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Wednesday, September 18, 2019

The New York Clickbait Times

So, as I understand it, Justice Brett Kavanaugh allegedly crushed a California Condor with his boots while giving the Nazi salute to the Queen of England.

Do I have that right? It sounds familiar, anyway. According to the New York Times, the story was given to them by a fentanyl addict who heard it from a social worker who knew about a guy who used to do plumbing repair at Cornell which is in the Ivy League along with Yale where Brett went to college. Close enough.

I've read a couple of essays wherein the authors wring their hands and wonder just what happened to the prestigious NYT to make them run tabloid trash stories. Why is this so complicated? There are two factors at play as far as I can see.
  1. They've decided their clientele are woke progressives who crave stories of conservative villainy. Anything will do. They're no pickier than conservatives craving stories of progs acting like lunatics.
  2. Plenty of the staff members at the NYT are True Believers and come to work every day itching to put on their superhero costumes and cosplay a grand battle against the Forces of Hate™. Stories like the Justice Kavanaugh one are simply daydreams wherein the NYT crew plays Let's Pretend and they defend a transgender Hispanic from the Klan who has been released into the wild through the actions of the evil Brett Kavanaugh.
And that's pretty much it. If you were expecting a newspaper to have a shred of journalistic integrity in an era when J-schools are specifically designed to turn out Hitler Youth Social Justice Warriors and media outlets desperately need clicks to survive, you're fooling yourself.

Here, reporters for the NYT fight off Klan-Putties who serve the Evil Lord Kavanaugh.

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