The New York Times’s obsession with viral TikTok content has it cheering on Zoomer pro-abortion activists.
“The New Abortion Rights Advocates Are on TikTok,” reads the headline to a glowing profile published in the paper of record. The article’s subhead reads, “Gen Z activists have been unapologetic and confrontational, a shift in tactics for a movement at a crossroads.”
The report spends most of its time describing viral TikTok videos made by pro-abortion activists, including one that shows a middle-aged pro-life demonstrator while the 1994 pop song “Short D-ck Man” plays in the background.
The New York Times profile reads:
The camera is focused on a middle-aged white man in sunglasses, who is holding a poster depicting what appears to be a fetus with the word “abortion” printed on it. The caption on the video reads, “don’t worry, the volume was turned all the way up so he could hear :-)”
The New York Times article continues, “This is just one of a series of viral videos by Alex Cueto, 19, an abortion clinic defender with the organization Charlotte for Choice. She posts videos of her confrontations with abortion protesters on TikTok as @alexthefeminist, to a large audience. The ‘Short, Short Man’ video, which was filmed outside of A Preferred Women’s Health Center, has over four million views.”
What an amazing euphemism, “clinic defender.” Quite a world we live in where the most powerful newsroom in the United States describes one group with heroic-sounding monikers such as “clinic defender” while also using the “anti-” prefix to describe the opposition.
There are other viral TikTok videos, which, of course, the New York Times cheers, including one where Cueto confronts a Bible-reading pro-life demonstrator by reciting the XXX-rated lyrics of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP.”
“We treat these protesters like they’re a joke already,” Cueto tells the New York Times. “We don’t give them that sense of moral superiority.”
The profile goes on like that for quite a bit, including the part where it reports that a recent survey by the American Psychological Association Survey found that 64% of Gen Z adult women “say that a possible change in abortion laws is a source of stress for them in 2020.” The profile also argues that the “confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, on the Supreme Court … invigorated abortion rights proponents who fear that Roe v. Wade may be at risk.”
And then, with practically no warning at all, the New York Times article goes into a seemingly pointless aside, shaming pro-life demonstrators for not properly adhering to COVID-19 social distancing guidelines.
“We’ve seen an increase in harassment and attempted clinic invasions and people showing up to scream and protest and shout unmasked,” National Abortion Federation President Katherine Ragsdale tells the New York Times.
The article then offers an assist, reporting that, in March, “four men who are part of the [pro-life group] Love Life organization were charged with violating a stay-at-home order in Greensboro, N.C. Ms. Hales, of the clinic, said it was not uncommon to see 90 anti-abortion advocates gathered outside the clinic on a typical day earlier this year when the state was much more locked down with coronavirus restrictions.”
Ah, see what the New York Times is doing here? It is a none-too-subtle way of saying: These people say they’re pro-life, but what about the pandemic?
It must be nice, having a multibillion-dollar media conglomerate act as your own personal public relations workshop. Really nice. Maggie Awards for all!
