The New York Times will strenuously defend Joe Biden’s VP pick Kamala Harris from those racists and sexists who would dare criticize her, as shown in Thursday’s “White House Memo” by Katie Rogers.
Keep in mind this online headline deck appeared over a story from a so-called objective reporter writing in the news pages:
“Kamala Harris Crystallizes Trump’s View of Women: They’re ‘Nasty’ or Housewives -- As Ms. Harris joined the Democratic ticket, the president wasted no time calling her “nasty” and praising the ‘suburban housewife’ he says will vote for him. His views are out of step with reality.”
Rogers text smeared Trump for a false “embrace of the Confederacy.”
….But just as public attitudes on racism have shifted, threatening to turn the president and his embrace of the Confederacy into a living relic, his views on American women -- particularly the suburban ones -- are similarly anachronistic.
….
As Mr. Trump insulted Ms. Harris on Tuesday, he peppered his usual misogynistic “nasty” trope with more name-calling, referring to her as the “meanest, most horrible, most disrespectful” member of the United States Senate.With that, Ms. Harris joins a group of women Mr. Trump feels have not been adequately compliant.
News flash: Trump is an equal-opportunity insulter.
Rogers even dredged up her own phony misinterpretation of Trump supposedly telling “Orwellian” falsehoods about his own comments on Duchess Meghan Markle, from June 2019.
Even Meghan Markle, the American-born Duchess of Sussex, was deemed “nasty” for not supporting his 2016 candidacy.
“What can I say?” Mr. Trump told a British tabloid last year, just before a visit to England, where he was hosted by the royal family. “I didn’t know that she was nasty.”
That time, in an Orwellian twist, Mr. Trump tried to walk back those comments, which were caught on tape, by telling the public not to believe what they had just heard.
Reading the full exchange suggests Trump meant to say Markle had been “nasty” to him, not necessarily a nasty person. But Rogers just played silly word games.
On Friday, Rogers hit Trump for having supposedly “encouraged a racist conspiracy theory that is rampant among some of his followers: that Senator Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic vice-presidential nominee born in California, was not eligible for the vice presidency or presidency because her parents were immigrants.”
Not content to criticize Trump for spreading a dubious legal theory, both Rogers and her headline writer played the reliable “racist” card in “Trump, Pushing a Racist Theory, Questions Harris’s Citizenship.”
(Yet similar questioning of Sen. John McCain’s presidential eligibility, amid trumped-up doubts that he was a “natural-born citizen," given that he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, appeared in the Times in 2008 without any internal gasps of horror.)
Also on Friday, reporter Shane Goldmacher fiercely defended Harris from the abject horror of having her unusual first name mispronounced: “For Biden and Harris, A Day Full of Kudos, Cash and G.O.P. Jabs.”
Commentators on Fox News and other right-wing outlets mispronounced her name, some seemingly on purpose. “Whatever,” snapped Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, when a guest tried to correct him. Others questioned if she could truly claim to be Black.
“There is no doubt an othering going on. It’s playing into the worst fears of Donald Trump’s base,” said Angela Rye, a Democratic strategist and former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus. “It’s déjà vu. She’s Black. She’s not Black enough.”
Never mind that Biden flubbed "Kamala" during his introduction speech as well.
In a fund-raising email about Ms. Harris’s selection, Vice President Mike Pence cast the Biden-Harris ticket as a “radical duo,” and minced no words in dividing America.
“The stakes have never been higher, and we need your help to send a message that this is YOUR Country, NOT THEIRS,” he wrote.
Goldmacher concluded sadly, giving Rye the last word:
Ms. Rye sighed about the ugly messaging in the race.
“We used to say racism is dog whistles,” she said. “Now it’s a fog horn.”
