A mind-boggling genre of political think piece that somehow has not been killed by Donald Trump and the American right is the “actually, it’s the left who are the real problem.”

The Very Serious and Sensible Centrist Minds of the Great American Discourse is seemingly obsessed with this. For example, in the summer of 2020 while the world was dealing with the worst pandemic in 100 years and thousands were dying, AND there was an all-too-brief reckoning about how Black Americans are treated in this country, these folks had signed the Harper’s Letter. The letter, you see, declared that THE REAL PROBLEM in America at that moment was not our fellow Americans dying horrible deaths while a Republican president dealt with it by being totally insane. Gosh, no, the real problem was cancel culture, because some people were mean to a children’s book author for being a transphobic shitbird on TwitterX.

One of the patron saints of the so-called fight against cancel culture was/is Bari Weiss, who declared herself cancelled by quitting her job because she was fussy there were editors and how dare they edit her. She then started a few other businesses, including a scam college so like-minded people can be free from those nasty people who try to make them feel bad about supporting the killing of Palestinian children, and her new online publication, The Free Press. This is what cancelled means, apparently.

Weiss uses The Free Press to fight wars against things like DEI, and increasingly, supporting a far-right dictator in Israel. It’s also a great place for the people who still somehow believe that the real threat is “shutting down” right-wing voices.

Uri Berliner is just such a person. He is a 25-year veteran of NPR, serving as its business editor. This week, he published an opinion column in The Free Press about how NPR has lost the public’s trust by catering solely to the left.

By public’s trust, he means the far-right’s trust, which is never had. He points to things like constantly reporting on Trump’s connection and collusion with Russia, which he claims the Mueller Report found no evidence of. Where is NPR’s mea culpa to Trump supporters, he demands.

Well, this sounds like someone who read Bill Barr’s dishonest statement about the Mueller Report and not the report itself. Berliner’s other primary examples of NPR’s supposed strong bias against the right, not reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop and being very skeptical of the COVID lab leak theory, are incredibly weak. NPR’s job is not to ignore the scientific consensus and listen to blowhards like Nate Silver who seems sometimes to be obsessed with the idea that COVID was leaked from a lab.

Berliner has this all backwards. It’s not NPR’s fault that GOPers have stopped listening. You have to ask why these people have rejected reality and instead gone down deep conspiracy rabbit holes about the 2020 election, climate change, vaccines, etc. And here in lies the problem for people like Berliner.

What do you do when one side has rejected what’s real? Do you cling to some sort of idea of even-handed journalism that demands you listen to the party that includes elected officials who seem to believe the eclipse was some sort of cosmic sign from God or was a ruse so the government can oppress them? Do you really treat “the election was stolen” and “no, the election was not stolen and here’s a ton of evidence that proves it wasn’t” as of equal value?

NPR responded strongly to Berliner, who likely will soon quit NPR and write many many pieces for Bari about how he was cancelled. This report included staffers, who called him out on what he wrote via TwitterX, questioning its honesty.

Many things wrong w/terrible Berliner column on NPR, including not observing basic fairness. Didn't seek comment from NPR before publishing. Didn't mention many things which could detract from his conclusions. Set up staffers of color as scapegoats: https://t.co/6StjuUwpnh

— Eric Deggans at NPR (@Deggans) April 10, 2024

It goes without saying that Berliner is now the toast of the right, including Fox News, who rained down the praise on him for Telling It Like It Is. And Trump jumped right in, declaring he would cut funding for NPR entirely if he is president, based on Berliner’s opinion.

I can’t really say for sure if Berliner is just naïve. That’s the generous take. The not-so-generous, and also possible, take is he wants Trump as president, and is just not brave enough to say it out loud. If so, he has plenty of company, like the No Labels people and Weiss herself.

The last word goes to The Pretenders.