"New York Times assailed for Alice Walker interview endorsing ‘anti-Semitic’ conspiracy theorist."

Explained by Isaac Stanley-Becker at WaPo.

There are so many layers to this story, which I saw yesterday and decided not to blog because I'd done enough blogging for the day and it looked complicated. Now, I'm seeing this WaPo piece and thinking I can use it to organize the layers to present it to you, but I'm wearied by the first paragraph, which brings in a layer I hadn't noticed before. Look how complicated this is. This is — I must stress — the first paragraph of the article. Look how it uses the word "it" without an antecedent:

Critics call it anti-Semitic, saying it places Holocaust revisionism at the center of an odious and addled worldview. Its title has been borrowed by followers of QAnon, a conspiracy movement that favors President Trump and peddles baseless theories about government secrets and cabals.

The layer I had not noticed before is QAnon! I thought QAnon was had faded from currency. The layers I knew were: 1. A supposedly anti-Semitic writer I'd never heard of, 2. The famous writer Alice Walker, who used that other writer's work in some way, 3. The NYT who did some sort of puff piece about #2, 4. People who are criticizing #3 for not attending to #1.

Okay. I don't know if I want to do this. But let me try:

"It" in paragraph 1 of the Stanley-Becker piece is “And the Truth Shall Set You Free,” a book by David Icke, who is the writer in layer #1 of my incomplete understanding.

In the NYT piece, Alice Walker said "In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about." She called him a "curious person's dream come true."

And now the debate is whether the NYT had a "gate-keeping" responsibility to help readers discount Walker's recommendation of Icke.

Stanley-Becker provides the filter, telling us that Icke "disseminates conspiracy theories in self-published books and on YouTube" and "promote[s] the idea that a race of reptilian humanoids, widely viewed as a stand-in for Jews, is secretly running the world," and, to that end, has relied on "the infamous anti-Semitic forgery 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'" Icke  has written that the Holocaust was "coldly calculated by the ‘Jewish’ elite."

The NYT has not caved to criticism. It stands by its original article and refuses to tack on any detail about Icke.

I'm looking at the NYT piece now and see that it's a spare, easy-to-read Q&A about what books are "on your nightstand." These are the books Alice Walker is reading, with her own words about why. It's not the format of this style of interview to quarrel with the interviewee's book choices . It's raw material, and we the readers are challenged to read critically. The NYT archive is full of these "By the Book" interviews, and the interviewees are given the room to explain their own choices and that's that. If you take that to be the NYT endorsing the books, you're an idiot.

Stanley-Becker never gets back to the subject of QAnon! What is the QAnon connection? I reread what S-B wrote: "Its title has been borrowed by followers of QAnon..." Its title, you mean "And the Truth Shall Set You Free"?!!

Does Stanley-Becker think Icke originated the phrase "and the truth will set you free"? I literally feel nauseated at the thought that I'm reading a long column, seeking enlightenment, and the person who wrote it does not know the Biblical verse, "and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Is the only connection between QAnon and Icke that both used that phrase?!

I need a rest.

BACK FROM MY REST: I think Stanley-Becker — eager to drag Trump into some newly available mud — gratuitously complicated an already confusing story by throwing QAnon into the first paragraph. The connection to QAnon was never explained, and as far as I can tell, is based on Stanley-Becker's ignorance of one of the most famous quotes in the Bible!

"Starting at age 11, they prayed for breast cancer. So distressing were the markers of their femininity that..."

"... Kris Irvin — who identifies as a man and uses the pronouns they, them and their — would have welcomed abnormal cell growth in their 'crappy and dysfunctional body.' Irvin knew of no other remedy for the physical and emotional agony that seemed to intertwine in their breasts, as they knew of no word to describe what they were experiencing. Since they were 3 years old, Irvin said, they were certain that they were male. 'But I didn’t know the word transgender until I was 28,' said Irvin, who is now 31 and a student at Brigham Young University, a school bound so tightly to the Mormon faith that enrollment rests on evaluation by religious leaders. That requirement could place Irvin’s education in jeopardy... 'One of the reasons God made me this way,' they wrote to their bishop, 'is to help church members and leaders see and get to know queer Mormons who are trying to stay faithful. But the church definitely does not make it easy for queer Mormons to remain Mormon'...."

From "‘He made me transgender on purpose’: Breast-removal surgery could boot Mormon student from Brigham Young" by Isaac Stanley-Becker (WaPo).

I'm reading Isaac Stanley-Becker in The Washington Post again

I noticed him for the first time yesterday — "In Trump’s right-wing media universe, it was a day like any other." I see "Isaac Stanley-Becker is a reporter based in the U.K. He is completing a doctorate in modern European history at the University of Oxford, where he is a Rhodes Scholar." I'm making an Isaac Stanley-Becker tag.

