NEW YORK, NY April 29 (DPI) – Some recent New York Times articles – and a coarsely offensive op-ed cartoon – have left a lot of longtime readers wondering what’s going on over on 8th Avenue these days. The Gray Lady – once measured and sober and thorough in its journalism, long the profession’s standard-bearer – is now preoccupied with promoting identity politics and engaging in other divisive narratives worthy of Trump.
Take, for instance, the April 20 report that posed the question “Should a White Male Be The Face of The Democratic Party in 2020?” and included chunks a demographic data trying to legitimize a query just as sexist and racist as anything from, say, Breitbart.com.
Readers, to their credit, replied with remarkably unified criticism of The Times: The #1 Recommended comment, by a reader posting as “dogma vat”, received more than 1800 recommendations: “Please stop this, NYT. You’re gonna get Trump re-elected.”
Other comments were equally scathing of The Times, which briefly removed the comment board last week.
What’s more, in a rare public reply on a comment board, the NYT’s editor responsible for the article, Patrick Healy, wrote this post:
@dogma vat thanks for sharing your view here. I’m the politics editor at the Times and I edited this article. I’m very open to hearing about your concerns with this article. The intent was to capture conversations among Democratic voters that we’ve been hearing on the campaign trail for months — about whether, with a historically diverse field of presidential candidates, a white man should be the nominee of the Democratic party in 2020. We interviewed several dozen voters on this matter and sought to represent a range of viewpoints that were expressed thoughtfully and candidly. This politics article comes after 3 stories by my team this week about policy issues — gun control, climate change, and public land use — and several pieces about the campaign finance reporters; a profile of Julian Castro; concerns among Democrats about Bernie Sanders winning the nomination; and reactions to the Mueller report and calls for impeachment. In other words, we write a variety of stories every week. None of these stories are written with the intent of getting a Democrat elected or Trump re-elected; that’s not our role. We are giving voice to Democratic voters in this piece. I don’t see why we would stop doing that on a matter that a diverse array of voters care about. But I am very open to hearing more from you and others. Thanks, Patrick
And his comment prompted more reader replies, most notably this one:
@Patrick Healy Many long time readers of the NYT (as you can see by the comments) are appalled by this article. It’s fueling & more importantly giving a voice to so called Democrats ( a small minority I believe) who are unapologetically racist, sexist, & of course ageist. But why is the left so desperate? Why don’t they want a white man like Biden to run? I know why. Because he’s going to drive progressive fav’s like Booker, Harris, Sanders and Warren out of the race. Pretty early too. The primaries favor Biden. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. The other candidate will run out of time, money, and support long before the next primary which is Super Tuesday. He will have a commanding lead at this point. It’s pretty obvious that progressives have been trying to steer the nominee process so as to eliminate all white men from the competition? Even if they have to resort to blatant, racism, sexism, & ageism. Guess what the smear campaign isn’t going to work. Everyone is on to these tactics. The Progressive obsession with cheap shooting white men with good intentions has compelled many people to question the value of their movement & to a greater degree the methods they are using it as a blunt instrument. Is this how the left intends to unite the party? To win the nomination? This is just another situation where political correctness” has run-amok. Progressives worship at the Altar of Political Correctness. Voters despise this. Keep this up & we will lose in 2020.
The NYT shot itself in the foot on April 24 with a national article asserting that a Houston high school principal’s decision to impose a dress code on – for parents – on school grounds was “racist and elitist.” Readers again pushed back with a dose of common sense, telling the NYT that such a decision was neither. And The Times quietly removed the phrase “racist and elitist” from the report – while all the comments referring to it remained.
The three most popular of more than 300 comments linked to that story:
Seriously, the notion that there is such a thing as appropriate clothing, and that wearing pajamas and hair curlers outside your own home is inappropriate, is elitist, classist, racist? That is insulting to non-whites and working class people. The school should be commended for respecting its clientele enough to uphold the minimal social standards required for success in the wider world, and teaching them to children. That is its role.
Good for her! I’m an African American woman and I was always taught that wearing curlers, scarves over curlers,satin bonnets etc was just plain trashy and inappropriate in public. My mother believed that just because we ( my divorced single mother, sister and I) had little money did not mean we had to carry ourselves in a low class way. She also taught us clothing should be ironed and worn with proper undergarments too! People do judge a person by appearance…rightly or wrongly.
Give me a break! Asking parents to dress like adults (eg no pajamas) is not racist or elitist. I feel for this principal!
Did I miss the part where it states that the rules only apply to people of color? No ? Then it is not racist. Period. End of discussion.
But the most striking departure from decorum and restraint was the NYT News Service picking up and International Edition publishing an antisemitic drawing this weekend by a Portuguese editorial cartoonist:
The Times apologized and removed the cartoon, which depicted the Israeli prime minister as a dog leading his blind master, Trump, on a leash. Even the largely incompetent right-wing press, such as the widely read British gossip site DailyMail.com – had a field day with the NYT’s lapse in judgement.