The New York Times has taken some well deserved shit for running an Op-Ed by Tom Cotton, in which the fascist Senator from Arkansas argued for more fascism, i.e., that we should unleash the armed forces on protestors with whom he disagrees. The Times defended itself initially on the grounds that it has an obligation to provide “both sides” of policy questions, though, like all other media, “both sides” seems to have a pronounced right-wing shift. (Senator Brian Schatz tweeted that the Times has refused to run several Op-Eds he submitted, none of which suggested making war on Americans.
Besides being a loathsome argument on the merits, Cotton’s piece was, predictably, full of typical Republican lies and half truths, and the Times is now partly walking its decision back, saying, in essence, that it didn’t bother to fact check the piece before publishing it. Odd that, considering that lying is the default Republican modus operandi, and one should assume anything emitted by a Republican Senator is filled with mendacity. It would probably have made more sense, and taken less time, for them to examine it to see if there was any truth in it.
Is it possible that the Times will now truly change its ways? Too bad, because I was going to suggest that in the interests of presenting both sides of important questions, that they consider giving Texas GOP chairs Jim Kaelin and Cynthia Brehm space on the Op-Ed page to give us the other side of the George Floyd story: that the entire event was in fact staged to make Trump look bad, or, perhaps, to yet another Texas GOP chair, Sue Piner, who “shared a post on Sunday that included an image of liberal billionaire George Soros and text that said, ‘I pay white cops to murder black people. And then I pay black people to riot because race wars keep the sheep in line.’”
These are views that deserve to be heard as much as those of a United States Senator who proposes that we make war on those American people with whom he disagrees. Well, if the Times truly is going to start fact checking Op-Eds from rightwing figures, those folks from Texas may just have to settle for the New London Day.