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The Death of Standards at the New York Times

The mainstream press has spent a lot of time and energy recently attacking Tucker Carlson, none more enthusiastically than CNN’s simpering and shrieking little eunuch, Brian Stelter. Of course Carlson, with the No. 1 rated show in the history of cable news, can laugh all the way to the bank in response to most of these critics. This is nothing new: Fox News is used to its top stars being attacked by the thought-monolith, leftist media and benefitting from the drama in the ratings. For those of us on the Right, it’s amusing and tiresome all at once.

But at the same time, disturbing undertones are emerging in these stories. On Monday, Carlson revealed that the New York Times was preparing to publish a story discussing the details surrounding the location of his family residence. This pathetic attempt to incite doxxing and harassment is unfortunately par for the course for the  rag started by Confederate sympathizers. The paper with its new generation of little wokesters will brook no deviation from their leftist dogma and are intent on driving out any editors, reporters, or columnists who are not 100 percent on board with their program to smash the Right. 

It is kind of ironic in a deliciously karma-filled way that the lefties at the Times are being purged by the little commies they hired. First, the commies forced the resignation of two editors for the cardinal sin of publishing Senator Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) op-ed on sending in troops to quell the looting and violence in cities across the country. Such independent thinking is only good for the gulag, kids. How dare any person stray from the one, true faith!

A few weeks later, and we find the Gray Lady reeling from what should have been the equivalent of a nuclear bomb exploding in the middle of the national media—the resignation letter of New York Times editor Bari Weiss. Weiss was one of the few centrists left at the Times; liberal, yes, but generally in the ZIP code of left-of-center. In fact, the Times hired her after the 2016 election precisely because management felt the paper needed her centrist view to keep them honest after they so badly missed the mood of the country that led to President Trump’s election:

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

Bari Weiss, a Jewish female centrist, was labeled a Nazi by her New York Times colleagues for her “forays into Wrongthink,” a phrase she uses to capture any alternate view to the dominant left-wing bias of the Times and its acolytes at the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the national media. In a normal world, this would be laughed at on account of the absolute ludicrousness of it all.

A day after Weiss resigned, Liberty University sued the Times in a $10 million defamation case over a “made up” and damaging story that falsely claimed several students returning from spring break became infected with the coronavirus because the school stayed open. In fact, no student, faculty member, or administrative staff on campus was or ever became infected. That story was never retracted. The Times said in a statement that it is “confident” the story was accurate. I guess they’re using the “new math” where zero plus zero equals something or other when leftist ideology is the constant in the equation. The entire mindset behind it all is incredibly arrogant. 

You can’t create something out of nothing, you little lefties. Only God can do that. 

Speaking of, over at CNN, Don Lemon insulted every believing Christian on the planet with a swipe at Jesus Christ. “Here’s the thing,” Lemon stated to fellow CNN anchor Chris Cuomo who is, ironically, a Catholic: “Jesus Christ—if that’s who you believe in, Jesus Christ—admittedly was not perfect when He was here on Earth.” Mmm. Yeah, so listen, I’m no theologian, but a fundamental aspect of Christianity is that as the Son of God, Jesus Christ, was fully perfect and fully man, though I guess we should not expect that Don Le-MON or any reporter assigned to CNN would know any more about Christianity than they do about the other subjects they cover. Today the Left can do and say anything, no matter how vile, outrageous, or untruthful—and get a pass. When the standard of truth is  not the facts, but instead how you feel about them, that’s how it works. Facts be damned as they truly are such inconvenient things.

I hope Bari Weiss kept screenshots of the “Slack channels” on which she was harassed for simply doing what she was hired to do by the New York Times: present her personal view of politics, the culture and world events which did not necessarily reflect the leftist, elitist groupthink that pervades the historic flagship of American journalism and the rest of America’s national media. But even if she did, it won’t matter. The Times will do nothing. The mainstream media will just shrug. That’s always the way of it. 

That’s because this has nothing to do with the truth. It has everything with forcing groupthink, rationalizing conformity, and creating and advancing “an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as well.” In other words, our media see themselves as the enforcers of conformity to the “true faith”the Idiocracy of the Left. You will conform or be damned. But if embracing open dialogue, freedom of speech and conscience is to be deemed heretical by the new Left, then I will gladly for the rest of my life be an apostate to their idiocy. 

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About Ned Ryun

Ned Ryun is a former presidential writer for George W. Bush and the founder and CEO of American Majority. You can find him on Twitter @nedryun.

Photo: Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images

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