Sinister black SUVs prowled the parks and playgrounds of D.C.'s toniest neighborhoods last week. Inside, heavily armed immigration agents in full body armor prepared to do battle with some of the most dangerous elements of the city's illegal alien underworld: NANNIES.
“Not trying to create hysteria,” one worried mom sent out to the others, according to a Sunday report in the Washington Post. "They are in Forest Hills right now in full tactical gear and children are being left behind."
The story continued: "As concern grew, neighbors lined the block. An elected official jetted to the Forest Hills playground. Immigration attorneys handed out know-your-rights cards in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole to any nannies they could find."
It isn't until after four solid paragraphs of teeth gnashing and hand-wringing that the paper admits that no such thing happened. There were no ICE agents, in or out of full tactical gear. No nannies were targeted. No child was left behind.
Wait, wut?
Yes, the fifth paragraph consists of a single line negating everything that came before it, "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials later told The Washington Post that agents had not targeted nannies at that playground nor any other in the District this week."
"Still," WaPo's Marissa J. Lang cautioned, "the unease gripping the nation’s capital has not abated."
"Golly," the slightly hungover PJ Media columnist snapped, "why might that be?"
Maybe it's because WaPo gives voice to neurotic, crazy people. The fear of ICE snatching people off the streets is "not just among the undocumented. It’s among permanent residents. It’s among citizens,” the paper reported one local woman saying. "What American communities are waking up to is this is not just a problem in your immigrant communities. It is a problem everywhere."
Another said, "There are a lot of neighbors who are willing to stand up and be present at any of these supposed ICE raids — and make sure your kids are okay."
And yet WaPo finally gets around to admitting in the eighth paragraph, "The Post could not independently verify any confrontations between immigration agents and child-care workers at D.C. parks."
Remember that even neurotic, crazy people are the heroes of their own story — and that the Washington Post is happy to lend them a cape. Stories like this one make sure that the unfounded worries of neurotic, crazy people are heard loud and clear, especially when they look for their names in today's edition.
What's the real story here? That a bunch of neurotic (and well-to-do) D.C. women got themselves worked up into a frenzy over something that didn't happen because they'd already gotten themselves all worked up over Trump?
Or is the real story something else? Maybe the story is that dinosaur legacy media outlets like the Washington Post exist to whip up, validate, and weaponize various neuroses for partisan political gain?
Maybe it's both.
Or maybe it's something even simpler: neurotic (and well-to-do) D.C. women hire a lot of illegal aliens to work as nannies and perhaps ought to be nervous any time a government-looking SUV drives through their neighborhood.
Strangely enough, the legal status of those D.C. nannies is the one detail Lang didn't bother to report.
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