap of not taking reactionaries seriously because said reactionaries are silly people that aren’t real to them.
They do however swim in an environment where the excesses of the very online left are more immediate and real to them so they tend to exaggerate the power that is there (all the while assuming they themselves are of course rational and apolitical it’s every one else that is weird).
Pretty sure places like the Times are similar even if the dynamic varies some in the details.
sdhays
@SiubhanDuinne: LOL. Yeah, DeSantis has a great rapport with
humansDemocrats.MattF
Bennet is applying the well-known Rovian ploy of accusing your political opponents of doing precisely what you are doing. It gets old after the first several dozen times you’ve seen it.
Thor Heyerdahl
O/T but speaking of trash
Swedish labour union to stop collecting Tesla waste
Anyway
@sab:
oh c’mon – BJ peeps call out FTFNYT hacks by name all the time. IJudith Miller (HOF), Mags Haberman, Amy Chozick (who made $$$ off HRC), Peter Baker, Jonathan Martin (from the reportorial side) – are all excoriated here by name (with me cheering on). The op-ed heavyhitters Applebee Brooks, Friedman Unit, Bedbug Stephens, Chunky Doubthat etc have nicknames. I hate them all so much!
Chris
@Rusty:
… honestly I think their biggest issue is that they’re liberals with lots of conservative friends and their commitment to all these things, even the good ones you mentioned, is shallow as fuck because of it. They’re the kind of liberals who may be “good” on gay rights or the environment, but are also very sad that these issues make their conservative friends upset, and think that whatever the answer is clearly has to reassure and compromise with their conservative friends so they’re not so upset. (Which is of course not a thing).
Because they live in the upscale parts of New York City, of course, “the kind of conservatives they know” skews a certain way, which also very much doesn’t help. A lot of the conservatives they know are going to be Mitt Romney types at worst and Michael Bloomberg types at best, rather than the completely deranged neo-Confederate types, which is part of why they’re constantly trying to convince themselves that they can’t be as bad as all those crazy lefties say. (Even in their city they should know better – this is the place that produced Rudy Giuliani after all – but they don’t. They like their conservative friends. They don’t want to think badly of them).
Chris
@Dave:
The fact that Donald Trump spent his entire life in the New York Times’ back yard and they still can’t take the threat of him seriously says a lot about that.
He was always right under their nose, but to them he was a sideshow and a punchline, and the city’s real elites, conservatives included, looked down their nose at him as a clown. In some sense they still can’t believe that this dynamic isn’t being replicated in politics and at the national level.
Marcopolo
Honestly, these privileged Caucasian men (and I live near the border of that distinction myself) living their unexamined privileged lives tire me out—when they aren’t pissing me off. But I am aware that their point of view and privilege (and actions/policies resulting from it) often leads to awful consequences for folks outside of their sphere because they wield power in our society/culture.
I am also reminded that this guy’s brother is one of the two US Senators from CO & hope there is substantial separation in how they view the world.
cain
@Chris: In Portland, a protest went fine until they started marching to some other place and that is when the subversives start infiltrating.
sab
@Anyway: And often they call out the Institution and not the hacks by name. I am okay with that for NYT, but not for NPR or PBS. That is just dishonest and misleading. NPR and PBS you can know what reporter reported whatever. And they do differ.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
About the whole “NYT is moving left” it was never the NYT changed, it has always been what is considered main stream conservationism has moved to the lunatic fringe. It has been pointed out that many people considered liberals right now would be conservatives in a sane political landscape.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I saw a clip yesterday of a Dana Bash interview with Nikki Haley, who is pretending to be a “moderate” member of the anti-reproductive healthcare party. The moderate line amounts to talking about how the party should show more compassion and be realistic about what bans are possible at the moment, blah blah blah, not anything resembling a recognition of women’s autonomy.
To her credit, Bash followed up on that gibberish with a specific question: if Haley were governor of Texas, what would she want done in the Cox case? Haley hemmed and hawed about her unfamiliarity with TX law so couldn’t speak directly to the Cox case. But eventually she said lawmakers don’t always get the legislation right and some abortion bans might have to be “tweaked” in some unspecified fashion so women don’t bleed out in parking lots or die of sepsis. That’s the “moderate” view.
different-church-lady
Ooops…
kindness
James Bennett is no different from any conservative. When things go bad, which they always do because they suck as human beings, they blame ‘The Left’ for all their own errors in judgement. They refuse to accept any responsibility for their dumb decisions.
Harrison Wesley
@Miss Bianca: Alas, life imitates art in the Sunshine State. Or that’s my impression as a Yankee who’s only lived here a few years.
El Muneco
@Chris: Historically, “race riots”, “Zoot Suit riots”, etc. are what the press called them. Historians established that in the vast majority – the vanishing majority – of cases, violence was instigated by law enforcement or hired outside agitators.
Barbara
@Chris: Conservative friends, parents, and other relatives. The friend issue is especially obvious in Washington D.C., which is why the NYT political coverage is especially bad. They keep reporting as if their kind of conservative friends would be running the show if Republicans control things. How you could believe this after 2016 just amazes me, but there are lots of people whose professional leverage relies on that assumption.
Citizen Alan
@jonas:
Assumes facts not in evidence. Has the NYT ever acknowledged let alone apologized for its pro-fascist slant in the era leading up to WW2? And if not, why should we assume the NYT institutionally thinks it’s coverage was “wrong” or that it should change it’s objectively pro-fascist coverage today? Is there anyone working at the NYT as a journalist or editor who seriously worries that their own lives might be adversely affected if Trump is reelected and declares himself dictator? I mean, think of all the clicks.
