I apologize for taking almost a week to cover this. I admit to having massive cognitive dissonance involving MSNBC, which long ago jumped the Megalodon and can no longer pretend to be anything but a pure progressive propaganda organ without objectivity, decency, honesty or moderation. Or shame, of course. Still, sometimes you can’t look away, as with a particularly gory roadside accident. When New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay, an “important editor” by the Times’ own admission who covers local politics, says this on national television, as she did to “Morning Joe,” attention must be paid, (even if its five days late):
“You know, the reality is here that we have a large percentage of the American population — I don’t know how big it is, but we have tens of millions of Trump voters who continue to believe that their rights as citizens are under threat by simple virtue of having to share the democracy with others. I think as long as they see Americanness as the same as one with whiteness, this is going to continue. We have to figure out how to get every American a place at the table in this democracy, but how to separate Americanness, America, from whiteness. Until we can confront that and talk about that, this is really going to continue. I was on Long Island this weekend, visiting a really dear friend. And I was really disturbed. I saw, you know, dozens and dozens of pickup trucks with you know, expletives against Joe Biden on the back of them, Trump flags, and in some cases, just dozens of American flags, which you know is also just disturbing, because essentially the message was clear, this is my country. This is not your country. I own this. And so until we’re ready to have that conversation, this is going to continue…Because, you know, the Trump voters who are not going to get onboard with democracy, they’re a minority. You can marginalize them, long-term. But if we don’t take the threat seriously, then I think we’re all in really bad shape.“
For some strange reason, many people took offense at this. Not anyone at MSNBC, where basic journalism—which is not acknowledged there—required at least a “Wait, what did you just say?”, as ABC’s Ted Koppel essentially said 50 years ago to Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis, who had explained on the air that there were no black major League managers because blacks “lacked the necessities” for the job. But no. Mika, Joe and the gang just nodded, as if Gay had explained that the world spins.
Al Campanis was fired. In contrast, the New York Times defended Gay, as if her comments were defensible. Not only were her comments indefensible on their face, the New York Times continuing to employ such a racist and hyper-partisan propagandist is indefensible. The Times tweeted,
“New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay’s comments on MSNBC have been irresponsibly taken out of context. Her argument was that Trump and many of his supporters have politicized the American flag. The attacks on her today are ill-informed and grounded in bad-faith.”
Ann Althouse, whose blog I continue to look in on now and then despite her declaring that her readers opinions and ideas annoy her, reacted,
“So I’m going to say that tweet is ill-informed and grounded in bad-faith! What a ridiculous blanket statement with no regard for the individuals who listened to Gay and made our own interpretations and expressed our opinions. It’s so hypocritical to obsessively protect her while attacking all her critics with broad-brush insults!”
It’s not hypocritical, it is revealing. The Times has the same ideological goal as Gay: undermine American values and pave the way for the radical undoing of American democracy using race as a wedge and weapon. If this was not the case, an editor who condemned “whiteness” in public would be treated exactly as one who condemned “blackness”: she would be fired, disgraced, and shunned as the racist she is.
A few additional points:
Ethics Alarms 