Today, he's already got 2 short articles, both of which interest me. You'll note the bloggerly panache.

1. "Trump tweets the word ‘Africa’ for first time as president — in defense of whites in South Africa." today:

The alleged plight of white South Africans is a major rallying cry of far-right movements across North America, Europe and Australia. An online petition titled “Genocide of whites in South Africa,” which calls on Trump to allow “white Boers to come to the United States,” has garnered [garnered!] nearly 23,000 signatures.

Daniel Dale, a correspondent for the Toronto Star, observed that Trump’s tweet Wednesday marked the first time he had used the word “Africa” on the social media platform since becoming president — “to express support for white people,” Dale said, “on the recommendation” of white nationalists, whose claims had been amplified by the Fox host. An archive of Trump’s tweets indeed reveals that Wednesday’s post was his first as president that included the word “Africa.”

2. "Beyond ‘You’re So Vain’: A new Carly Simon-Mick Jagger duet is unearthed 46 years later." Oh! I am so tired of 46 years of the subject of who the song that talks about who the song is about is about [sic], but...

The Rolling Stones singer did backing vocals for “You’re So Vain”...  In her memoir, Simon recalled... [Mick] testing out a song, which included the lyrics, “Funny, funny, funny, funny, how love can make you cry.”...

A new duet, never before played in public, was recently discovered on a tape... The lyrics recalled by Simon match [the tape], though the two seem to croon the word “change,” not “cry.”...

In an interview with the magazine in 2016, Simon stoked speculation about the long-lost duet. She sang the line she had put in her book, asking, “Does that sound like any Stones song to you?” The interviewer suggested “Fool to Cry”...

“Maybe, maybe,” Simon said. “We had this little back and forth at the piano for about an hour.” But then Paul and Linda McCartney arrived, she said, and the spontaneous collaboration was over....

In her memoir, she wrote that “for Mick Jagger, all women, including me, were his, by divine right.”

Whatever. "Fool to Cry" is kind of my favorite Rolling Stones song. A great soundtrack for crying, if that's ever on your agenda:



But don't you hate that — when you're having a sublimely artistic and romantic experience and Paul and Linda McCartney arrive?

"In Trump’s right-wing media universe, it was a day like any other."

Writes Isaac Stanley-Becker at WaPo:

Alongside a Daily Caller story about [Michael Cohen's pleading guilty] were laudatory posts about Trump, from the president’s defense of free speech to his status as “the most feminist president.” TheBlaze gave prominence to Trump’s attacks on ESPN for not “defending our anthem,” foregrounding the president’s grievances with NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to protest police violence.

Meanwhile, conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh asserted that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III isn’t interested in what Trump’s former attorney has to say....

If [Trump] went online shortly before 4 p.m., the only “BREAKING NEWS” alert he would have seen was the one from Fox about the 24-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico who law enforcement officials say killed Mollie Tibbetts, the 20-year-old college student who disappeared last month.

Alarm over the student’s death dominated the president’s feed... “OUTRAGE!” steamed Laura Ingraham....

Hannity dismissed Tuesday’s news as a bloodthirsty campaign against the president. “The media is once again beside themselves with false reporting, speculation and hysteria,” he said....

The only part of this right-wing media coverage I consumed yesterday was a bit of Fox News, which I did not turn on, but only overheard. As I said yesterday:

On Fox News — "The Five" — there's too much talk about the Iowa murder case, with a suspect who's been in the country illegally, and how this might be what ordinary Americans really care about. I was groaning aloud at this labored effort.

My comments section often seems like part — a very small part — of the right-wing universe, and I got a lot of pushback for criticizing Fox for putting an Iowa murder story at the top of the news on such a big national news day.

Examples of comments: "Well Ann I disagree. I am angry about Mollie Tibbetts murderer, but don’t give a damn about Manafort or Cohen." "I kind of do care about murder more than I care about selectively prosecuted financial crimes. Both are bad -- but dead bodies should perhaps get more of our focus." "Mollie Tibbetts' murder is going to enrage a lot of people. Like me. In 2015, when Kate Steinle was murdered by an illegal alien, no politician said a word until candidate Trump began slamming it, slamming our laws, etc. That started momentum that carried him all the way to the White House. I'm willing to bet that people--like me--would rather have him and his policies in the White House than hear about what dodgy Michael Cohen had to say to buy five years."

IN THE COMMENTS: tim maguire said, "Ms. Althouse herself has highlighted Drudge's front page. Stanley-Becker needs to stick his head outside is protective cocoon once in a while is he doesn't want to look like an idiot while talking about people who aren't him." Yes, Drudge is also "right-wing media" (within the Stanley-Becker world view) and — as I showed you in my above-linked post from yesterday — Drudge looked like this:



AND: A day later, Drudge is still showing Trump in Hell. The red is gone, but "IMPEACHMENT FEARS" have arrived: