MORE ABSURDITY – AT 6:43 A.M. ET:  The New York Times isn't dying.  It's committing suicide.  Earlier this week it had the nerve to give an accurate description of Michael Brown, who was killed by police bullets in the Ferguson incident.  But the political left erupted at any description of Brown that suggested he was less than perfect, the same kind of eruption we had in 2008 if anyone dared ask a serious question of Barack Obama.  Now the Times is crawling and begging forgiveness for printing impolite thoughts.  From John Hinderaker at Powerline: 

Michael Brown was a very large young man, 6’4″ and 292 (sometimes reported as 300) pounds. He used his size aggressively to rob a convenience store and shove aside a store clerk just ten minutes before his fatal encounter with a police officer. Brown’s height and weight are obviously relevant to the police officer’s claim of self-defense, which we assume will eventually be forthcoming.

Yet these basic physical facts are too hot for the New York Times to handle. In a column by Kyle Massey, an assistant news editor, the Times says that it regrets describing Brown as “burly” and will no longer do so. Why? Because the word “burly” is “racially charged.” That’s news to me; I have sometimes described my son as burly, although he weighs more than 100 pounds less than Brown. Evidently I will have to stop, even though the Merriam-Webster dictionary merely defines “burly” as “strongly and heavily built.”

So how will the Times describe Brown from now on? Svelte? Diminutive? I don’t suppose so. The paper’s real problem is that it doesn’t want readers to know that Brown was such a big guy. They just want to keep saying that he was “unarmed,” as though that precludes any necessity for self-defense. 6’4″ and 292 pounds clouds that narrative just a bit. So from now on, the Times will draw a discreet veil over the stature of the burly Mr. Brown.

COMMENT:  On the political left, justice is defined as getting the result you want.  Whether it is just or corrupt is of no consequence.  It reminds us of the definition of "truth" by Herbert Marcuse, one of the left's leading philosophers in the 1960s:  Truth, he said, is what supports progressive causes. 

The Times is simply going with the flow.  Many of its "sophisticated" readers just don't care, or are happy to go along with this new fascism, as long as they can be invited to the proper cocktail parties in Manhattan. 

August 29, 2014