The Hate That Dare Not Speak Its Name

'You fail': Washington Post slammed for 'terrible headline' about Trump journalist event https://t.co/osvlJpR8x8

— Raw Story (@RawStory) August 1, 2024

Political affairs analyst and businessman David Rothkopf separately said, "If journalists do not call racists racists, liars liars, and criminals criminals they are actively aiding the racists, liars, and criminals by minimizing or recasting and normalizing the indefensible. And it happens every day." 

Jarvis ultimately noted that the Post changed its title to "Trump's attack on Harris's racial identity moves contest into new phase." 

"The Post rewrote this headline and put made it worse insofar as it backed farther away from just telling the truth: Trump made a racist attack on Harris," Jarvis wrote. "'Contest into new phase'? That is the editors' attempt to say less: i.e., nothing. The Post is broken." 

He continued: 

"This is not just one headline It is overarching editorial failure. On this same story, here is another headline The Post ran. 'Tussle.' 'Raucous.' No, racist. If the editor and publisher do not know or cannot bear to tell the truth, they need to go. This is not an entertainment story. It is the essence of the United States. My kindest interpretation is that these British news executives don't know. More likely and worse, they choose not to."

The only surprise is why anyone is surprised. (Which is precisely why Harris should let Trump twist in the wind on this one. She doesn’t need to defend her ancestry or her identity. Let Trump defend his remarks. And WaPo. And the NYT.)

I mean, even here:

Asked what the Trump campaign's strategy appears to be, [NYT reporter Jeremy] Peters told the hosts [of Morning Joe], "I think they're flailing around. They have not landed on any effective critique of her. It's 'laughing Kamala, crazy Kamala, crooked Kamala.' Trump is kind of casting about for an attack line that works, something he's been very effective at doing with his other opponents, but they can't land on one. They don't know how to go after her. " 

"I think what Vice President Harris has done by responding the way she did is to very effectively draw the contrast that Biden couldn't with Trump," he continued. "She's saying, you know, 'same old show.' It's no accident she used the word old, right?" 

"She's reminding people that this is something that we've all seen before from Donald Trump – it's kind of like a tired sequel to the original," he elaborated. "He is going back to the same playbook, saying, you know, questioning her background, that somehow this is, like, a conspiracy theory, that he'd like to be as powerful as birtherism was in 2016. I don't know about that." 

"As far as conspiracy theories go, this is a pretty weak one," he pointed out. "I think it sounded like it was something very compulsive, that came out of his mouth at the time. I had never heard this before, maybe I'm wrong. I never actually heard anybody questioning Vice President Harris's background the way there were dark conspiracy theories around[ex-President Barack] Obama. I think this was just a, you know, an attempt to land a hit on her, and he missed."

He just can’t say the word: “racist.” Trump’s “dark conspiracy theory around Obama” was racism, pure and simple. Why not just name it? Because that’s too rude, especially to a white man?

I’ll retire to Bedlam.