Jamie O, Political Crack, So Called Liberal Media

Christopher Rufo Gets The New York Times Treatment

The New York Times, aka The Paper of Record, The Old Grey Lady or, as Peter Atrios of the Eschaton blog refers to it, That Fucking Newspaper, has been on quite a roll lately with their work to normalize fascism.

Yesterday, they posted one of their Fascists Fashion Shoots/Profiles about the Prettier Steve Bannon, Christopher Rufo. It featured the usual photoshoot, and stuff like this:

“To some on the left” is championship-level both-siderism. He’s quite clear about what he is up to (turning back the clock to 1950s America as far as race, gender, and sexuality), and is also clear that lying is a way to achieve it.

This is a guy who launched the critical race theory moral panic and is now pushing ideas like the majority of public school teachers are pedophile groomers as a way to destroy LGBTQ rights. The New York Times presenting him as a guy who “some on the left” view as dangerous is bonkers.

This is not the Times‘ first rodeo with this. In 2017, they caught some fire for their profile of an Ohio white nationalizer and Nazi sympathizer.

People were not happy because they presented an actual Nazi as this guy who sure had some bad ideas, but otherwise he was just a dude. The Times argued that such exposure “shines light” on some terrible, horrible, and dangerous views. As a lot of media critics have pointed out, this is doing nothing but normalizing such beliefs.

The Times hasn’t learned anything and, as is evident by their profile of Rufo yesterday, are content to just ignore critics. The danger here is I don’t think many people are aware of just how dangerous Rufo is. “Groomer” is a new slur used by right-wingers, and LGBTQ people are bigger targets than ever.

Some are optimistic that the new editor of the Times will initiate changes. Margaret Sullivan is one, her column yesterday was hopeful that Joe Kahn will listen to criticism, to try to do better.

She lays out the stakes:

No exaggeration detected. But will Kahn move the Times away from the failures of the Trump era? Hard to say. As Sullivan pointed out, they never admitted their errors in how they covered the Hillary Clinton email nonsense.

Some of us understand what the current stakes are. I just wish more of the DC political media did.

The last word goes to a whole bunch of people. I have been greatly enjoying this playlist, figured I’d share with the readers:

4 thoughts on “Christopher Rufo Gets The New York Times Treatment”

  1. Standard issue tropes from the right: For as far back as I can remember, the charge of being gay was leveled at their opponents. When that sort of lost its punch, it was mocking wholly made up sexual practices or predilections. That had a limited shelf life, but came back in the form of cuckolds or beta male cucks. That proved of equally durability, and we got “Let’s go Brandon” of extremely short duration, and now we’re at “groomer.” I don’t think it will last very long, either, but I shudder about what excites their prurient interest next.

  2. 100 years ago In 1922 Mussolini and his Fascist’s marched into Rome and the worlds first nation to be ruled by fascists was born. It must be understood that Fascism was created as a counter to Communism and it was widely admired by the old and new money class in America. So from 1922 on till today the NY Times project has been to treat fascism as just another ‘side’.

    So congratulations to the NY Times because it has taken 100 years but you have your victory. Fascism has won. Well it’s just a mop action going forward as the GOP takes the congress and the White House by 24 at the latest.

    Well done, The funny part is the barbarians are going to go hunting for the ‘liberal NY Times men and women, and there will be blood. Well funny is the wrong word.

  3. Pingback: Mike's Blog Round Up – Starwide

  4. Democrats want the NY Times to improve, Republicans want to kill their reporters and hang their corpses in the streets of DC.

    As usual, the answer is right in the middle between the two sides who have equally valid perspectives.

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