The Washington Post is the only place where Democrats are unceremoniously thrown out of office. It can only be one thing: Democracy has died in darkness.
Take Stephen Sweeney (the powerful Democrat leader of New Jersey’s state Senate). He was not expected to lose to a Republican who was a trucker with a small campaign treasury.
Paul Farhi, a veteran reporter at The Washington Post, identified the problem in a story headlined, “How the media missed a New Jersey senate candidate’s racist social media posts—until he’d already won.” A more accurate headline would be, “How the media failed to help a Democrat win (because no one thought he would lose).”
Farhi insisted Ed Durr “had a history of posting bigoted, misogynistic and derogatory comments on social media.” Like what? None of Durr’s tweets were quoted in full by Farhi, and Durr quickly deleted his Twitter account, so a lot of context is missing.
No. 1: “Mohammed was a pedophile!” he tweeted in 2019, and also described Islam as “a false religion” and “a cult of hate.”
According to Islamic writings Mohammed married a six year-old child bride. The Washington Post seems to be upset that Islam is being criticised at all. Is it “racist” or “bigoted” to say there’s such a thing as a “false religion?”
Muslims believe that other faiths are false to put it mildly. Christians believe that other faiths are false. That’s why they have their own faiths. “Cult of hate” is harsh, but it sounds pretty close to how The Washington Post describes die-hard Trump fans.
No. 2: Durr called the coronavirus “the China virus.”
So, it’s “racist” to identify the virus from where it originated. Journalists began the pandemic saying “Wuhan virus” and so on, until they were told it was racist, and then they became adamant that no one could insult Communist China for letting loose a deadly pandemic on the world.
No. 3: Durr blamed an “influx of #illegalAliens” for spreading disease.
The Washington Post thinks it’s racist to be concerned about immigrants flooding across the border with no coronavirus screening. It’s the only time liberals seem to get incredibly cavalier about COVID-19. It’s also considered “racist” to say “illegal aliens.”
No. 4: This one is both “bigoted” and “misogynistic,” apparently. Durr “denigrated Vice President Harris on Facebook, writing she had earned her position only as a result of race and gender.”
Anyone with a political pulse understands that the Democratic Party’s leftist base demanded that Biden nominate a woman from color. So, apparently, the mortal sin here is using the word “only.” But if Harris was a white guy named Karl, the other attributes wouldn’t matter either.
Farhi lamented that a database search found that no one reviewed Durr’s social media statements in any of his campaigns in 2017, 2019, and 2021. He also lamented the decline of media in southern New Jersey due to economic trends.
He also noted that Sweeney was too powerful to conduct research on his opponents. “Reporters often rely on leaks of damaging information,” he wrote. Yes, especially if both candidate and reporter are Democrats, which is often the case.
The Washington Post didn’t seem to think this through the other way. Sweeney would have won easily. They would not have filed any story complaining about the depleted media in South Jersey. They would not have found any objectionable tweets from Durr.
But with this lament, they have told us all they can’t imagine voters making a decision without heavy influence from the media, and the decision to dump a powerful Democrat is somehow a failure of local journalism.
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