UncleEbeneezer
I think this is one of the most overlooked aspects of the way that Conservatives/ism are treated with such kid-gloves in this country. I know people who are pretty strong liberals but who refuse to reach the obvious conclusion about the GOP and Fascism (and Racism, Sexism, LGBTQphobia etc.) primarily because, well, they have Republican friends and family and they don’t want to think about how these people that they like could support these terrible things. So they reverse-engineer a mindset that allows them to escape this painful cognitive dissonance and keep seeing these people as good people. And worse, they pat themselves on the back as if maintaining some relations with MAGA friends makes them better people than those of us who just want nothing to do with those assholes. I remember an episode of the Marc Maron podcast where he interviewed Skip Gates and Gates proudly told him that he still has friends that are Trump voters and even suggested that unfriending MAGA people was just another form of intolerance. It was so damn disappointing, especially from someone as smart as he is.
Jeffro
She has a SERIOUS axe to grind: Harvard actually made her feel…gasp…what…consequences for supporting trumpov’s lies about the 2020 election. They kicked her off of its Institute of Politics’ board for that.
Never-ending attempts at revenge by damaged people: that’s literally all the GOP stands for these days.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I have given this a huge amount of thought since law school and read extensively and I just don’t see how they “tweak” state law to allow for pregnancy health care while banning abortion. How would they do this? They would need to list every possible health issue with a range of possible responses.
Roe was right. They cannot legislate in this space. They can do broad restrictions based on weeks but there has to be a very broad health exception or they are going to be diiagnosing individual women.
“Health of the mother” is where the anti abortion movement hits a brick wall. It’s where reality intrudes on religious/ideological dogma. They can’t fix it.
Martin
Looks like the news cycle is going to hang on the 10″ thick binder of Russia interference evidence (sources and methods) that Trump said he was going to declassify and instead sounds like he had someone destroy, or else it’s behind a gold toilet somewhere.
Sure Lurkalot
I was thinking there’d be a post on this and I stopped reading early on, at this:
Unfortunately, he’s the brother of one of my senators.
Then there’s the Wapo today, highlighting the biggest whoppers of 2023, with the center bigger picture of JOE BIDEN and the story leading with JOE BIDEN.
Wow, those whoppers are sure to end democracy as we know it. When I get back from lunch with my sweet SIL, I’m finally canceling that rag like I did the FTFNYT, years ago.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
They’re STILL not doing any real thinking. 15 weeks sounded snappy and marketable so idiots jumped on that but every single litigant in Texas would still be denied medical care with a 15 week ban. They were all past 15 weeks.
They have to think about this and they refuse to. It’s hard! They sneered at Roe for 50 years but Roe was the compromise that works. There aren’t 5000 ways to do this. They aren’t going to come up with anything better.
Jeffro
@Kay: I don’t know why trump, Ted Cruz, any of them think that they can just not respond on this. (or in Cruz’s case, keep telling reporters to “call my press office”)
We have them on tape, endlessly. We have gazillions of social media posts. Hell in trump’s case, we have him noting on camera that “there has to be some form of punishment for the woman” [for having an abortion]. “PUNISHMENT”!
Own it and rally your side, Republicans. Why not – you pushed and pushed and pushed for it for decades. Let’s see how it all shakes out next November.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I think that’s right. The Texas Supreme Court’s ruling discounted what it called Cox’s doctor’s “good faith belief” that continuing the pregnancy was a danger to Cox’s health and fertility, and that struck me as unbelievably arrogant. How the hell are they qualified to overrule a doctor’s medical judgment? It’s nuts.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I have a weird swelling beneath my eyes. It’s NOT eye cancer – ruled that out with a Google :)
Anyway. My PCP just asked me for a photo of the swelling which I sent to her. Treating people is really hard because each case is different! Justice Alito and Nikki Haley don’t know how to do it.
rikyrah
NewsOne (@newsone) posted at 11:32 AM on Fri, Dec 15, 2023:
Pastor At Iowa Rally Threatens ‘Judgment,’ ‘Retribution’ When Donald Trump ‘Becomes The 47th President’
https://t.co/FOuFM4tRRH
(https://x.com/newsone/status/1735714336214069745?t=EN6NwXyqHBM6Gpdf1G_j6Q&s=03)
Chris
@El Muneco:
Yeah, once you start reading about the pre-WWII civil rights protests and “race riots,” it becomes quickly clear that nothing actually changed in the 1950s. It’s just that there were now cameras filming and news networks broadcasting, and all of a sudden, a whole nation of people who’d gotten used to rolling their eyes and shaking their heads about Those People, At It Again when the papers mentioned a race riot were getting it beamed right into their faces that, oh shit, those people really aren’t doing anything, they really are being attacked out of the blue!
Eventually, they learned to go back to business and rationalize that “well, the media’s making them look bad.” But for a few years the shock from the cameras actually made a difference.
raven
Editors’ Note, June 5, 2020:
After publication, this essay met strong criticism from many readers (and many Times colleagues), prompting editors to review the piece and the editing process. Based on that review, we have concluded that the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.
