In warning against violence, the New York Times again slimes conservatives
Quin Hillyer
Video Embed
The New York Times is transgressively selective when it comes to identifying “The Danger Within” American society. The selectivity is ethically degenerate.
Last week the famous newspaper, in its role as house organ for the Left, published its seventh in a series of editorials and columns under that “Danger” rubric. Predictably, all the “dangers” seen by the New York Times come from the political Right. All are described in breathless, nearly frantic tones, as if society faces imminent ruination from a combination of neo-Nazis and a theocratic Christian version of the Taliban. In the forced-metaphor words of the first editorial in the series, the Right supposedly has erected a “social scaffolding that allows for the kind of endemic political violence that can undo a democracy.”
ANTI-ABORTION PREGNANCY CENTERS SCALE UP SECURITY
Nowhere to be found, of course, is any concern about the street violence of leftist mobs looting and razing innocent businesses, attacking police and federal buildings, or threatening to assassinate Supreme Court justices. Still, for blinkered benightedness, last week’s entry in the series surely was the worst.
This editorial identifies an allegedly overwhelming danger to transgender people, apparently exacerbated when (the newspaper says) “Republican politicians also used a barrage of lies about trans people in their campaign ads during the midterm elections.” The most likely victims of violence, supposedly, are those who participate in “drag queen story hours,” which they describe as “similar to other public readings for children, except that readers dress in a highly stylized and gender-fluid manner and often read books that focus on acceptance and tolerance.”
Gee — who knew those story hours consisted of such benignity? For the New York Times, hypersexualizing children is fine as long as it pushes them against ordinary biology.
Still, what rankled most was when the editorial then discussed threats against medical facilities providing transgender treatments. One particular statistic grabbed the eye: “Around the country, at least 24 hospitals or medical facilities in 21 states have been harassed or threatened in the wake of right-wing media attacks.”
Yes, that’s awful. Harassment, threats, and violence (except in self-defense) are inexcusable. Society is right to protect against such tactics and to crack down on the perpetrators.
But at the risk of being accused of “whataboutism,” this is one case in which the New York Times’s double standards are particularly egregious. I’m pretty good at doing web searches, but I searched in vain for a single New York Times editorial even lamenting, much less identifying as an existential threat to civilization, the even worse and more numerous attacks on crisis pregnancy centers and pro-life churches in the wake of the Dobbs decision this year.
By the most recent published count (in the Daily Signal), “At least 97 Catholic churches and 76 pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life organizations have been attacked since the May leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion.” Not only have the left-wing attacks on pro-life outfits been a whopping seven times as numerous as the “attacks” against medical facilities providing “trans” services, but the nature of the attacks has been worse. It turns out the latter all involved nasty online posts.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Nasty posts online are terrible. They don’t compare, though, with the spate of physical vandalism (including destruction of sacred statues and pews) actually at the sites of the pro-life outfits, much less to the multiple instances of arson against them.
If the New York Times really cared about violence, it would be running editorials against this actual violence rather than treating mere online threats as a sign of the end of democracy. In truth, the New York Times editorial series is no more than anti-conservative hate speech.