Discriminations

Perhaps New York Times editors and reporters, bitter over impending layoffs caused by declining numbers of newspaper readers and ad revenues and hence clinging to comfortable ideological bromides, cannot resist disparaging those who are different from themselves. Or perhaps being fair and balanced (forget about objective) is so counter to the corporate culture there that they cannot help themselves.

But whatever the contextualizing explanation, there is simply no excuse for the following question that NYT reporter Jeff Zeleny asks in his article today that purports to plumb the depths of the hole dug by Obama’s bitter&cling remarks.

In Pennsylvania, as well as coming primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, did Mr. Obama provide another excuse for white voters to voice qualms about his candidacy without acknowledging that it is his race that troubles them?....

What were the other excuses offered by white voters for not supporting Obama, excuses that everyone (at least everyone at the New York Times) knows were not their real, though unacknowledged, reasons?

You almost have to feel sorry for these poor white voters. They are victimized by so many forces working against them, not least of which is their stubborn failure to read the New York Times and accept its point of view. Leave aside the editorials; if they would only read news stories like this one by Zeleny they would know what Zeleny knows — that their real reluctance to vote for Obama is his race, not his infatuation with his Farrakhanian pastor, his belief that their religious values and social views derive from the degree of their satisfaction with their jobs, or even his tax policy (white rubes don't have views on tax policy; they only vote their prejudices).