Everyone lives by a moral code. But some, it seems, are more flexible than others.
Take the New York Times: As the long-reigning godfather of the mainstream media, The Gray Lady writes the narrative and publishes the template that other outlets follow. Even today, all across America, countless news directors will pore through the New York Times — our nation’s “newspaper of record” — before assigning stories.
So when the New York Times deems something “fit to print,” there’s an E.F. Hutton effect: Everyone else in the mainstream media stops and listens. They follow directions, sing from the “approved” hymn sheet, and add a few extra echoes to the left-wing echo chamber.
Been this way for years.
Even when what the Times is saying is flippin’ stupid!
Buckle up, boys and girls, because the New York Times is just FURIOUS over the latest pejorative term for Karens — i.e. those pushy, self-important, middle-aged white women who bully everyone else into submission. And for the Times to object, you know this word has got to be REALLY bad.
After all, our “newspaper of record” has been calling President Trump a “Nazi,” “literally Hitler,” and a “fascist” for years.
But I won’t keep you in suspense: AWFUL!
That’s the terrible term for white women that has the Times’ undies in a knot: AWFUL!
So said the New York Times on Jan. 17, in its explosive (and ridiculous) exposé: “After Renee Good Killing, Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right”
The subhead prepared the Times’ readers for the scandalous story they were about to read: “Vocal Trump supporters are demonizing Renee Good, her partner and their allies, with some even using an acronym: AWFUL, or Affluent White Female Urban Liberal.”
Yup. Using AWFUL as an acronym for Affluent White Female Urban Liberal is considered a demonization tactic. (Those monsters!)
As the article piously reported:
In the days since a federal agent killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, Republican officials and conservative commentators have called the 37-year-old white woman “very violent,” a “deranged lunatic woman” and a “domestic terrorist.”
Some right-wing influencers have latched onto a different word — or rather an acronym: Ms. Good, they have said, was AWFUL.
“An AWFUL (Affluent White Female Urban Liberal) is dead after running her car into an ICE agent who opened fire on her,” the conservative commentator Erik Erickson posted on social media. “Progressive whites are turning violent. ICE agents have the right to defend themselves.”
Affluent. White. Female. Urban. Liberal.
Which of those five words does the Times believe is hateful?
Because for a solid decade now, the New York Times has bashed Donald Trump with the harshest, most vicious language imaginable. Words such as Nazi, Hitler, and fascist were used over and over again:
May 28, 2016: Rise of Donald Trump Tracks Growing Debate Over Global Fascism
Aug. 8, 2017: The Test of Nazism That Trump Failed
Sept. 11, 2018: Is Trump a Fascist?
Oct. 15, 2018: If You’re Not Scared About Fascism in the U.S., You Should Be
Nov. 30, 2020: 1918 Germany Has a Warning for America
Dec. 19, 2023: Trump Attacked for Echoing Hitler, Says He Never Read Mein Kampf
Oct. 29, 2024: Presidents, Conventions and Nazis: A Political History of ‘The Garden’
Nov. 6, 2024: Amid Talks of Fascism, Trump’s Threats and Language Evoke a Grim Past
Of course, every now and then, the Times would criticize Trump without calling him Hitler, a fascist, or a Nazi. For example, on April 13, 2018, the Times ran this delightful essay: “Tethered to a Raging Buffoon Called Trump.”
I dunno. Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t “raging buffoon” a tad more mean-spirited than AWFUL?
Apparently not. In fact, according to the Times, affluent white women are now a targeted, vulnerable minority — just like the Indians and Jews:
Liberal white women are only the latest group to be on the receiving end of right-wing animus. In late October and November, as Tucker Carlson offered a friendly interview to the Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes, the fear among some conservatives was that attacking Jews was inching toward the mainstream of the Republican Party. Last month, Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy entrepreneur who is a Republican candidate for governor in Ohio, was calling out a surge of bigotry directed at Indian Americans, like himself.
My God, I had no idea that affluent white women were suffering so greatly!
But the New York Times knew it owed it to its readers to get to the bottom of this AWFUL situation. Which meant, of course, consulting the smartest expert in all the land: a liberal academic.
Liberal academics have been diagnosing what they see as the problem. Laura K. Field, author of the book “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right,” said social, demographic and economic changes had left men with a sense that they have lost status.
“Women are, for many of them, the place holder for their ‘stolen’ status,” she asserted.
Ah. All that male anger towards Karens is actually jealousy!
It has absolutely nothing to do with the self-absorbed, condescending nastiness of overly-privileged white women whatsoever. That’s a red herring, you see: The wealthy white women are blameless.
Gosh, it’s almost as if the Times is telling its readers exactly what they want to hear.
Either way, it’s created a vexing PR problem for the left, because their martyr du jour, Renee Good, was a Karen with a capital K — and it’s AWFUL(ly) hard to build a protest movement around an unlikeable martyr.
As we discussed earlier in the week:
Renee Nicole Good’s sad, avoidable demise will be replayed over and over again. It’ll be like the Zapruder film on steroids. The Democratic Party needs Good to be a sympathetic martyr, because that’s how political PR works: Defining the martyr’s brand ID is step one.
Whoever defines the martyr defines the mission.
But the trouble is that Good isn’t a sympathetic victim. She and her spouse, Becca Good, were Karens writ large. They ignored the laws they personally disliked — because they know best, of course — and deliberately mocked and antagonized law enforcement.
For millions of American men, Good’s behavior wasn’t novel. We’ve been to this rodeo a zillion times before, because it’s the same kind of Karen behavior we’ve seen in school, at work, in public, in government, and on TV! It’s the tyranny of these smug, self-important, middle-aged white women who bully their way to the top.
News flash for the left: The more you show Renee Nicole Good and Becca Good on TV, the more young men you’ll lose.
Which is exactly what’s happening right now, and the New York Times doesn’t like it one bit. But instead of blaming wealthy white women for acting like self-aggrandizing tyrants, the Times blames the PR blowback on… male sexism.
Yet there’s nothing sexist about disliking Karens. (News flash: Most women don’t like Karens, either.) Disliking their behavior doesn’t make you a sexist.
It makes you minimally observant.
And there’s nothing AWFUL about that.
One Last Thing: 2026 is a critical year for America First: It began with Mayor Mamdani declaring war on “rugged individualism” and will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the fate of the America First movement teeters in the balance.
Never before have the political battlelines been so clearly defined. Win or lose, 2026 will transform our country.
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