Smoking gun: The New York Times' etrog

Twenty years ago next Friday night, Mrs. Carl and I and our four children, and my wife's niece who had spent the summer as our mother's helper, boarded an El Al flight from New York's Kennedy airport to Tel Aviv. For Mrs. Carl and me and our American-born children, this was our aliya flight. We immigrated to Israel that night. It was August 19, 1991, the 8th day of the Jewish month of Elul.

I

NY Times calls for 'imposed solution'

In an editorial that says that 'all share the blame' for the Middle East impasse - and then conveniently forgets Barack Hussein Obama's role in the impasse - the New York Times concludes that the United States 'and its partners' must impose a 'solution.' The best way, likely the only way, to head off this debacle is with the start of serious negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. The

Huh? New York Times calls Israel 'deeply humane'

I guess this proves the theory that even a broken clock can sometimes be correct. The New York Times has called an Israeli policy 'deeply humane' (Hat Tip: Mrs. Carl). Unlike countries where couples can go broke trying to conceive with the assistance of costly medical technology, Israel provides free, unlimited IVF procedures for up to two “take-home babies” until a woman is 45. The policy has

Woodstock 40th anniversary; New York Times coverage; Ayn Rand; Nightmare in the Catskills

This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of "Woodstock." We are supposed to celebrate "peace," "love" and other stuff in honor of this anniversary. Debbie Schlussel has the real story:

I really don’t care that the “greatest names in rock of the day” performed there. So what? And who cares if Jimi Hendrix played there? Look what happened to him just over a year later. Dead of a drug overdose and too much alcohol. Typical of the Woodstock idiots. They, the rockers, and the hippies, yippies, and other numbskulls making up the boomer generation at this infest-o-fest brought us free love . . . and STDs and AIDs, single mothers and baby mamas, and a whole new hipness to out-of-wedlock births that has brought us crime waves, sensitive men a/k/a wimps, and a whole lot of other problems. Their sexual mores brought us sky-high divorce rates and a rate of out of wedlock mothers–40%–that rivals many Western democracies.

They are the liberals who voted for Barack Obama and not too long before him, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter. They are the ones who made today’s consideration of socialized medicine possible.

Apparently Debbie didn't get the MSM/DNC memo (or she got it but was able to ignore it like the rest of us should).

In 2007 [in the immediate aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting], I wrote in detail about the changing way we view news stories after the initial event. I chronicled how the MSM/DNC line develops, after which all of the MSM/DNC outlets learn to stick to their story:

Years from now, we will forget that we were in the dark for so many days or hours in the immediate aftermath of the killings at Virginia Tech. MSM/DNC becomes more polished the more time passes in the wake of any news item. As various parts of the MSM/DNC "get their story straight," the MSM/DNC line becomes standard and can be reduced to a few soundbites. That is why immediate coverage of any major story is interesting. We have the chance the catch the MSM/DNC off guard.

The same is true of Woodstock. On August 18, 1969, the New York Times published an editorial highly critical of the gathering entitled "Nightmare in the Catskills." By the next day, the Times had apparently received the MSM/DNC memo and changed their position. Today, the Times' original editorial has disappeared down the memory hole. Other MSM/DNC outlets fell into line quickly also.

The definitive piece on Woodstock was written by Ayn Rand four months later. She not only summarized the social implications of the gathering but she chronicled facts that have been lost to history. Debbie Schlussel has summarized the negative consequences created by the participants, consequences from which we suffer today. Those consequences were easily predictable for anyone who had read Rand's piece - "Apollo and Dionysus."

In particular, Rand chronicled the hardships created for neighboring farmers and small businessmen by the Woodstock event:

Richard C. Joyner, the operator of the local post office and general store on Route 17B "said that the youngsters at the festival had virtually taken over his property - camping on his lawn, making fires on his patio and using the backyard as a latrine

.