The basic arguments advanced by Senator Cotton — however objectionable people may find them — represent a newsworthy part of the current debate. But given the life-and-death importance of the topic, the senator’s influential position and the gravity of the steps he advocates, the essay should have undergone the highest level of scrutiny. Instead, the editing process was rushed and flawed, and senior editors were not sufficiently involved. While Senator Cotton and his staff cooperated fully in our editing process, the Op-Ed should have been subject to further substantial revisions — as is frequently the case with such essays — or rejected.
For example, the published piece presents as facts assertions about the role of “cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa”; in fact, those allegations have not been substantiated and have been widely questioned. Editors should have sought further corroboration of those assertions, or removed them from the piece. The assertion that police officers “bore the brunt” of the violence is an overstatement that should have been challenged. The essay also includes a reference to a “constitutional duty” that was intended as a paraphrase; it should not have been rendered as a quotation.
Beyond those factual questions, the tone of the essay in places is needlessly harsh and falls short of the thoughtful approach that advances useful debate. Editors should have offered suggestions to address those problems. The headline — which was written by The Times, not Senator Cotton — was incendiary and should not have been used.
Finally, we failed to offer appropriate additional context — either in the text or the presentation — that could have helped readers place Senator Cotton’s views within a larger framework of debate.
Harrison Wesley
@Sure Lurkalot: “And that Amtrak conductor – he had tears in his eyes – he said, “Sir……….”
rikyrah
Gordon Craig: (@gordoncraig11) posted at 8:09 AM on Fri, Dec 15, 2023:
Be absolutely assured that the @DailyMirror group is not the only newspaper involved in hacking Prince Harry and others. Today’s judgment partially explains the newspaper industries prolonged campaign to damage his reputation. They don’t want you to show any sympathy.
(https://x.com/gordoncraig11/status/1735663275935732151?t=gMob7mFIfzCPlnmrolPhvg&s=03)
Jeffro
@rikyrah: @ #84
Revenge, retribution, wreaking havoc, smashing shit – it’s all they ever offer to do. Anything to make peoples’ lives better? Anything about climate change, education, cheaper and better health care? NOPE. Just cruelty, all the way down.
No wonder they didn’t have a party platform in 2020 and won’t again in 2024
Chris
@Barbara:
@UncleEbeneezer:
What drives me insane is that they don’t even listen to them.
I got to where I am in terms of realistically appraising the modern GOP (namely, that it was ripe for someone like Trump long before him and that it’s going to be his party long after he’s gone) precisely by actually fucking listening to conservatives, and not pundits or politicians but relatives, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, etc. Which reveals very quickly that almost all of them are scarily authoritarian bigots who largely view politics as a way to abuse people for the crime of not being like them. And that that’s true even if they view you personally as “one of the good ones” (though in many cases you’re flattering yourself if you think that).
But so many liberals just remember the good vibes they got from drinking together or playing together or going to games together or working together or having been college roommates, so they just ignore or don’t even listen to anything they’re actually saying, and then continuously retcon everything they know about them to be all “oh, they’re not so bad, they just get a little carried away sometimes.”
piratedan
cripes, the Hallmark Holiday movies have more diverse plot points than these guys….
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer: I think about this a lot since 75% of my community and half my family are MAGA dopes. My kid is queer, so it’s really personal to me. Chuckle-fucks like DeSantis want to unperson my child, and people who voted for DeSantis, Trump, etc., either agree that my child should be unpersoned or don’t think that view is a dealbreaker.
This is infuriating to me, and in my eyes, anyone who voted for Trump or DeSantis — especially twice — has committed a moral offense comparable to armed robbery or something. I’m talking about my father and beloved aunts and uncles who helped raise me, who have been there for me through all of life’s sorrows and triumphs. People I love.
Are they bad people? Well, they are people who have done bad things. They are people who hold appalling views. They are unambiguously poor judges of character. But they are also people who have been incredibly generous and kind and loving. I don’t think “bad people” tells the whole story.
Anyhoo, I certainly don’t think people who choose to cut MAGA dopes out of their lives are intolerant. But I also don’t think choosing to keep MAGA dopes in your life is an endorsement of their views or failure to hold them accountable, as some folks claim. People are complicated.
Chris Johnson
DARVO. They’re the baddies and they know it. For pretty much decades (at least one decade, surely more) they are outright the knowing tool of wealthy fascists trying to overthrow this country from outside it.
Why? Sympathy, but mostly money. It HAS been decades since newspapers stopped being a relevant business. They have to get their money from somewhere, so they’re getting it from literally Putin.
rikyrah
About the Abortion Drug Case. There are 2.
1. The phony doctor’s group – they don’t have standing.
2. The regulatory question – I don’t see how they sever this one drug from the rest of Big Pharma. And, I believe Big Pharma will win.
So, no, I don’t think that they will strike down the ability to get this drug across the USA.
Citizen Alan
@Kay:
They don’t even want to fix it. They just don’t. It’s like I said the other day: 90% of “pro-life” dogma is not driven in any sense by actual concern for the lives of the “unborn.” Rather, it is driven by the religious conviction that all the pain and risks of pregnancy were a literal curse placed on all women by God due to Eve eating the Forbidden Fruit, and anything that alleviates that pain and risk is contrary to God’s will. I guarantee you that once they move on to banning contraception, they will start arguing against epidurals and anything that reduces pain during delivery. I’ve already seen clips of fundamentalist preachers talking about it.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
this
When you have a party that wants to strip you of your rights to exist.
Politics is personal.
