On Wednesday evening, The New York Times released its editorial on the attempted massacre of Republican Congressmen and their aides by a Trump-hating Bernie Sanders supporter. It was, without a doubt, the worst editorial they have run in a decade.
The editorial essentially called for gun control — no shock, since every shooting with a semi-automatic engenders a fully automatic response from the mainstream press. But the truly egregious part of the incoherently awful essay came when The Times attempted to pin the rise in toxic rhetoric in the United States on … Sarah Palin. Really.
Here’s the most insane section:
Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs. Conservatives and right-wing media were quick on Wednesday to demand forceful condemnation of hate speech and crimes by anti-Trump liberals. They’re right. Though there’s no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack, liberals should of course hold themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right.
This is Orwellian in the truest sense of the word.
The long-repeated lie that Sarah Palin was somehow responsible for the assassination attempt on Gabby Giffords was debunked years ago. Jared Lee Loughner wasn’t a conservative. He wasn’t a Republican. He wasn’t sane. There is no evidence whatsoever that he ever saw the infamous Palin targeted district map. None. The rumor was discredited within hours of the shooting. But six years later, The Times is still repeating the lie as true — and not just as true, but as the ultimate example of political rhetoric prompting violence. Remember, The Times isn’t just mentioning the Palin-Giffords lie in offhand fashion — they’re saying that there is “no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack.” Oh f***ing really? Loughner was a paranoid schizophrenic. The shooter in this case plastered his social media with messages ripping Republicans and Trump and mirroring the most extreme excesses of the hard Left.
This is fever swamp territory from The New York Times. The facts don’t match the narrative, so the facts must die a gruesome, slow death.
The Times editorial board doesn’t even match the high editorial standards of Teen Vogue. It’s a trash heap. And they demonstrated that repeatedly on Wednesday night — this wasn’t their only muck-up. The Times beclowned itself no less than three different ways. In another article, The Times attempted to pin the Congressional shooting on Bernie Sanders, since The Times were big fans of Hillary Clinton. In that piece, by Yamiche Alcindor, The Times openly blamed Sanders for the shooting:
That shooting on Wednesday, which wounded four people, may prove to be an unexpected test for a movement born out of Mr. Sanders’s left-wing, populist politics and a moment for liberals to figure out how to balance anger at Mr. Trump with inciting violence.
Oddly, The Times ignores the fact that the shooter posted stories on a routine basis from outlets that endorsed Hillary Clinton. But The Times likes Clinton and not Bernie, so Sanders must be smeared.
Finally, The Times also headlined, “Their Own Targeted, Republicans Want Looser Gun Laws, Not Stricter Ones.” Jonathan Martin tweeted:
Not only did Alexandria not prompt GOP to rethink guns, it emboldened some in the party on loosening gun laws >https://t.co/1KX6vbViVL
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 15, 2017
But of course Republicans want looser gun laws. Nobody on the field had a gun but security that arrived several minutes into the attempted massacre. The Times takes it for granted that their perspective is the only valid one, then acts puzzled that it isn’t.
In an era when the media complain about being labeled fake news, The Times coverage amounts to a brutal self-own. Anyone with a subscription should immediately think about cancelling unless The Times walks back its stupidities and slurs.
