Saturday, August 27, 2016

That's our narrative and we're sticking to it

The New York Times had a problem.  Omar Mateen had killed 49 people at a gay nightclub, but they couldn't blame a Muslim, so it's time for the ol' standby:
Evidently, an Eighth Avenue blamestorming session was convened to alleviate liberal cognitive dissonance. The result was this postulate: if a) Islamophobia is evil, and b) homophobia is evil, but c) Islam is homophobic, then d) it’s all the Republicans’ fault. The news must be made to do its duty. When a story undermines, complicates, or merely fails to support the master narrative about the more and less privileged, facts in evidence are ignored, and ones not in evidence are assumed. The epistemological humility that led the Times to express uncertainty about Mateen’s precise motivations waxes and wanes at the paper. Columnist Paul Krugman, for example, needed mere hours after a lunatic shot an Arizona congresswoman to conclude that the crime was no “isolated event,” but the result of a “national climate” rendered “toxic” by conservatives’ “eliminationist rhetoric.”
The NY Times editorial page is an embarrassment.  Even their own public editor knows the paper has no integrity.

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