And, no, I can’t be in a room with folks that don’t believe my humanity is equal to theirs.
rikyrah
@UncleEbeneezer:
They don’t want to confront that these people are horrible and wouldn’t think twice about having all of YOUR rights taken away. They wouldn’t defend you for shyt.
As a Black woman, I see this plain as day.
rikyrah
@Kay:
They don’t want to fix it.
kalakal
After reading bits of his dribblings I feel he should be made their Pitcairn Island columnist. Think of it as a sideways* move in their organizational structure
*5,100 miles sideways
Marcopolo
Thanks for the folks who did read Bennet’s screed because I just saw a report of this “throwaway line” about which I’d love to hear more reporting:
“President Trump himself submitted one op-ed [to the Times] during my time, but we could not raise it to our standards – his people would not agree to the edits we asked for.”
Also, am I the only person who finds it odd/disturbing how far the NYT editorial staff apparently would go to make an outside editorial submission palatable for publication? The mea culpa post above by Raven at #94 indicates they did all kinds of clean up on aisle 7 with Cotton’s original submission. I mean if you want to publish for the sake of free speech & transparency just do it. And right next to it post the NYT response as to why it’s a an authoritarian nightmare opinion we should all be horrified by. Don’t fucking clean it up & deliver it with a pretty bow.
Citizen Alan
@Betty Cracker:
It all comes down to tribalism. There is nothing intellectually inconsistent about showing kindness to people inside the tribe while showing unremitting hatred to people outside it. Many would argue there’s nothing morally inconsistent about it. It all comes down to whether you are willing to acknowledge members of other tribes as beings worthy of mutual respect.
Grover Gardner
Bennett’s career in journalism is basically over, and the more he whines the less his chances of ever being hired by any any respectable news organization again. Also, I know someone who works for the NYT and you won’t find a more hide-bound, red-tape-saturated, bureaucratic, sluggish, nepostistic, kick-the-failures-upstairs corporate environment anywhere. It’s *anything* but progessive.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Citizen Alan: I agree about tribalism, but I can’t account for how it interacts with misogyny. Women are part of any tribe. Or maybe they’re not full members?
HRC’s defeat drove home to me that a lot of people don’t see me as a full-fledged citizen of my own country. I’m in some spaces on sufferance.
Betty Cracker
@Marcopolo: That’s a great point.
RevRick
@Harrison Wesley:
@Harrison Wesley: I see what you did there.
Soprano2
@Kay: Bill Maher talks about it on every show. Every.Single.Show. You’d think it was the biggest threat to the U.S. today, how college campuses are accommodating to different types students and Democrats are accepting of people who aren’t white. They aren’t mostly white like they were when Maher was there, and it really bothers him. He thinks colleges should be exactly the same as they were when he attended, and all the students should adapt to that.
I understand nostalgia, I’ve felt it strongly especially the past couple of years. Things are changing a lot sometimes in ways that are challenging to understand, so it’s easy to decide everything should stay the same so you’re comfortable with it. Adults know that things have always changed and will continue to change, so it’s either adapt or be left behind. These people think there is a third option – make things go backwards to how they were when they were young, but that option doesn’t exist. Most people don’t want to go backwards, even if going forward is sometimes uncomfortable.
Edited for lots of grammar errors
trollhattan
@Soprano2:
Maher downplays his education, joking about spending college dealing weed, but that college was Cornell.
Because he performs at colleges he thinks that makes him an expert in higher education.
Suzanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
A really horrifying way I’ve seen it phrased (by gross right-wingers) is “my wife is my oldest daughter”. Extrapolate from that what you will.
trollhattan
Uh, wut? Can’t begin to make sense out of that.
RevRick
@rikyrah: The patriarchy is built into an reactionary system. This means women can never be coequal to men, and will only receive the scraps off the table that men choose to throw. It’s all about power, and if the cost is a woman’s life, well sobeit. Like a classroom of children sacrificed to the great gun god. Just another blood sacrifice to reinforce patriarchal power.
Suzanne
@trollhattan: It means a couple of things:
1) Their version of a relationship intended to be a partnership of equals must have a power dynamic, and the woman is inherently more vulnerable
2) They want to fuck their daughters.
Soprano2
@Chris: I was talking to my new manager yesterday. He told me that he grew up in New Jersey and everyone there hates TFG because they all know he hires contractors, then files bankruptcy and doesn’t pay them. Why the NY Times couldn’t be bothered to cover these people the same way they did MAGA’s in rural diners I’ll never understand. They could have featured one a day for weeks and not run out of people. Stories about how he shafted working people, how he hired undocumented people so he didn’t have to pay prevailing wages, all kinds of this crap about him was right under their noses yet they couldn’t be bothered to write about it, instead writing yet another story about the dangers of Hillary’s e-mail server. Fuck them.
dirge
The only remotely workable approach is the other way around: make it legal in the general case, and list the specific exceptional cases where it should be illegal. I think it turns out that nearly every exception is a just morbid fantasy that never actually occurs in the real world, but perhaps there’s something I could be persuaded to ban. But no, it’s our burden to justify each individual case, and though each and every one is well justified, we’re nonetheless supposed to treat justified cases as exceptions.
Old School
@Sure Lurkalot:
Since I wasn’t familiar with all of these, I looked into these tales:
The Fire: Biden says his house almost burned down while he was out of town. Reality: After a lightning strike, firefighters put out a fire in his kitchen after 20 minutes.
I’m not even sure how that counts as an exaggeration. Do they claim the house wouldn’t have burned down if the fire wasn’t put out?
