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I ran across this on Twitter this morning, and of all the things I read about, thoughts about this particular tweet kept intruding into my thoughts. 

Rather than worrying that I am having a psychotic break, I decided to write about it, despite it not being (precisely) about the news of the day. In a larger sense, I do believe it is relevant because it is a reminder of just how stupid the best and the brightest in the news media can be. 

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Mara Gay, a New York Times Editorial Board member both then and now–this clip is from 2020–was having a discussion on Brian Williams’ MSNBC show (Brian Williams, MSNBC, New York Times–a toxic brew already!) discussing Michael Bloomberg’s 2020 bid for president when the ridiculous sum of money he spent came up. 

Bloomberg, you see, lite $500 million on fire, stomped on the ashes, and scattered it all to the wind to get roundly rejected by voters. You would think that profligacy, ego-boosting, and inability to read the room would provide plenty of grist for the commentary mill.

But no–what did Williams and Gay discuss? How Bloomberg should have spent the money on a much bigger project: giving $1 million to each US citizen, making each of their lives better. 

The problem? Well, math, to be blunt. You know…facts. If you divided up that $500 million and distributed it to Americans, it would amount to enough to buy 1/3rd of a Starbucks coffee, or $1.53. That’s a far cry from a million dollars. 

But Gay was undeterred. Writing about the brew-ha-ha, she attributed the ridicule she suffered to…racism and sexism. 

Gay, you see, thought that the mistake was trivial–a math error made under the pressure of being under the klieg lights of a TV studio, and seen in one light, you could see why she would say so: for today’s reporters making a point they think is about morals and character, little things like facts don’t matter. 

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Now, if Gay were off by $1.53, or even a thousand dollars, it really would be relatively trivial. But the whole point was that Bloomberg could have bought a comfy life for everyone, not a third of a cup of coffee. $1.53 is trivial to anybody who works, and even beggars bring in 20 or 30 times that in a day. Even a homeless fentanyl addict wouldn’t find his life changed by somebody putting $1.53 in his pocket–he needs more than that for a fix. 

In other words, the whole point of her argument was blown up because she knows nothing and can’t reason. 

“You’re a great example of why we need to end Affirmative Action,” someone named Jim B. wrote me in an email this weekend. “Get a job scrubbing floors. It’s the only thing you’re good for.”

On Twitter, it was about the same. “Keep thinking that your important. Lol … your a nobody … you fill a seat … only because your Black. that’s the only reason. cause if was based on education or merit, you would be working at Walmart … sometimes the truth hurts … your a lowlife.”

“Is that you using that black girl magic I heard about. You so silly, can’t believe you have a job there. LOL”

One email read simply, “have a banana.”

These are just a few examples of many.

I am a black woman who writes for The New York Times and appears on national TV. And if you’re black in America, no matter who you are, what you accomplish or how hard you work, there will always be people to remind you that you are black, that you are “just a nigger.”

A colleague at The Times, an African-American woman, wrote to me on Friday afternoon, “They resent that you exist.”

It didn’t help that I write for a newspaper where my colleagues are assiduously working to hold a rogue president accountable every day. We are living in a world where there is no grace for the smallest, most inconsequential mistake. In an instant, I became a target of those who are furious with the media for being too liberal, or not liberal enough, a totem for the grievances of millions of people who seem to be hurting. No doubt, some people piled on because they just wanted the “likes” and brushed aside the inconvenient fact that I was a human being.

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The name-calling of these critics was out of line, but the point that her high perch as the arbiter of ethics at the Times is spot on. When your entire argument collapses live on TV, and you scream, “Racism!” you are proving the point of your critics–you shouldn’t have any authority, including moral authority, because you don’t have a clue. And, of course, the excuse for retaining that authority is DEI ideology. 

Gay, who has a high perch at the New York Times, is no more capable of moral reasoning than UFC fighter Bryce Mitchell, who makes the same point about Elon Musk: he should be spending his wealth on Earth helping people rather than on rockets and building Teslas. 

Only this point is even more stupid–Elon Musk would have no wealth but for making rockets and building Teslas. His wealth is not liquid assets getting spent on useless things–it is almost entirely bound up in equity in those companies and would evaporate if he quit building them. 

You can’t make a moral argument without understanding how the world works. Getting the facts right–not precisely, but in broad strokes, at least–is the difference between having a compelling argument (at least worthy of discussion) and being a crank. 

Both Gay and Mitchell are cranks, the difference being that one sits at the top of the opinion-making world and the other gets hit in the head for a living. 

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