Shame On The Post
For Retailing A False Charge
Posted: November 30, 2012
Republicans and conservatives bold enough to criticize Susan Rice and question the U.N. ambassador’s bona fides for a possible elevation to secretary of state have come under fire themselves, from the usual liberal sources. In this day and age, when none dare criticize even the record of a minority official (i.e., only the liberal ones), that hardly comes as a surprise.
What did catch us off-guard, though, was the smarmy vitriol pouring off the editorial page of The Washington Post vis-a-vis the burgeoning Rice brouhaha. Unlike The New York Times, The Post, at times, can be reflective, as opposed to reflexive, in its liberalism. This was not one of those instances.
To set the stage somewhat, three Republican senators — Arizona’s John McCain, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, and New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte — have questioned Ms. Rice’s fitness for the State post in light of her suspiciously sanitized account of the Benghazi raid on five Sunday talk shows back in September. Their obvious query: How could she present such a fairy tale — the attack on the U.S. consulate, she intimated, was a “spontaneous” protest to an anti-Islamic film trailer rather than an orchestrated terrorist assault — when real-time video streaming back to the United States told the true story of the raid?
Ninety-seven House Republicans chimed in as well, signing a letter to President Obama that stated, “Ambassador Rice is widely viewed as having either willfully or incompetently misled the American public in the Benghazi affair.”
OK, cutting to the chase as it did, this was pretty rugged criticism. But did it suggest anything other than legitimate outrage over the fact that Ms. Rice’s statements seemingly had no basis in reality? The Post’s editorial page apparently thought so. To wit:
“Could it be, as members of the Congressional Black Caucus are charging, that the signatories of the letter are targeting Ms. Rice because she is an African American woman? The signatories deny that, and we can’t know their hearts. What we do know is that more than 80 of the signatories are white males, and nearly half are from states of the former Confederacy.”
As media analyst — and bane of the liberal press — Bernard Goldberg recently wrote, “This is particularly nasty.” Is it ever. After admitting that “we can’t know their hearts,” The Post went on to allege, by snarky implication, that nearly half of the 80 male signatories are little more than garden-variety Southern racists. The newspaper never gets around to saying what motivated the other signatories, but we must assume that racism is involved as well — albeit not of the particularly vile strain that supposedly still sprouts in the old Confederacy.
Any way you look at it, this is decidedly vicious stuff — The Post’s accusations, we mean. And we say this taking due note of a double standard that continues to exist. Let Mr. Goldberg explain:
“Liberal elites can say whatever they want about Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and (soon-to-be former) Congressman Allen West. They’re black conservatives, which means they’re fair game. It’s perfectly permissible to call them Uncle Toms, house Negroes, and the like. But utter a discouraging word about a black liberal and you’re in for a heap of trouble.”
It just goes to show that waving the proverbial bloody shirt — and not patriotism — is the “last refuge of scoundrels.” Liberal scoundrels, that is.
What did catch us off-guard, though, was the smarmy vitriol pouring off the editorial page of The Washington Post vis-a-vis the burgeoning Rice brouhaha. Unlike The New York Times, The Post, at times, can be reflective, as opposed to reflexive, in its liberalism. This was not one of those instances.
To set the stage somewhat, three Republican senators — Arizona’s John McCain, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, and New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte — have questioned Ms. Rice’s fitness for the State post in light of her suspiciously sanitized account of the Benghazi raid on five Sunday talk shows back in September. Their obvious query: How could she present such a fairy tale — the attack on the U.S. consulate, she intimated, was a “spontaneous” protest to an anti-Islamic film trailer rather than an orchestrated terrorist assault — when real-time video streaming back to the United States told the true story of the raid?
Ninety-seven House Republicans chimed in as well, signing a letter to President Obama that stated, “Ambassador Rice is widely viewed as having either willfully or incompetently misled the American public in the Benghazi affair.”
OK, cutting to the chase as it did, this was pretty rugged criticism. But did it suggest anything other than legitimate outrage over the fact that Ms. Rice’s statements seemingly had no basis in reality? The Post’s editorial page apparently thought so. To wit:
“Could it be, as members of the Congressional Black Caucus are charging, that the signatories of the letter are targeting Ms. Rice because she is an African American woman? The signatories deny that, and we can’t know their hearts. What we do know is that more than 80 of the signatories are white males, and nearly half are from states of the former Confederacy.”
As media analyst — and bane of the liberal press — Bernard Goldberg recently wrote, “This is particularly nasty.” Is it ever. After admitting that “we can’t know their hearts,” The Post went on to allege, by snarky implication, that nearly half of the 80 male signatories are little more than garden-variety Southern racists. The newspaper never gets around to saying what motivated the other signatories, but we must assume that racism is involved as well — albeit not of the particularly vile strain that supposedly still sprouts in the old Confederacy.
Any way you look at it, this is decidedly vicious stuff — The Post’s accusations, we mean. And we say this taking due note of a double standard that continues to exist. Let Mr. Goldberg explain:
“Liberal elites can say whatever they want about Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and (soon-to-be former) Congressman Allen West. They’re black conservatives, which means they’re fair game. It’s perfectly permissible to call them Uncle Toms, house Negroes, and the like. But utter a discouraging word about a black liberal and you’re in for a heap of trouble.”
It just goes to show that waving the proverbial bloody shirt — and not patriotism — is the “last refuge of scoundrels.” Liberal scoundrels, that is.