Amtrak: Biden says he was stopped by a conductor while he was going to visit his dying mother. Based on when his mother died, when he passed a million miles of Air Force One travel, and when the conductor died, the timeline doesn’t line up.
Father: Biden has said he was both a junior and senior in high school in different tellings and that he saw the men kiss on a street corner and in a car. Glenn Kessler also doubts gay men would have kissed in public then.
Chris
@Soprano2:
I understand nostalgia. But since all times and places contain at least some bad things and some good things, what you’re nostalgic for is what’s really revealing. People Bill Maher’s age could be nostalgic for all the peace and prosperity of the 1990s. They choose to be nostalgic about its race and gender politics instead.
1950s nostalgia and the way it usually plays out provides an even starker example of the same dynamic.
Soprano2
@UncleEbeneezer: Some of us live in places where we have to get along with them because they’re our co-workers and customers. None of them are my good friends, but I have to live with them.
Citizen Alan
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
On the contrary, “men vs. women” was the original tribal division. I believe misogyny is largely a response to female tribe members refusing to play the role that the tribe has assigned to them.
Gretchen
@Citizen Alan: they also don’t want to fix it because they think women and doctors lie so they can get frivolous abortions and need to be stopped. That’s why they don’t want health exceptions because women lie.
Chris
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I think the bottom line there is that, to quote a line I heard elsewhere on the Interwebs, there are very few single-issue bigots.
Once you’ve established that you can dismiss an entire category of people based on one identity division between you and them, it’s not much of a leap to start dismissing other categories based on other such divides. And then starting to actively look for such divides in order to more easily dismiss somebody you don’t like.
And there’s never an end to it. Take a hundred white, Christian, male, native-born, heterosexual, cisgender, middle-class Republicans from the same state and dump them on a desert island. Within a week, they’ll have rediscovered the Catholic/Protestant divide. Or the Irish/Italian divide. Or something.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
Sigh.
So, Trump, essentially.
Soprano2
@trollhattan: Oh, he whines about that, how he can’t perform on college campuses anymore because none of the young people have a sense of humor; in other words, they don’t find his 30-year-old jokes funny. Lots of comedians can perform for college kids, you have to update your material. Making fun of transgender people by using slurs isn’t considered funny by them anymore.
eclare
@Betty Cracker:
Same. That interview with Matt Lauer was all the proof you needed.
Nettoyeur
@Old Man Shadow: So wait…David Brooks is young? Ross Douthat (aka Chubby Brooks) is liberal? WSJ emigré Bret Stephens is left wing? Sounds to me like Bennett was Just Not Up to the Job. Not bothering to read a known MAGA extremist Senator’s aggressive op ed before printing it prominently sounds like editorial malpractice.l, a firing offense.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: Bill Maher is just another old white dude who cannot accept his slide into utter irrelevance with any grace.
Chris
@Soprano2:
Not to minimize the entire conversation about “wokeness,” but what’s hilarious about the whole thing is that he actually believes that without it, he’d still be the toast of college campuses.
Bill, the reason the kids these days aren’t keen to have you on college campuses is that you’re from thirty fucking years ago! You’re old! Kids these days have their own comedy icons that they grew up listening to and being amused by and they want to see them! I don’t know who they are because I’m an Old too now, but I know they’re not you because I remember you from when I was a teenager in the 2000s and you were already getting pretty long in the tooth then. You could be the most woke and sensitive comedian in the entire country, and you probably still wouldn’t be invited to college campuses, because you’re not from their world!
Wondering why college kids in 2023 aren’t interested in Bill Maher is like wondering why college kids in 2023 aren’t interested in X-Files, the Spice Girls, or tamagochis.
And I suspect Bill Maher knows that on some level, and like all people who were once iconic but whose time has passed, he’s struggling to stay relevant by blaming his decline on some external conspiracy instead of simply admitting that, well, pop culture icons have their time, and then they pass on, and that’s what’s happening to you.
trollhattan
@Chris: Perhaps he can reboot the career by co-hosting a show with Dennis Miller.
I’ll come in again.
Chris
@trollhattan:
Who?
Ruckus
@Kay:
They don’t handle change or challenges well.
The only change they want is to regress 100 years so that they can get their hate on publicly and massively and “regain” their very, very unearned place in life while everyone and everything they hate suffers. And that ain’t happening. They only get to share the world, they no longer get to have their hate and bullshit front and center.
Kay
@dirge:
Even the most restrictive countries have exceptions for health of the mother – if they didn’t (Mexico, Ireland) that omission is what led to abortion legalization, because women died.
So the only country that hasn’t figured this out is the US. We’re currently the world’s dumbest on issues of pregnancy care.
trollhattan
Gaza battle going swimmingly.
Betty Cracker
@Chris:
It’s funny because it’s true. I lived in the North End neighborhood of Boston for a while, which at the time was the Italian section. (It may be still!) There was a distinctly weird vibe in the building when I first moved in, which a neighbor I became friends with later explained was due to my recognizably Irish last name. They were thinking, “Go back to Southie, ya mick!”
Kay
@Ruckus:
I think we in the US (and the world) are in for a rough ride in the next years. I think we should look for people and institutions that can adapt and be flexible with changing conditions because brittle people and institutions will break.
If black people protesting over police brutality so rattled these people that they have completely lost the plot they cannot be relied upon. They need to be tougher than that.
