The very name of the NYT’s effort is a historical falsehood. As my grade school history text first told me, the black people who were sold into Jamestown in 1619 were not slaves at all. The English Common Law never permitted chattel slavery. They were indentured servants — a harsh but temporary form of service, and the condition under which the majority of white settlers came to America before the Revolution.

I believe that would have been the tobacco farming business.

The New York Times is the principal vial in which it resides.

Led by the queen bee New York Times, where the woke clichés are endless, the hive of drone-level leftists in the media and the Democratic Party are easily pivoting from the Russian collusion hoax to the next one: “white supremacism!”

As normal people try to evaluate this latest round of charges, it’s worth remembering one critical and universal characteristic shared by genuine white supremacists: They proudly proclaim their beliefs; they aren’t shy about them.
…
But a funny thing happened on the way to the outrage party at which privileged (often white) elites demand racial minorities join their condemnation of presidential “racism, bigotry, and xenophobia!” These calls have been met with eye-rolling, not applause.
…
Perhaps the most shocking and surprising result may be found in a recent Zogby poll finding a whopping 49 percent of Hispanics approve of the job Trump is doing. A subhead in the Zogby poll reads, “Trump is winning urban voters and has record support with African Americans.”

How is it possible that an alleged white supremacist president could draw “record support” from African Americans? It’s a strong indication that the Left’s effort to paint the president as a racist is failing.

Which may explain why the NYT is going full-throttle to “correct” that failure.

The president won’t let phony charges of “racism” cow him into accepting the unacceptable and bowing to liberal demagogues and hypocrites. And neither should we.

Rabbi Aryeh Spero – August 20th, 2019
…
No person is above criticism. Not Cummings, not Al Sharpton, nor “squad” members Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), or Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). If they can dish it out—as they do daily, often by tarring their opponents as racists and white supremacists—they should be able to take it.

The assertion that racism is an exercise of power and that “people of color” do not hold power is an absurd dodge here. Cummings, Sharpton, and the “squad” hold immense power in the public sphere. To claim the privilege, as they do, of being beyond legitimate criticism based on their status as a member of a minority group is disingenuous. They ascribe to themselves a certain supremacy, which is itself a species of racism. Political correctness is eating away at the fabric of the body politic. Exploiting one’s victim status to deny others their rights, such as freedom of speech, stifles political debate, fosters corruption, and threatens essential public accountability.

This new, (il)liberal lack of accountability manifests itself in different ways. In recent years, for example, many liberals have embraced a raw hatred of Israel, the demonization of decent white people, and a virulent anti-Semitism. Such views had long festered in the outlying provinces of the far-Left and have bubbled up on college and university campuses from time to time over the past two decades.

But now the hatred has moved into the mainstream of the Democratic Party, under the banner of “social justice” and “progressive” civil rights politics. Long-standing identity politics grievances have given Democratic activists license to hate political conservatives, Jews, and really anyone (white, suburban female Trump voters; black conservatives) who departs from the party line

Thankfully, President Trump is fighting back, calling them out, and not letting them get away with it. He is doing so not merely to defend himself, but to fight for us, something his predecessors and most Republican Senators are unwilling to do in our behalf.
…
What a difference from a few short years ago, when Barack Obama used his presidential perch to criticize and malign the United States, chide America as a racist society, weaken us around the world, diminish the importance of Christian religious freedom, and extol racialists like Al Sharpton and traitors like Bowe Bergdhal.

In contrast, President Trump, proud of being an American, is standing up for the dignity of the country. He, like so many others, is saying: It’s time to stop the baloney and farce of lionizing self-serving agitators simply because they call themselves civil rights leaders. He will not let phony charges of “racism” cow him into accepting the unacceptable and bowing to left-wing demagogues and liberal hypocrites. Neither should we.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/08/16/readers-think-satire-is-real/

The larger question, though, is what we should do about this problem.

In other recent work, we compared the effectiveness of different ways of flagging inaccurate social media content.

We tested a couple of different methods. One involved including a warning that fact-checkers had determined the inaccuracy of a post. Another had a message indicating that the content was from a satirical site.

We found that labeling an article as “satire” was uniquely effective. Users were less likely to believe stories labeled as satire, were less likely to share them and saw the source as less credible. They also valued the warning.

You can’tmake this stuff up — but journalists apparently can.

https://babylonbee.com/news/concerning-survey-finds-too-many-people-think-snopes-is-a-real-fact-checking-website

https://babylonbee.com/news/under-mounting-pressure-from-snopes-babylon-bee-writers-forced-to-admit-they-are-not-real-journalists

https://babylonbee.com/news/prodigal-son-kicked-back-out-after-old-tweets-surface

https://babylonbee.com/news/six-year-old-saying-why-dont-we-just-give-everything-away-for-free-surges-to-top-of-democratic-polls

https://babylonbee.com/news/republicans-question-trumps-loyalty-to-party-values-after-he-actually-does-something-to-help-defund-planned-parenthood

(h/t PowerLine for the first one, and wisdom from some of their commenters).

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/08/is-snopes-a-satire-site.php

mike_s •
(another) commenter suggests that we search Babylon Bee at the Snopes site and actually read what they write about Babylon Bee. I did. It’s incredibly entertaining – I highly recommend it.

Paul Sorensen •
Two things missing in a liberal book store:
Humor section
Non fiction section

Hawk Handsaw •
Well, before they picked a fight with the Babylon Bee, I assumed Snopes was still the mom and pop outfit that just collected urban legends, as it used to be back when read it from time to time in the early days of the Internet.
Now I know better…..

andrewfalcon •
“Study: Too Many People Think Satirical News Is Real.”
It’s more real than the nooz the New York Times and Washington Post dish out to their readers every day.

Spinmamma andrewfalcon •
Good point. With the ridiculous gossip pushed by NYT and WaPo who could blame readers for not being able to tell the difference.

I also served in the Central African Republic and studied pre-colonial history along the Ubangui River. Slave raids (including those led by Tippu Tib) took many slaves from that region north to the Sudan and east to the Indian Ocean ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, where Arab traders bought ivory and slaves. This trade is also well documented by early English and French explorers.

Slavery is only marginally a North American custom. It is more significantly a black African and Arab custom. The Times is missing a lot of very important history by looking only at slavery in the American colonies.

I believe I will start a one-person boycott of the NYTimes. Its level of dishonesty has just climbed too high. I have known a number of NYTimes correspondents overseas, and respected them all. But I cannot respect the dishonesty of their current editorial staff.