Of White People and the New York Times

• The latest addition to The New York Times’ editorial board is a young woman named Sarah Jeong, and although it wasn’t the most momentous story on Thursday it was the one that caught our eye. After so many decades in the newspaper business we still follow the big hires, and this one comes with one of those racial brouhahas we can’t resist commenting on.
  Jeong is of Asian heritage, as you might have already surmised from the name, and she’s a liberal, as you might have already surmised from her hiring by The New New York Times, and although those obvious facts should have little bearing on the story of course it does in this day and age. So far Jeong’s generally white and mostly right-of-center critics aren’t criticizing her for being Asian, but these days almost everyone in the public eye has a history of spouting off on social media and other internet niches in controversial ways, and Jeong apparently has a history of writing rather harsh things about white people. The bowdlerized versions of several “tweets” require numerous asterisks to convey her chosen epithet about white people, and another expressed that “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get from being cruel to old white men.”
  Being old white men our first instinct is to take offense, but there’s so much offense to be taken these days by almost everybody that we’re trying to stay off the stuff, and by now we know these things are always complicated.
  Jeong’s defense is that she’d been “trolled” by seemingly white and explicitly racist commenters on the internet, and was only responding in kind. We don’t doubt that a liberal writer with a noticeably Asian name has been subjected to obnoxious harassment by racist old white men in the comments section of an internet site, and can well understand why she might be provoked to respond in unkind, but we’d like to think that such an august American newspaper as The New York Times would hold its editorial board to a higher standard. On the other hand, we’d prefer a Republican president who doesn’t feel obliged to punch back ten times harder in similarly stupid fashion against any caustic internet commenter, and by now we realize that we can’t always get what we want.
  Jeong’s defenders are also reviving the familiar argument that she can’t be guilty of racism because she’s not white, which is as noisome to our old white ears as ever. The argument holds that racism is not merely an animus toward other races but rather a political system or the majority oppressing the minority, and that non-white are therefore blameless by their powerlessness, agency, and even the most well-intentioned white folks are guilty by virtue of how well things might be going for them.
  The argument has never held up in the ope skies of our real lives. We’ve had many fine African-American and Hispanic and Asian and Native Americans friends in our lives, but we’ve also encountered people in each group who had a prejudiced dislike to us based on our skin tone, and if they’re racist by the politically correct definition they’re aspiring racists who would happily oppress us if they could. We’ve had street and school hall encounters with minorities where they held all the power, and can well understand why the guy in the “Make America Great” ball cap at the latest Trump rally doesn’t consider himself more privileged than than the latest hire on The New York Times’ editorial board.
  Still, we can’t blame any of our current woes on the systemic anti-white oppression that somehow persists in the era of President Donald Trump, and we’ll not worry that Jeong’s missives from the editorial pages of The New York Times will much disturb us. There were some conservative “tweets” lamenting that the estimable National Review columnist Kevin Williamson lost a prestigious job at The Atlantic Monthly because of some past “tweets” about abortion that went far beyond even our pro-life sympathies, and finding double standard in the liberal media, and although he’s controversial in conservative circles for prescribing the same harsh get-off-your-ass  medicine to the white underclass that conservatives has always preached to the minority underclass he’s suddenly a darling of the Trump-ian right. He came out squarely on the side of The New York Times’ right to hire whomever the hell it wants, and that’s pretty much all we have to say about it.

  — Bud Norman

The Show and the News and Real Life Go On

An otherwise successful opening to the annual local Gridiron Show was marred by a family medical emergency that occurred just afterwards, and instead of drinking it up with our fellow cast members we spent the remainder of Thursday night and the first two hours of this morning in a nearby hospital.

So far as we can tell from the doctors’ carefully worded statements, things will likely turn out just fine, although our beloved Dad wound up spending the night in the hospital for a night of observation. At his stubborn insistence we took our beloved Mom home and then returned to headquarters for a glance at the news, hoping to keep our years-long writing streak intact with at least a brief post.

The lately essential Washington Post’s web site was filled with the usual depressing news. China has escalated its recent trade war with America, although this time the stock markets didn’t seem to mind. During a campaign stop in West Virginia President Donald Trump literally tossed out the carefully worded script that had been prepared for him, complaining that he found it “boring,” and instead went on one of his usual stream-of-consciousness rants full of taunts against his perceived enemies and plenty of outright falsehoods. There was also an interesting piece about the final statements of some recently ousted Trump administration officials, and their all-too-credible accounts of Trump’s chaotic management style.

At the bottom of the page we found the most depressing report, that Kevin Williamson has been fired from The Atlantic Magazine after just one column. If you’re not familiar with the name, Williamson has a long history in newspapers and magazines and was most recently a prominent columnist for The National Review, where he frequently annoyed many of that venerable conservative journal’s readers with his principled conservative Never Trump stance and by advocating the same tough-love solutions for the white underclass that conservatives have always advocated for the black underclass, and as far as we’re concerned he’s the best political polemicist of the day, our own formidable selves notwithstanding.

Although Williamson’s principled conservatism had so annoyed National Review’s Trump-loving readers, his hiring by The Atlantic outraged it’s more stridently liberal readers. As the oldest and most venerable monthly magazine in The Atlantic has published influential and widely anthologized essays by still-famous writers on both the left and the right over it’s more than 150 distinguished years, under the leadership of legendary editors from both sides of the political spectrum, and Williamson’s keen analysis and elegant writing is well worthy of that august tradition, but of course there were angry e-mails and “tweets” and some attention paid by more traditional media.

These days, liberals are no more interested in reading keen analysis and elegant writing from some damned conservative than conservatives are in reading any keen analysis and elegant writing from some damned liberal.

Eventually Williamson’s critics came up with some off-the-cuff and not all written-down comments three years ago on a couple of internet “podcasts.” Like most conservatives and a large chunk of the country at large, Williamson has moral objections to the practice of abortion, based on his widely-held belief that human life is sacred and begins at the moment of conception. In those unearthed “podcasts,” Williamson took this belief to its extreme but logical conclusion that the law should therefore consider abortion murder, and despite his his usually carefully considered writing he conversationally used some controversial language about hangings.

Despite our own moral objections to the practice of abortion, this is taking things further than we’re comfortable with, and many conservatives agree, and so does the biggest chunk of the population at large, including all those outraged liberals who have some equally extreme ideas of their own about abortion and the sanctity of life, so of course it was too much for the venerable Atlantic. We can hardly blame the magazine, given the current political climate, but it does seem a damn shame.

At the end of a long, long day we expect that such a formidable writer as Williamson will land on his feet, and that such a formidable fellow as our beloved Dad will do the same. Until next Monday, you beloved readers, we expect the news will continue, and the show must go on, so we wish everyone the best.

— Bud Norman