The rules of reporting are clear insofar as there aren’t any objective ones when it comes to placing public blame.
When a Bernie Sanders-loving terrorist shot up a baseball field of Republican congressmen, the media didn’t ascribe blame to the senator, but rather to the shooter — and rightly so. Yet when a deranged lifelong criminal with a history of bomb threats terrorizes Democratic politicians and liberal media figures, President Trump is to blame.
So now here’s a new wrinkle. The latest in a string of anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City was revealed to be committed by a liberal activist who had actually once been profiled by the New York Times. Naturally, the Times had to follow up. Except that the Times chose to make the perpetrator’s personal problems the story, rather than the rise of left-wing anti-Semitism in New York City or, better yet, its victims.
In a piece originally headlined, “Man Accused of Anti-Semitic Vandalism Faces New Setback in a Life Full of Them,” the Times wallows in the scrappy upbringing of James Polite — a man who, might I remind you, attempted to burn Jews alive by setting five different sites affiliated with the Jewish community on fire. Lest his intentions be obscured, he is accused of scrawling “Die Jew Rats,” “Hitler,” “End It Now,” and “Jew Better Be Ready” within the walls of Brooklyn’s Union Temple, one of the targets of his arson campaign.
First the piece retitled, “Man’s Struggles With Mental Illness and Addiction Preceded Hate Crimes Charges, Friends Say,” notes that he lived in foster care and suffered from a crippling drug addiction. You’d be forgiven if you assumed they meant to an addictive substance — perhaps an opioid — but the article reveals only that he “struggled with marijuana use.” As in, the effectively nonaddictive substance that kills fewer people than alcohol.
And no, it isn’t April 1, and the New York Times’ website has not been taken over by The Onion.
The most legitimate point that the Times makes is Polite’s struggle with bipolar disorder. Much like the mail bomber and hundreds of other domestic shooters and assailants, it seems as though Polite was influenced, at least in part, by mental illness. Tragically, that’s a tale as old as time, and not one that requires much explanation. Yet it’s easy to see the Times overreaching to defend a man who interned with prominent Manhattan Democrat Christine Quinn, over whom the Times saw fit to fawn over just 11 months ago. Surely, no one wants to suggest that his involvement in left-wing politics resulted in such ideas being planted in his sick mind — something that happens as a matter of course on the campuses of major American universities.
Yes, Polite went off his rocker, and no, the politically involved people in his life should not be reflexively blamed for this. But the standard that the Times deployed here would provide an excuse for the nutjobs of the future, right- and left-wing. That would be pretty inconvenient.
