From the right: China’s Nobel Chutzpah
National Review’s Jim Geraghty scorns Beijing’s argument that “the Wuhan Institute of Virology deserves to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine.” It’s “another indicator that it intends to change nothing in the aftermath of the pandemic.” Although “WIV’s work literally brought the world to a screeching halt,” the Beijing regime argues the lab deserves kudos “for being the first to discover the gene sequence of the novel coronavirus.” What shouldn’t be rewarded: locating a a hazardous lab, which works with the most dangerous viruses, in the middle of a global trade hub.
Democrat: Blacks Are ‘Furious’ With CRT
“We are living in the best of times,” cheers former Democratic congressional candidate Barrington D. Martin II at Newsweek. America is no longer “recognizable as the place where segregation” once reigned — and “as a black man who has lived his entire life” there, “I should know.” Yet Democrats have worked “overtime to keep race ideology alive,” most recently via critical race theory — “big business” for those “wishing to keep black Americans believing in the omnipresence of racism.” Alas, CRT promotes “divisiveness” and “sets our kids up for failure” and resentment. Black parents are “furious” with it, yet Dems aren’t listening, and the GOP response has been lacking.
Welfare watch: Dems’ Dangerous Aid
Democrats claim new monthly payments of up to $300 per child “will reduce child poverty, as if the absence of money were the only problem for these families,” scoffs Robert Doar at The Wall Street Journal. Decades “in New York’s social-services agencies” taught him that money “rarely addresses the underlying issues.” Often, beneficiaries “need help that money can’t buy.” Homes “plagued by addiction, domestic violence and unemployment need the attention of a social worker,” but sending “no-strings-attached cash from Washington” severs that contact, which “can save lives.” Liberals “who cheer . . . are concerned about substance abuse, absent parents, domestic violence and mental health,” but the benefit “circumvents some of the most effective ways to address these serious challenges.”
Media beat: Maddow’s Telling Win
When MSNBC host Rachel Maddow declared One America News “literally is paid Russian propaganda,” the right-wing network sued for defamation. “In an oddly overlooked ruling,” reports Glenn Greenwald at his Substack, a federal judge dismissed the suit, asserting Maddow’s audience “understands that her show consists of exaggeration, hyperbole and pure opinion and, therefore, would not assume that such outlandish accusations are factually true, even when she uses the language of certainty and truth when presenting them.” The “judge emphasized” Maddow doesn’t “present news but rather hyperbole and exploitation of actual news to serve her liberal activism” — which her viewers “not only expect but desire.” Fox News lawyers made “virtually identical” arguments when Karen McDougal unsuccessfully sued for slander over Tucker Carlson’s contention the former model “extorted” for President Donald Trump “by demanding payments in exchange for her silence about an extramarital affair.” Liberals, including Maddow’s MSNBC colleagues, constantly cite that suit to claim Fox “admits that its host is a liar who cannot be trusted” — strangely, it’s “impossible to find similar headlines about Maddow.”
Culture critic: Projection at The New York Times
Projection, accusing “someone of exhibiting shameful or unpleasant qualities that we possess ourselves,” is “a familiar mental process,” yet New York Times journalists can’t “recognize it when they see it,” snarks Lee Siegel at City Journal. A recent Times article lists “areas in which the Republican outrage machine is manipulating the appearance of crisis for political reasons” — economics, national security, border security, energy, culture — ignoring that “every tweet, every syllable, practically every breath that Donald Trump took as president served the media, and especially the Times, as the occasion for predictions of imminent catastrophe,” with the pandemic intensifying “the calculated hysteria.” The paper has lost “the professional self-awareness that is not just at the heart of reporting the news but also an essential quality of culture itself.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board