Clarence W. Townsend, who runs a 150-acre dairy farm . . . was shaken by the ordeal. "We had thousands of cars all over our fields," he said. "There were kids all over the place. They made a human cesspool of our property and drove through the cornfields. There's not a fence left on the place. They just tore them up and used them for firewood" . . .

"My pond is a swamp [said Royden Gabriele, another farmer]. I've got no fences and they used my field as a latrine. They picked corn and camped all over the place. They just landed wherever they could . . . We pulled 30 of them out of the hay mow smoking pot . . . If they come back next year I don't know what I'll do," Mr. Gabriele said. "If I can't sell, I'll just burn the place down."

The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, p. 71 [Signet edition] (quoting New York Times, August 20, 1969)

As Rand wrote, "No love - or thought - was given to these victims by the unsanitary apostles of love." Ibid.

The apostles of love have been enabled for decades since that event (much in the way summarized by Eugene Lyons in the Red Decade (referring to the 1930's)). The enabling and coddling has led that generation to give us the unsustainable welfare state of today with no thought of the consequences. As revealed by a New York Times interview with participants the following week, the participants had no thought of consequences for their own basic needs at the festival:

Q: What about food?
A: We brought a bag of carrots. And some soda.
Q: Did you expect to be able to buy more there?
A: We never really thought about it.

[As quoted by Rand, p. 73.]

In the same way, these same people are now supporting Obamacare without thinking about what will happen when they are denied medical treatment under the system of rationing that may soon be enacted.

No living, eating or sanitary facilities were provided; . . . "Festival food supplies were almost immediately exhausted . . . and water coming from wells dug into the area stopped flowing or came up impure. A heavy rain Friday night turned the amphitheater into a quagmire and the concession area into a mudhole. . . Throngs of wet, sick and wounded hippies trekked to impromptu hospital tents suffering from colds, sore throats, broken bones, barbed-wire cuts and nail puncture wounds. Festival doctors called it a 'health emergency,' and 50 additional doctors were flown in from New York City to meet the crisis." [There will be no "50 additional doctors" flying to our rescue under Obamacare - Salt.]
According to the New York Times (August 18), when the rainstorm came "at least 80,000 young people sat or stood in front of the stage and shouted obscenities at the darkened skies [a precursor to the anti-Christianity that pervades today's culture? - Salt] as trash rolled down the muddy hillside with the runoff of the rain. Others took shelter in dripping tents, lean-tos, cars and trucks . . . Many boys and girls wandered through the storm nude, red mud clinging to their bodies."

Rand, pp. 69-70

Has it ever occurred to you that it is not an accident, but the psychological mechanism of projection that has made people of this kind choose to call their opponents "pigs?"

Rand, p. 75

Who will the leftists shout obscenities at when they cannot receive medical treatment under Obamacare? The thought of such a scene makes it tempting to support Obamacare - except for the fact that I will suffer also.

Drugs were used, sold, shared or given away during the entire festival. Eyewitnesses claim that 99 percent of the crowd smoked marijuana; but heroin, hashish, LSD and other stronger drugs were peddled openly. The nightmare convulsions of so-called "bad trips" were a common occurrence. One young man died, apparently from an overdose of heroin.

Rand, p. 70

There is much more to Rand's article, especially the discussion of the attitudes of the participants, and their expectations of happiness without work and life without thought.



These details (especially the destruction of neighboring property) have largely been ignored in today's MSM/DNC memorials to the event. So have the subsequent disputes among the organizers of the event (over money). That the event was organized by wealthy heirs who spent the next few years fighting over money does not fit the MSM/DNC theme of peace, love and utopia that we are all expected passively to accept. Woodstock has become another object of worship among the MSM/DNC. Leftists expect their history books to treat Woodstock much the same way that Christianity treats the "Sermon on the Mount." They fail to realize that as more of the leftist agenda becomes law, civilization will continue to collapse. With the end of civilization comes the end of higher learning, including the faithful recording of history (even propaganda). Propaganda itself depends on the existence of the civilization that the left seeks to destroy.

