Kudos to The New York Times for standing up against trans-extremism ideologues — so far, anyway.
Two Wednesday letters to the Grey Lady, signed by hundreds of activists, celebrities and Times contributors, attacked the paper over its supposedly “irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender people” and “mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language.”
The signers clearly meant news reports that outline the actual risks of pediatric gender treatments and social transition without parental consent, as well an opinion piece offering a feisty defense of J.K. Rowling.
And the Times, to its credit, didn’t cave. “Our journalism strives to explore, interrogate and reflect,” ran its reply, “and we’re proud of it.”
Maybe this signals a renewed commitment to common sense, and a resolve by Times management to face down its Slacktivist staff.
But the precedents aren’t good. Just three years ago, the paper purged its op-ed staff and editorial-page editor after it caught some Twitter heat over Sen. Tom Cotton’s call to deploy the National Guard amid the George Floyd riots.
On COVID, the Times spun like a weathervane in the social-media breeze, first advising caution on overreacting to the initial outbreak, then becoming the central cheerleader for online public health “experts” who demanded an ever-expanding, useless regime of masks, closed schools and shut businesses.
Or consider Sen. John Fetterman. The man suffered a stroke shortly before winning election and displays obvious cognitive impairments. But the Times is still covering for him. Why? A horde of digital lefties has declared all mention of his obvious unfitness for office ableist.
And after years of publishing occasional, cranky articles slamming gas stoves, the Times opened the floodgates with enough gas-stoves-are-bad content to fill a small book when the subject took off online.
So good on the Times for not hanging its writers out to dry. But if the paper’s pandering past is prologue, it may well let the gender extremists get their way.