The above-named Alfie Evans was the subject of a curious work of analysis in the Washington Post on April 28. The headline: “How Alfie Evans Became the Latest Weapon in the Conservative Attack on Universal Health Care.” The piece, by Ben Zdencanovic, purports to explain that conservatives have long misrepresented data in an effort to discredit nationalized health care and in particular Britain’s National Health Service. Leave the writer’s argument aside, though. What was remarkable about the piece was the lede: “This week, U.S. conservatives seized on the case of Alfie Evans, a 2-year-old British child who died Saturday from a progressive neurodegenerative disease that had destroyed most of his brain.”
Who are these “U.S. conservatives,” we wondered? In the 1,100-word piece, we counted exactly two: Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
We’re happy to grant Zdencanovic the license journalists traditionally afford themselves, summed up in the old maxim One is an example, two is a coincidence, three is a trend. But he only offers two “U.S. conservatives,” not even a trend. Actually only one, since Trump—assuming he’s a conservative—didn’t say anything about Alfie Evans but only tweeted about the ills of nationalized health care back in February. So “U.S. conservatives” are just Ted Cruz.
Another piece caught our attention for the same reason, this one in the New York Times by culture reporter Joe Coscarelli. The headline: “On the Right, Kanye West Is Embraced as a Pop Ally.”
Really? The Scrapbook read several reactions by conservatives to Kanye West’s newfound appreciation for Donald Trump—one of them appeared in last week’s issue of this magazine—but none could be described as an “embrace” of rapper West. Never mind. Coscarelli assures his readers that West’s opinions “have been hailed by those who have long seen the entertainment world as oppressively liberal”; this was “the right latching on to Mr. West’s statements.”
So who were the people making up “the right”? We counted five: former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly; current Fox News commentator Jesse Watters; Donald Trump himself; the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.; and “Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative student movement.” It seems like cheating to count the elder Trump, since he could hardly be expected to express ambivalence when someone tweets nice things about him, and Trump Jr.’s opinion is similarly skewed. But we’ll let it slide.
So “the right,” in the opinion of the Times’s culture reporter, is fairly represented by Donald Trump and his eldest son, a pair of Fox News personalities, and someone we’ve never heard of. If we thought that was the American right, we’d hate us too.
