NYT's Nocera Apologizes for Calling Tea Partiers 'Terrorists'
New York Times columnist Joe Nocera took a lot of heat this week for writing an article calling Tea Party members "terrorists" wearing "suicide vests."
On Saturday, he apologized:
In the four months since I began writing an Op-Ed column, the thing that has most surprised me is how darned liberal I sound sometimes.
After explaining his liberal roots, Nocera informed readers what brought him to make such inflammatory comments Tuesday:
Once the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, they began to systemically undermine the Dodd-Frank reform law, pushing back against new, and mostly sensible, regulations designed to prevent another meltdown. The worst was the way Republicans took a hatchet to Elizabeth Warren as she tried to set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Such an agency, had it been in existence prior to 2008, might have prevented millions of Americans, many of them poor and financially unsophisticated, from being gouged by mortgage companies. Watching it all unfold made me angry.
That anger reached its apex on Tuesday, when I wrote a column comparing the Tea Party Republicans to terrorists. The words I chose were intemperate and offensive to many, and I've been roundly criticized. I was a hypocrite, the critics said, for using such language when on other occasions I've called for a more civil politics. In the cool light of day, I agree with them. I apologize.
He concluded:
Most frightening of all, the hand-to-hand combat over spending is going to resume shortly when Congress returns from the August recess, and its supercommittee will start to look for an additional $1.5 trillion in cuts. It is hard to see how the outcome of those negotiations will be any different from this last awful go-round. In all likelihood, they will inflict more damage to our battered economy.
Undoubtedly, I'll write columns about those negotiations. But I won't be calling anybody names. That I can promise.
Maybe not, but it's a metaphysical certitude whatever he writes will sound "darned liberal."
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Comments
The worst was the way
Submitted by lnthomp on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 10:41am.
If the government hadn't first forced the mortgage companies to finance homes for millions of Americans who should never have got financing, the mortgage companies wouldn't have had to invent balloon mortgages and interest-only mortgages that would allow low-income people to meet their payments for the first two or three or five years and then lose their homes when the payments increased but their income didn't.
NO agency required, just LESS government interference in the banking industry. There is such a thing as TOO MUCH REGULATION, contrary to liberal dogma.
Lee T / USN(ret) /Midland, TX,
From what I understand
Submitted by ricklail on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 12:11pm.
From what I understand Elizabeth Warren snubbed her nose at the committee saying she did not have time for them. Thank the good Lord she is gone, well at least for a bit. She wants to run for Senate from Mass.
Good thing...
Submitted by foxyk on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 10:44am.
no one reads the ny times
Apology accepted
Submitted by Cool Arrow on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 10:48am.
I still think it was terribly wrong for the Republicans to use the threat of default to insist on massive spending cuts.
It's not as though Sen. Reid and Sen. Obama used such threats against another American President.
Cool, it wasn't the
Submitted by MikeB on Sun, 08/07/2011 - 9:57am.
Cool, it wasn't the Republicans who threatened to default, it was Obama. As has been pointed out many times, there is enough tax revenue coming in each month to pay the interest on the debt, pay Social Security and Medicare, pay the military, and pay for necessary defense functions. It was Obama who threatened default, not paying SS, and not paying the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who were standing in harm's way.
The real problem
Submitted by DontFeedTheTrolls on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 10:48am.
If the Democrats and RINOs would release the stranglehold on, say, the domestic energy industry, we would see the beginning of a REAL recovery.
And yet...
Submitted by Dave81 on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 10:54am.
In his apology he uses the terms "took a hatchet to" and "hand-to-hand combat." We appreciate the apology, but the civility still needs a little work.
Yeah, I was thinking the same
Submitted by killa37 on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 1:58pm.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when I was reading this pathetic excuse for an apology - not that anyone cares whether he apologized or not, cause he's a nobody just repeating what the rest of his cohorts are saying. In his first piece the other day, he was using a bunch of Moooooooooooooooooooooooooslem words to describe TEA partiers and conservatives, and how he's gone back to your run-of-the-mill hardcore violent words to try and excuse, worm, and alibi his way out of the last stupid thing that he said.
So....he's not sorry for
Submitted by motherbelt on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 10:53am.
So....he's not sorry for calling them terrorists, only for being a hypocrite.
Got it.
He's not sorry he did it
Submitted by kch50428 on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 11:06am.
He's sorry people noticed. And he's sorry people are making him responsible for his words.
I am wondering what else he had...
Submitted by drsamherman on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 11:18am.
...with the crow.
