"The baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets bears a striking resemblance to blood libel — the centuries-old antisemitic canard that accused Jews of kidnapping Christian children for ritualistic purposes."
Bigoted lies circulating among the populace is as old as human civilization, where the line is crossed - and the line that's being crossed here by JD Vance - is when powerful people choose to spread the lies themselves. Your average Russian peasant can hold all sorts of hateful suspicions about the Jews, but it takes the Czar's endorsement to make a pogrom. Hutu people may harbor some resentments of their Tutsi neighbors, but it doesn't turn into a genocide until a political party decides that massacres are the path to power.
People tend to focus on the hatred and bigotry itself, and that can make the problem seem insoluble, how can we police hundreds of millions of people, and the hateful and bigoted thoughts in their heads? And the answer is you don't, you draw a line and put public officials on one side of it, with consequences when they share the hate, consequences like the ones Parker is proposing.
At least there are some headlines about the lie. I agree it's not enough. But if had been trump, in a direct tweet or a speech, had said it, the headline would have been "Trump discusses immigrant situation in Springfield."
I checked the NYT and WaPo. The NYT article on the Mom's For Liberty speech did not even mention trump's lie about schools, though an editorial did. The main headline was how trump "charms" conservative women who really would prefer he is not QUITE so misogynist. The WaPo's only citing of the statement was in a story about...Tim Walz. Way down the page. The story about the actual speech focused on trump's disavowing of Project 2025.
In other MSM, of course, there has been a fair amount of criticism about the statement. But how can we expect the major sources to keep focusing on outrageous lies when they don't even report on them in the FIRST place?
Political journalism is an oxymoron. I've been saying it for decades, but reporting like yours could redeem it
"The baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets bears a striking resemblance to blood libel — the centuries-old antisemitic canard that accused Jews of kidnapping Christian children for ritualistic purposes."
Bigoted lies circulating among the populace is as old as human civilization, where the line is crossed - and the line that's being crossed here by JD Vance - is when powerful people choose to spread the lies themselves. Your average Russian peasant can hold all sorts of hateful suspicions about the Jews, but it takes the Czar's endorsement to make a pogrom. Hutu people may harbor some resentments of their Tutsi neighbors, but it doesn't turn into a genocide until a political party decides that massacres are the path to power.
People tend to focus on the hatred and bigotry itself, and that can make the problem seem insoluble, how can we police hundreds of millions of people, and the hateful and bigoted thoughts in their heads? And the answer is you don't, you draw a line and put public officials on one side of it, with consequences when they share the hate, consequences like the ones Parker is proposing.
At least there are some headlines about the lie. I agree it's not enough. But if had been trump, in a direct tweet or a speech, had said it, the headline would have been "Trump discusses immigrant situation in Springfield."
I checked the NYT and WaPo. The NYT article on the Mom's For Liberty speech did not even mention trump's lie about schools, though an editorial did. The main headline was how trump "charms" conservative women who really would prefer he is not QUITE so misogynist. The WaPo's only citing of the statement was in a story about...Tim Walz. Way down the page. The story about the actual speech focused on trump's disavowing of Project 2025.
In other MSM, of course, there has been a fair amount of criticism about the statement. But how can we expect the major sources to keep focusing on outrageous lies when they don't even report on them in the FIRST place?
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"false claim", "unsubstantiated slur", "contradicted by evidence"
Seems like the media embargo on the word "lie" is holding firm.