Based on searches at their respective sites at 9:40 a.m. ET this morning, the Associated Press, the New York Times and the Politico do not have stories on the fever-swamp left's two-days-old attempts to force storage company DropBox to reverse its appointment of Condoleezza Rice to its board of directors.
The three outlets just cited, and the rest of the national establishment press, with the as usual notable exception of Fox News (in an opinion piece by Richard Grenell) and the unusual exception of UPI.com, appears to be following what I'll call the "hand-wringing template": Ignore the story until the left gets its dirty work done, and then file a timid story noting how the now-settled matter "raises free-speech issues." This is how a passive-aggressive mission is accomplished.
Rice's supposedly unforgivable "offenses" are her involvement in the Bush administration, the Iraq War (which the U.S. military won in 2008, a victory which Barack Obama appears to be well on his way towards undoing) and, as national security director (before she was Secretary of State), her alleged involvement with domestic spying. (Does anyone think that the left will go after any Obama admin CIA or national security official when they head into the private sector?)
Grenell lays out the hypocrisy vividly in his Fox column (bolds are mine):
Dropbox, Condoleezza Rice controversy: More proof liberals are the new intolerants
... young tech geniuses are now trying to purge conservatives and those who support conservative causes from corporate board rooms.
... For decades, the liberal media eviscerated the religious right and other conservatives for their own attacks against liberal social causes. Over time, the media labeled anyone who didn’t agree with the left’s world view as intolerant. Progressive journalists were quick to support the Democrats’ meme of their opponents as mean-spirited, bigoted, homophobic or racist.
But the pendulum has now swung the other way. Diversity is no longer about differing views. The new bullies are the left. Yesterday’s champions of diversity have become today’s intolerants. Black, gay and Hispanic conservatives are labeled self-haters and considered sell-outs to their communities. The left sees no place for differing opinions. In fact, if you have a minority opinion from the majority liberal view then you will be run out of the room.
... Wired Magazine’s Marcus Wohlsen, a Berkeley, Calif. resident, wrote this as his lead for the Dropbox announcement: “Condoleezza Rice — Stanford professor, Iraq War architect, alleged warrantless wiretap supporter — is joining the board at the rising tech startup.” Wohlsen failed to mention that Dr. Rice was the former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.
Wohlsen’s piece goes on to argue that Rice should be dropped from the board because Americans won’t trust her and therefore the company. Wohlsen’s assumption that all Americans are Democrats leaves out the possibility that Republicans may not trust corporate America’s liberal board members.
... We all know that President Obama’s liberal ... Susan Rice would be perfectly welcome on a corporate board by the progressive scions of Silicon Valley. But that other black woman who made her own way to the top of the State Department and NSC isn’t acceptable to the mob.
Is any more proof needed that liberals are the new intolerants?
I would only take issue with Grenell's characterization of these exercises as "new." They are only more virulent, because the left believes it has greater power now than it did several years ago, when it had to bite its collective tongue and pretend to be tolerant.
Dropbox is holding firm — for now. A furious Twitter war rages. The establishment press avoids covering it all because its members know that early exposure of the controversy will cast the intolerant in an unfavorable light, and hurt their chances of success.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