Careful, Dr. Sam
Submitted by Cool Arrow on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 11:22am.
Balboa should be arriving any minute to condemn you for using the word "crow"
You're right. It's CROW as in the BIRD species.
Submitted by drsamherman on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 11:28am.
For the liberal lurkers incapable of recognizing a time-honored saying.
Apology accepted IF and this is a big IF:
Submitted by Chicagoray40 on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 11:30am.
You left wingers HAVE TO realize that because of the dreamed about nanny state you've allowed to fester like a cancer and feed like a beast your chosen president, his cronies and some bad RINO's in the mix have now made us ALL subservient to the communist Chinese. The only way out of this is if America comes together, gets rid of all non tea party candidates and cleans house in DC and in the streets, by removing all deadbeats, all illegal aliens, all foreigners in our jails and so on.
And that's the first step of the medicine, the second step is the ending of all perpetual generational welfare as we know it.
All welfare recipients must be put to work to be given incentive to find work on their own, or they simply must perish on their own, not on our time and dime. Number two, no more immigrants from anywhere period. The only to be fair about it is to stop immigration altogether for at least a decade from all corners of the globe until we sort out who's here and who needs to go back to whence they came. While doing that, we need to start respecting human life again and stop ALL NON ER abortions, it's robbed our society of 50 million prospective hard working human beings, if brought up in a non nanny state gimme gimme environment.
This alone would lift our society tremendously and would give us the missing muscle and brain we need right now we don't have coming up through the ranks of children in the numbers we'll need. The key to that though is being born into families that have 2 parents with at least one that works, and not the other living at the local jail or state prison on the Us taxpayers backs at 50 thousand minimum per inmate per year....
That would just be page one of How to fix this country were I elected tomorrow and if we don't do these things and now this experiment is OVER and OUT, it's that simple . We have stop fighting amongst ourselves and pull together for the common goal of saving this republic, otherwise, we don't deserve it and we'll lose it. And that day will come sooner than later, like in the next 5 years.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. –Albert Einstein My Twitter
The tide has turned.
Submitted by The Vet on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 11:43am.
Most frightening of all...over spending is going to resume shortly when Congress...will start to look for an additional $1.5 trillion in cuts.
Who still thinks Speaker Boehner got a bad deal? No one is talking about raising taxes now. No one will talk about raising taxes in the near future. It is all about too much government spending. And one of them lets it slip. This scares them to death.
Sorry Vet
Submitted by Blonde on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 12:52pm.
The democrats are still at it.
Nothing will make them stop this class warfare nonsense, not even a ratings reduction (which is clearly a repudiation of their failed policies).
Handy Reference Guide to Obama's Gaffes and Goofs ~ Currently Numbering 200 (and Counting)
NYT insults their readers yet
Submitted by Slyrr on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 11:48am.
NYT insults their readers yet AGAIN. This loser writers denounces his own readership as 'financially unsophisticated'.
So - they're not 'sophisticated', eh? You mean not sophisticated like YOU, Mr. Nocera? (Maybe should be 'No-Sense-a') Or not sophisticated like Obama? Or Paul Krugman? Or Barney Frank? Or like any of the other communist liberal morons whose 'tax and spend' idiocy has landed this country in such dire straits within only FOUR years?
No, I guess your readers just aren't 'sophisticated' enough to realize how spending over 200 BILLION in a single day gets us OUT of debt, huh?
Mr. No-Sense-A, I'd wager to say that ANY of your readers has more common sense in their little finger than you, and Obama, and Krugman and all the rest of you have in your entire liberal hate-filled bodies. Even a CHILD knows that if you don't have the money, you DON'T spend it! But YOU don't seem to know that!
So who are the REAL rubes here, Mr. No-Sense-A?
PS: Your 'promise' is worthless. You're a liberal. You LIE.
who is in charge of the chalk
Submitted by TerryWest on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 4:24pm.
It's as if this small group of bullys have a little club house where they all meet and rehearse, practice the line of Tea Party attack for the month
( the word "Terrorist" is written on the side walk in chalk, "wooden parrot" the pass word).
Anyone who fails to do their part will be kicked out of the juvinile journalist club house,
He gave his weak apology only after being deemed compliant and safe
Club house
Submitted by Model850 on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 6:07pm.
The He-Man TEA Party Haters Club.
That's what he calls an
Submitted by jessieH on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 4:28pm.
That's what he calls an apology? The damage was done. Every liberal in the news has said the same thing. It's out there, whether he apologizes or not. That's some really bad journalism.