We just watched a US institution break – the Republican Party. They weren’t strong and they cracked. And under such a weak-ass assault! A moronic real estate scammer from NYC did them in. There will be more casualties. It’s going to be a demanding period to be alive.
eversor
@Citizen Alan:
Religion was created to get past that. It’s not that the tribe demands it, it’s that god demands it, his son Jesus demands it as well and also there’s a reason god is a father and Jesus is the sun. I have this wonderful book for you! It’s called the Bible, and both Testaments, God, and Jesus all demand patriarchy and make women second class citizens with no rights.
So if we have Christianity, than blamo women have to do what they are told by men. Anything else is anti Christian.
Sis
Gee, I somehow missed the Times’ liberal bias back in 2000 when they printed outright falsehoods about Al Gore and helped to create an image of him with voters as a serial liar, when he wasn’t. And I missed their liberal bias back when Judith Miller made the Times essentially a PR arm of Dick Cheney’s office, helping to bring on a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. And I missed the liberal bias in the Times’ portrayal of Hillary Clinton as corrupt in 2016, when they inflated nothing stories into faux scandals, and used that ridiculous Clinton Cash book as a blueprint for their coverage. And that was in a year when despite massive coverage of Trump, we didn’t hear a lot about his connections to organized crime, which were and still should be a big deal. The paper of record should have been all over that, but not a peep from them. And as Betty Cracker says, I don’t see the liberal bias in giving a platform to every single damn Trump voter in the country while failing to do the same for liberal Democrats. And I missed the liberal bias in their assessment of their coverage of 2016, when they decided that, wow, every single thing they did upheld the highest standards of journalism.
I read as much of that article as I could stomach. That people such as Bennet are unwilling to admit their bias against liberals and their fear of being fussed at by Republicans is absolutely maddening.
eclare
@Chris:
That’s an interesting point. I graduated from college in 1990, and I’m often nostalgic for the lack of overseas conflicts in the 1990’s. The wall had pretty much just fallen, Bill was in charge, we got involved in Kosovo and maybe one other minor (to us) conflict, and that was it. Bliss.
But I am not nostalgic for DADT, etc.
Tony Jay
@Thor Heyerdahl:
Letter? Nah. I demand a full 60,001 words and twice Bennet’s fee. Only fair since I’ll have to work very hard indeed to pad out one simple observation; namely that Conservatives are increasingly puce with resentment that, once they had replaced any kind of coherent policy portfolio with the claim that Democrats are ALWAYS EVIL AND MUST BE DESTROYED, the national media didn’t wholly and unconditionally agree with them.
I don’t think the FTFNYT will agree to pay me for telling them that.
Betty Cracker
@eversor: This you?
Sis
@Betty Cracker: Great point!
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Jesus did it. The Chevalier d’Crank saw him do it and everything. Why won’t you dumb wimmenz believe that he’s just trying to save you from Bad Jesus and his naughty ways?
Kay
@Sis:
The email coverage was lousy, garbage work. Until they admit that I don’t think anyone has to listen to their long, boring self-serving “reflections”.
Don’t produce cheap garbage. They need to start there instead of going off on 16,000 word tangents that no one outside of their industry cares about.
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
Wow, the New Atheist to fascist pipeline really works, doesn’t it?
I mean, it’s not like there was ever any subtlety to it. Sam Harris was crowing that “the people who speak most sensibly about Islam are the fascists,” using the exact F-word, nearly twenty years ago already.
Nelle
@Martin: You don’t think it is in Putin’s nightstand drawer?
burritoboy
@Chris:
It was not that the racial violence was unknown – it was reported on quite frequently. I randomly read this morning a story by Faulkner – “Dry September” – which Faulkner completely correctly assumes that every reader will know that race riots started by whites were completely common occurrences in the South (in the story, a bunch of genocidal whites are basically portrayed as almost waiting because they have nothing better to do for any accusation of wrongdoing by blacks – even though the accusation is close to nonsensical, and made by a white woman who is shortly checked into a mental institution – to go and effectively randomly attack any black man they can find). The story was published in 1931 in Scribner’s – one of the very most popular magazines of the time.
What changed was that people started to see video evidence of what had been already widely known.
scav
@Chris: Or, it’s just a bog-standard fascist that adopted an atheist cover in his needy needy quest for personal attention. Mere fascist incels are like pennies: no one bothers to pick them up individually any more.
Sis
@Citizen Alan: They assessed their coverage of 2016, including the breathless Clinton stories in which some questionable allegation might not have been evidence of wrongdoing, but would cast a cloud or cast a shadow over the campaign. The Times decided that once again, their coverage was just dandy.
RaflW
@Barbara: Yeah. Shoulda said unethically malicious Elise Stefanik.
Her ilk are among the most internally rotten. Because their early careers show they know better. But rather than have the courage of their convictions, they have the cunning of their desires. And sell out anything and everything to get ahead (and thus head into a far shittier world).
narya
@Soprano2: Can confirm. I also grew up there, and my dad was a contractor, though (a) way too small to bid on jobs like TIFG’s and (b) wouldn’t have bid even if his business was big enough, for precisely this reason.
Betty Cracker
@Sis: Yep. The Times is 100% allergic to introspection. That’s a bad trait in a person and even worse in an organization, especially such an influential one.
