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For NYT’s Rich, No Evidence No Problem

Don Irvine  —   April 20, 2010
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New York Times columnist Frank Rich tries to disabuse readers of the notion that evidence is necessary when charges or racism and bigotry are raised against conservatives.

From the New York Times

It’s kind of like that legendary stunt on the prime-time soap “Dallas,” where we learned that nothing bad had really happened because the previous season’s episodes were all a dream. We now know that the wave of anger that crashed on the Capitol as the health care bill passed last month — the death threats and epithets hurled at members of Congress — was also a mirage.

Take it from the louder voices on the right. Because no tape has surfaced of anyone yelling racial slurs at the civil rights icon and Georgia Congressman John Lewis, it’s now a blogosphere “fact” that Lewis is a liar and the “lamestream media” concocted the entire incident. The same camp maintains as well that the spit landing on the Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver was inadvertent spillover saliva from an over-frothing screamer — spittle, not spit, as it were. True, there is video evidence of the homophobic venom directed at Barney Frank — but, hey, Frank is white, so no racism there!

“It’s Not About Race” declared a headline on a typical column defending over-the-top “Obamacare” opponents from critics like me, who had the nerve to suggest a possible racial motive in the rage aimed at the likes of Lewis and Cleaver — neither of whom were major players in the Democrats’ health care campaign. It’s also mistaken, it seems, for anyone to posit that race might be animating anti-Obama hotheads like those who packed assault weapons at presidential town hall meetings on health care last summer. And surely it is outrageous for anyone to argue that conservative leaders are enabling such extremism by remaining silent or egging it on with cries of “Reload!” to pander to the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base. As Beck has said, it’s Obama who is the real racist.

 

Poor Frank.  He along with his fellow liberals have been trying to defend the charges that were made last month against Tea Party protesters withouit success as no video has surfaced to verify that what the media reported actually happened despite the sea of video cameras present. So now he tries to mock conservatives as if that will magically change the facts.

Maybe the Times should change their slogan for Rich from “All the News That’s Fit to Print” to “All the News That’s Fit to Distort”.

 

 


About the author
Don Irvine
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.




4 Comments for For NYT’s Rich, No Evidence No Problem

The Major

I LOVE the New York Times. It is SOOOOO useful.I use it when I run out of Cat Litter & Bird cage liner.
When I was a boy,there were 9 daily papers,& the NYT was the choice of the Highbrows,but all in all a good paper for all NY’ers. With all of todays electronics,,all of the papers suffer,but the NYT with it’s ultra-liberal ivory tower slant on the news will suffer the worst due to the new demagraphics of NY.(no speekie english)

BBFmail

http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621

Double standard?

Is there a double standard? Seems to be.

Every threat to Obama is now vigorously pursued, trumpeted and dissected by the media and the blogs, and roundly condemned. And I condemn such threats as well.

But in the past, whenever someone threatened Bush at a protest, there was a deafening silence on the part of the media and the left-leaning blogs, and consequently very little (if any) follow-through on the part of the Secret Service. Which I find quite distressing. I was condemning those threats in the past (as best I could, by drawing attention to them on my blog) — but few people were joining me in my condemnation.

I am NOT (repeat: NOT) defending anyone who threatens a president’s life. That’s the whole point. I say that anyone who threatens Obama should be arrested and/or investigated. All I am saying is that threats to Bush should have been similarly pursued — but weren’t.

And the only reason I’m publishing the essay is that many Obama supporters — to my astonishment — now claim that Bush was never threatened at protests. Before we can have a rational discussion on this topic, we need to have a shared factual basis. The evidence below will establish that basis.

######

At the end of the essay are photos of anti-Bush protesters setting fire to images of Bush, carrying posters threatening Bush with death…and worse.  I don’t remember seeing any of this in the NYTimes or LATimes or WashPost.

The Major

To BBFmail,,I agree. There were many more attacks against Bush, than Obama,that were NOT checked out
Remember, I believe that most of us are are in the middle, with some slightly to the left of center,,& some to the right of center,,ALL honest hard working TAXPAYING folks,just trying to get by
In my opinion, it is the people on the X-treme Left OR Right that will cause the biggest problems
The New York Times has become part of the PROBLEM not part of the Solution. They have forgotten the first things learned in Journalism 101. The Who, What,When, Where & Why + How,,have been left out if the TRUTH will not sell papers. Some one in the WWE said that “Controversy creates Cash”, & it seems that the Times has gone down that path.

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