NYT Issues Apology After Outrageous Kavanaugh Tweet Infuriates All Sides
The New York Times’ latest attempt to smear Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has backfired in the most stunning of ways.
That the article — billed as Sunday Review “news analysis” titled “Brett Kavanaugh Fit In With the Privileged Kids. She Did Not.” — would appear in The Times is not all that surprising in and of itself, given the newspaper’s left-leaning tendencies.
The piece — an adapted excerpt from a book co-authored by two Times reporters — tries to re-open an old can of worms as it tries to corroborate sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh. In this case, it involves former Yale student Deborah Ramirez, whose allegations were brought up during the Christine Blasey-Ford controversy.
But the real stunner came when The Times tried to tweet about its own article. Surprisingly and miraculously, The Times did something that actually belies its leftist stance: The tweet somehow united everyone on the left and right in swift condemnation of the Grey Lady.
That’s because the tweet used a rather poor choice of words, which is a massive understatement.
The New York Times’ Opinion Twitter account posted a rather graphic accusation against Kavanaugh, but then called it “harmless fun.”
This is…. such a profound lapse in judgment and common sense. Sexual assault isn’t harmless fun. What the hell is going on at the NYT? pic.twitter.com/0XBtzGup4Y
— roxane gay (@rgay) September 14, 2019
Conservatives were upset that The Times was bringing up an accusation all this time later, seemingly for the sole purpose of attacking Kavanaugh, on top of the language that seemed to describe sexual assault as “harmless fun.”
What are they thinking at the New York Times? 1) It’s a discredited allegation. 2) If it had happened, such things are ‘harmless fun’? pic.twitter.com/zBUmj0Ghqq
— Byron York (@ByronYork) September 15, 2019
Leftists, who are no fans of Kavanaugh, mostly just took issue with the language being used.
The NYT tweet about the Kavanaugh bombshell is very bad but so too is the editors’ framing of the piece as being about the culture on the Yale campus rather than leading with the actual news that a) Debbie Ramirez’ claims are corroborated and b) there was another incident.
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) September 15, 2019
The Times even bungled its initial handling of the offending tweet. Its first stab came off as dismissive, merely calling the original tweet “poorly phrased.”
“poorly phrased” pic.twitter.com/vKJoHWSsPt
— Peter Hoskins (@PeterHoskinsTV) September 15, 2019
The second attempt came off much better, though it was probably too little, too late.
We deleted a previous tweet regarding this article. It was offensive, and we apologize. https://t.co/gbUdweKbDg
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) September 15, 2019
So for those keeping count, The New York Times spent its Saturday night rehashing an old story for the sole purpose of attacking Kavanaugh, calling sexual assault “harmless fun,” and needing two attempts to actually apologize.
Typical Times.
UPDATE: For a breakdown of the Times article, check out a John McCormack’s piece on National Review here.
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