Marcopolo
@trollhattan: I don’t know any of the specifics about how this happened other than the context that these hostages either escaped from or were abandoned by their captors but as it is inconceivable that they were armed it makes me think the IDF (or at least these soldiers) is/were shooting at folks indiscriminately. I am no fan of Hamas (or Netanyahu fwiw) but as the Biden administration has been saying, Israel isn’t doing themselves any favors in how they are waging this fight. My condolences to the families (and to all the Palestinian families as well).
dirge
Nicely put. It’s kind of another way to say “the cruelty is the point” — the impulse to bully comes first, the choice of targets is reactive or opportunistic.
I’ve worked in several environments where this phenomenon is glaringly evident.
In an nearly exclusively white-cis-male environment, you’ll get “leadership material vs individual contributor” or less euphemistically “alpha vs beta,” (yes, discussed openly, in those words) to define the in-group boundary, and create a permission structure for bullying, gaslighting, and exploiting the out-group.
In a diverse workplace where discrimination is generally off limits, you’ll get stuff about alignment with mission or culture, which sounds fine, and probably is in some places, but is the kind of vague subjective value judgment that readily becomes a basis for in-group formation. Not as common or as ugly as the all-white version, but still toxic.
The thing is, useless assholes can’t function in an environment without an exploitable labor pool, so they’ll work very hard to create conditions suitable for themselves if they have to. They’ll definitely do it the easy way if there are readily identifiable minorities they can get away with targeting, but if denied any other mechanism, they’ll eventually resort to business cards.
Barbara
@RaflW: Stefanik stands out for jettisoning principle in pursuit of power. Or maybe they never were deeply held principles, just positions she adopted because she thought they were likely to make her successful at the time.
Marcopolo
@Betty Cracker: thanks for the link. just pied this mentally 3 yr old narcissist.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
They didn’t write about him when he was a NYC businessman. That was about the most difficult thing to write, that he was a businessman. He is a human? I’ve always thought he was a POS. And I’ve been proven correct so many times that piece has turned into pile of shit.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Did it break?
I see the GOP as the same as it’s always been, except for now it doesn’t hide behind Frank Luntz approved dogwhistles.
They’ve always been fanatics. Always looking for someone to follow.
Their common thread is that they are for White Supremacy. That was clear, since the party was remade because of their opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That birthed the modern Republican Party.
The party that supported and defended Apartheid. Elected Reagan, who began his Presidential Campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which only has one claim to fame.
So, yes, the party of White Supremacy, whose supporters were broken by the re-election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2012 (never forget, Willard Romney won the same PERCENTAGE of the White vote as did Donald Trump), would pick as their White Supremacist Savior, the Orange One.
Rusty
@rikyrah: I agree the standing issue should be dispositive. The doctors argues that had trauma from treating patients that had abortions that then regretted the decision. On any normal standing grounds it’s ludicrous. However the district and circuit courts accepted it and I strongly suspect the conservative majority will find it’s sufficient too. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have accepted cert. My sense is that there will at least be a return restrictions and not out of the realm of possibility that the drug will have to through the entire approval process again. He’ll, maybe it will be the vehicle to override Hriswald, but I doubt that in an election year.
Barbara
@dirge: Sometimes the alignment with mission and culture is just unconscious bias for wanting to protect your friends, and ultimately, yourself from change.
Harrison Wesley
@trollhattan: Hey, shit happens.
Paul in KY
@Rusty: Shorter version: They are rich assholes who only care about themselves.
rikyrah
@Martin:
Been in Russia.
Ksmiami
@Barbara: she can go to hell or get fucked. Every single GOP enabler needs to be pushed back under the rocks they came from
rikyrah
John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) posted at 10:50 AM on Fri, Dec 15, 2023:
In Prince Harry’s High Court victory against the Mirror, the judge found there was no doubt that Piers Morgan, as editor, knew Harry’s phone was tapped. (Piers, of course, says he didn’t.) Mr Justice Fancourt also says two ex-Mirror execs, Richard Wallace, now head of TV at…
(https://x.com/JohnSimpsonNews/status/1735703812055110038?t=0Jh6V8bZXsNFVGIh4pQ8dg&s=03)
dirge
Yes, but what I find perplexing is that even on this blog, it’s always framed this way, rather than as, for example, “legal, with exceptions for fetal viability.” Yes, I understand it’s largely because the anti-abortion side refuses to engage in good faith, but still…
Yeah, and on a few other issues too.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Have you said below (verbatim or pretty damn close) to these people? They probably don’t read any of your Commie Demoevil agitprop:
‘My kid is queer, so it’s really personal to me. Chuckle-fucks like DeSantis want to unperson my child, and people who voted for DeSantis, Trump, etc., either agree that my child should be unpersoned or don’t think that view is a dealbreaker.
This is infuriating to me, and in my eyes, anyone who voted for Trump or DeSantis — especially twice — has committed a moral offense comparable to armed robbery or something.’
Paul in KY
@Marcopolo: Wouldn’t fix the bad typos?!?! Agree, publish the damn crazy. WTF are you doing trying to polish his ravings?!?!
Paul in KY
@Old School: Just like TFG’s bazillion lies…
Suzanne
@rikyrah: Piers Morgan is one of the worst people in public life, on either side of the pond. Fuck that guy.
I’m so glad Meghan Markle did not.
Paul in KY
@Nettoyeur: The whole lefty cabal there: The Dowd Cell
Paul in KY
@Chris: Or why in my day, Sid Caesar wouldn’t have been a big draw.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: They weren’t quite so nutty/assholey pre-Nixon (Goldwater notwithstanding).
