The one thing that all New York Times house "conservatives" are united on is their hatred of President Donald Trump. In fact, it is pretty much a job requirement. The New York Times will barely tolerate their slightly conservative (on a few topics) views but only if they express complete hostility towards Trump. Political diversity at the Times on the subject of Trump is absolutely taboo.
Sometimes this Trump derangement on the part of their house "conservatives" can take an unintended humorous turn as it did this week when David Brooks and his Mini-Me, Ross Douthat, sounded remarkably alike when writing on the same topic...how Donald Trump is supposedly disrupting our culture. Brooks wrote about this on Tuesday with The Abbie Hoffman of the Right: Donald Trump and his Mini-Me wrote on the exact same topic a day later with Trump’s Empty Culture Wars.
Since both of the New York Times house "conservatives" sound so remarkably alike, I shall distinguish them by placing the quotes from Brooks' Mini-Me in italics after I quote the original:
He never showed any real interest in policy during the campaign. He was elected to be a cultural president. He was elected to shred the dominant American culture and to give voice to those who felt voiceless in that culture. He’s doing that every day.
That was David Brooks. Now his Mini-Me will express the exact same opinion:
...he is unique as well in that unlike most culture warriors — who are usually initially idealists, however corrupted they may ultimately become — he has never cared about anything higher or nobler than himself, and so he’s never happier than when the entire country seems to be having a culture war about, well, Donald Trump.
Okay, back to the original house "conservative"...
The members of the educated class saw this past weekend’s N.F.L. fracas as a fight over racism. They felt mobilized and unified in that fight and full of righteous energy. Members of the working class saw the fracas as a fight about American identity. They saw Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin try to dissuade Alejandro Villanueva, a three-time combat veteran, from celebrating the flag he risked his life for. Members of this class also felt mobilized, unified and full of righteous energy.
...echoed by his Mini-Me:
But in his usual bullying and race-baiting way, Trump has made it much, much worse, by multiplying the reasons one might reasonably kneel— for solidarity with teammates, as a protest against the president’s behavior, as a gesture in favor of free speech, as an act of racial pride — and then encouraging his own partisans to interpret the kneeling as a broad affront to their own patriotism and politics.
Finally, more of the expected Trump derangement from the original....
Donald Trump came into a segmenting culture and he is further tearing apart every fissure. He has a nose for every wound in the body politic and day after day he sticks a red-hot poker in one wound or another and rips it open.
...which his Mini-Me faithfully recites in slightly different words...
Unfortunately for us all Donald Trump is a master, a virtuoso, of the second kind of culture war — and a master, too, of taking social and cultural debates that could be important and necessary and making them stupider and emptier and all about himself.
Exit question: Should the New York Times cut expenses by consolidating the two columns into one and call it "Me & Mini-Me"?
