'Undercover' Reporter Claims She Heard 'Casual Bigotry' at Conservative Workshop

It was bound to be a big story in progressive circles: An “undercover” reporter “infiltrated” a workshop by the Leadership Institute, and shared what she found. For many on the right, her claims seem outright bizarre, however.

Take this one, for example:

But surprisingly, given the casual bigotry and white supremacist rhetoric, the group is not as homogeneously straight, white and male as you might imagine. The group I attended training with had a few women in the mix, was not all white, and as my gaydar indicated, not all straight. Instead, the positioning and the subsequent catharsis that can occur over common ground comes when the question, “Who has ever been called a fascist?” is posed.

Hmm.

This writer was later able to rattle off examples of the group mocking Leftist theories in the workshop — like global warming, the number of genders, and so on — yet she couldn’t deliver a single example of “casual bigotry and white supremacist rhetoric.” Not one.

Further, as she noted, this group wasn’t a homogenous group of straight white men. If the bigotry was so casual, why weren’t these minorities bothered? I’ve never known of a minority conservative to tolerate bigotry and white supremacist rhetoric. Not one.

Here’s a thought: Maybe this writer simply saw what she wanted to see.

After all, this is a woman who “prepped” by binge-watching American Bible Challenge on Netflix, betraying her own prejudices. It’s not hard to believe that our intrepid writer may have read into things that weren’t really there.

I’m not ready to say she lied, necessarily. I never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to something else, and it seems clear that she entered that workshop with her prejudices and expectations. Maybe she interpreted negative comments about Black Lives Matter or welfare programs (which, of course, are doled out to white men too) as “casual racism.”

This isn’t the only problem with the article. Not by a long shot. It’s long and drawn out, and another case of a progressive seemingly on the cusp of understanding us, only to be pulled back by her own partisanship.

It’s a shame, too, because she had a great opportunity to teach folks that maybe we aren’t heartless bastards. But that wouldn’t advance the narrative.