Doc Sardonic
@Soprano2: During my time attending UF and going to Gator Growl, we had a couple of ancient comedians Bob Hope and George Burns. Both of them had The Swamp rolling. I think(been a while and my memory is not good anymore) both had return engagements as the headliner. It was obvious that both put some time in to research the University and the area for relevant jokes and also threw in their greatest hits. Maher’s issue is that he is stuck in the same shtick he has used for years and it’s about as fresh as a WWll C-Rat kit.
Betty Cracker
@Paul in KY: Yes, I give some version of that speech every damn time politics comes up, including the part about how their votes are hurting people they love and how morally repulsive that is in my view. They take offense, accuse me of being intolerant and misrepresenting what their candidates are doing, tell me I’m brainwashed by liberal propaganda, bemoan the fact that I would say such hurtful things because of mere political disagreement, blah blah blah. Eventually everyone agrees that further discussion is pointless, and we move on to discussing sports or the weather. It will probably happen again weekend after next…
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Jeezus. Their candidates gleefully say what they are doing to LGBTers & non-Christians & poor & whatnot. Thanks for answering. My immediate family are complete TFG haters. I have a few friends that go GQP. They are gun nuts & think TFG is a POS, but have to vote GQP to save the guns…
moonbat
@Suzanne: But, but, but he smokes pot! Someone told him back int he day that would make him eternally cool and hip. lol
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
but, but…. her emails
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
It may also be that many parts of the country that are now rather liberal were not all that long ago, rather republican based. 50 yrs ago my congressman in SoCal was a member of the John Birch Society. And he did his job well. But conservatism has lost a lot in the last 1/2 a century. They are fighting humanity because they want to control, well everything, like they think it used to be. And as ever, they are wrong. They mostly wanted things to not do the one thing they always do – change. And their concept of government and politics is not what this country was supposedly built upon, that conserving the supposed past is proper. They don’t see the need for change because the old way gave them the thing that royalty always wanted – control. And that control and power structure was and is wrong. But of course there are a lot of people that see themselves losing power, becoming in their eyes, less, rather than others have become equal. This country was founded on that change, but asking some to give up their hate, ignorance, unearned power is more than they can or want to understand.
Anotherlurker
@eversor: You know, my beliefs about religion are close to your beliefs. My life has seen sadistic nuns, pedophile priests, rapist youth pastors and other religious horrors.
However, reading your screed about voting republican prompts me to tell you to eat shit and —— fill in the fucking blank. How can you ever justify voting for the sociopaths who fanned the flames of everything you profess to oppose? You make no sense. I can only conclude that you are a meagerly paid provocateur . I would tell you to seek psychological help but I can see you are beyond help.
You are nothing but a fucking troll.
dirge
With which I sympathize, and which even performs a useful function in a healthy organization. But then, if it evolves as far as cliquish, it’ll be hard to stop before it gets to exclusionary, then on to exploitative, abusive.
My anecdotal observation is that it only takes around three narcissists per hundred people to get you to bad outcomes, unless you have mechanisms designed to disempower them.
Betty Cracker
@Paul in KY: Yeah, some of my wingnuts are in the “but mah guns” category too. I think across the board they’re less enthusiastic about Orange Jesus this time, but they claim Biden is letting all of Central and South America waltz across the border because he is senile. Or something. It’s stupid.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The left took over the Times newsroom? Really?! The fuck they did…
I’d ask what drugs this conservative shithead was taking when he wrote this but I’m going with PCP. Liberals taking over the NYT…lol! What a bunch of self-serving conservative bullshit because that’s all this is. This is all to push the narrative that the FNYT is a liberal rag and now it’s got even more liberal in it!
Fuck conservatives and fuck the conservative New York Times.
Mark Regan
The bigger problem with publishing Cotton’s screed was that in summer 2020, Trump was looking for excuses to take over cities with lots of anti-Trump voters and suppress their votes, and Black Lives Matter, interpreted by Cotton, provided one big huge excuse. The thought in December 2020 of invoking the Insurrection Act wasn’t the first time someone thought of that. Publishing Cotton’s op-ed was dangerous to the Republic. Bennet spends 16,000 words bloviating without ever putting his decision in context.
evodevo
@Betsy:
Yep..in Minneapolis they took videos of the vandals, who threatened to beat the protesters filming them…there was a protracted internet search trying to figure out who “umbrella guy” was. I don’t know if he was ever tracked down…
Subsole
@Kay:
It’s worse, Kay.
So much worse.
They aren’t going to sit down and explain your body to you. That would require they care about your body.
No. They are going to sit you little ladies down and explain why your health doesn’t matter because it’s God’s plan (that you die in agony to gratify their sense of moral superiority). Which they will also gladly explain to you. Because they’re anointed like that.
TerryC
@evodevo: He was tracked down – right-winger.
Tehanu
Steve M. at No More Mr. Nice Blog has a take on this.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Just got home so pretty damn late getting to this…
People are complicated.
In many ways yes they are. And often they don’t even know it. Many humans see their view as sacrosanct and everyone should agree with them. And many never really have to make decisions of life and death. I carried a loaded .45 pistol in the Navy and my orders were specifically, if I see someone on the ship that does not belong, shoot to kill. I think I could have done that but I am absolutely glad that I never had to take the thing out of the holster and find out. Life can be a lot different from minute to minute and is often complicated, sometimes in ways you never see coming. And sometimes in ways you hope you never do.