When President Donald Trump announced his selection to fill the seat on the Supreme Court vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, you had to know that Neil Gorsuch was going to end up under a microscope. And considering the rhetoric flung at conservatives over the last eight years, attempts to paint him as a racist seemed inevitable.
The Independent goes first, turning Gorsuch’s decades-old criticism of anti-apartheid activists into a smear:
Then a political science student, Mr Gorsuch accused the students’ of lacking “a vibrant political heterogeneity” and presenting one-sided “rigid convictions”.
“Is it because such arguments would be Immoral, False and Heartless? Or is it because it is not fashionable at Columbia to be anything other than a pro-Sandinista, anti-Reagan, ADHOC, uranium-pilfering protester?” he wrote, condemning the students’ “tyrannical atmosphere of ‘ideas’”.
His disdain for apartheid protesters is revealed as events and commemorations, which recognise the achievements and central role of African-American in the US’ history, start today as part of Black History Month.
Note that last paragraph.
Nowhere in the text is there anything remotely showing that Gorsuch actually supports apartheid, so The Independent inserts commentary about the date they chose to publish this dreck in an attempt to connect Gorsuch’s “disdain for apartheid protestors” with Black History Month. The hope is that criticism of a group of protestors and their methods can be taken as racism.
And of course, they later include a quote where Gorsuch condemns apartheid outright, thus destroying the point of their article. They point out his criticisms of protestors on Columbia’s campus during the 1980s, glossing over the fact that he shared the same goal as them: the end of apartheid in South Africa.
Gorsuch just felt their tactics were foolish, designed more for virtue-signaling rather than accomplishment.
When a liberal asks you what media bias looks like, show them this piece and ask what relevance Black History Month had to the article. Heaven forbid a conservative not be painted as something despicable.
Luckily for Judge Gorsuch, his family, and friends, if this is the harshest the left can come up with, then he should do just fine during his confirmation hearings.
They will probably do what The Independent just did: bury the relevant information and ask a question they already know the answer to, just so “Gorsuch” and “opposed anti-apartheid” shows up elsewhere in the dishonest media.
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