As the left becomes more politically successful, the gods of leftism will fade into the memory hole along with the rest of our knowledge. By passing Obamacare, cap-and-trade, the stimulus bill, etc., the left relegates itself (and the rest of us) to oblivion. Future generations will know little or nothing of Woodstock, the first African-American President, the first hispanic Supreme Court justice, the Vietnam protests and other landmarks of leftism. They will know only that the greatest civilization ever to exist somehow collapsed, leaving them to struggle on a daily basis for their very survival.
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Visit counter added August 16, 2009

This was predictable; Vicki Iseman; John McCain; What is coming next?

It looks like we have been suckered again. The New York Times delays a lobbyist-scandal story until after McCain takes the lead (all the while endorsing McCain) and then slams McCain now that it is too late to nominate someone else.

I write this out of bitterness and sadness over this disaster that need not have happened. We had the opportunity to support people that the NY Times was not spoonfeeding to us - even after Thompson dropped out. But we took the bait and now the Times has dropped the hammer, just like the polls that suddenly did a 180 last week.

I don't blame the NY Times. We know what the NY Times is and what it does. We should be used to it. [We don't get mad at crocodiles when we swim in the swamp.] I also don't blame the Republicans that have abandoned McCain. That was predictable, having happened many times in Republican primaries over the past 60 years after moderates were foisted on the party by the establishment. I blame those of us who jumped on the McCain bandwagon when Thompson dropped out, thinking McCain was "electable" based on polls or on the fact that the NY Times hadn't torn him a new one yet. You have all but handed the White House to Obama and gift-wrapped Iraq to either (1) Iran or (2) Al Qaeda [or both].

As bloggers, we have become good at remembering what happened yesterday. Let's try to apply that same technique to primary voting in the future (if there is one).
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Michelle Malkin posts more details.
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VICKI ISEMAN

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn [New York Times]

Our war has one of the lowest fatality rates of any war ever, and, when they get so low that even Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid temporarily give up the quagmire bleating, the [New York] Times invents bogus stories to suggest that the few veterans lucky enough to make it out of Iraq alive are ticking time-bombs ready to explode across every Main Street in the land.

Mark Steyn - 1-19-08

Previous - New York Times and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

New York Times on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

Thanks to "Death by 1000 Papercuts" for alerting me to The People's Cube version of a hypothetical New York Times front page from the Warsaw ghetto uprising during World War II.


My question is, why didn't the New York Times actually use these headlines in 1943? We know that the Times writes today's stories that way - equating good with evil, blaming both sides, accusing those who defend themselves of overreacting, siding with U.S. enemies, etc. etc.

The accepted version of media history is that organizations such as the New York Times were patriotic during World War II and became "skeptical" of the government during Vietnam and Watergate. Establishment historians note the general supportive attitude of newspapers during WWII. The same historians note rising "skepticism" over the following two decades on the part of the media and attribute such skepticism to misconduct on the part of the American government.

In fact, the New York Times has been part of the fifth column since before World War II. But there was a very good reason that the Times (and others) did not oppose official U.S. interests during WWII. The New York Times' version of the ghetto uprising would have been just as bad as it is depicted on the above graphic had the uprising occurred two years earlier.

Prior to June 1941, Germany was allied with the Soviet Union. In June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and threatened the workers paradise so admired by the left. The New York Times turned against Germany not out of a sense of patriotism or a lack of "skepticism," but out of loyalty to the Soviet Union. The Times and other media outlets saw a threat to their real ally. The U.S. just happened to be on the same side - thus making the Times appear patriotic.

Had Germany and the Soviet Union remained allied during the entire war, the Times' coverage of the war would have been very different. The graphic above is a good example. Leftist historians would today refer to WWII as a boondogle, where America learned the "limits of imperialism." Today, we would constantly hear warnings about not getting into "another WWII."

There is no real difference between the NY Times of Walter Duranty's day and the New York Times of today. The war coverage seems different because today we don't have the Soviet Union on our side to keep our newspapers loyal.

Quote of the day - New York Times [2000 Florida recount]

A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.

New York Times - November 12, 2001