TNR Hack Demonstrates Hypocritical Double Standard of the Left

Peter Beinart, of The New Republic makes casual reference to his standard for racism in the course of making a case for Joe Biden staying in the presidential candidate race, "Biden Time" February, TNR.

He says "I have my own reasons for hoping Biden stays in the race. Partly, it's a broader principle: stupid, insensitive remark shouldn't sink political candidacies unless they bespeak some larger animus. George Allen's "macaca" comment mattered because, as Ryan Lizza has documented, Allen had a long history of racist sympathies. So did Trent Lott, long before he endorsed Strom Thurmond for president. Biden, by contrast, has another dumb remark on his record (this one about Indian Americans), but his long career in Congress suggests no sympathy for racists. Given that, he doesn't deserve the political death sentence. Journalists shouldn't be hypocrites: You can ask politicians to be unscripted and then decapitate them anytime they misspeak."

This is so wrong, on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. So let's take them in order: George Allen, if you believe the accounts of the left-wing media, is a dyed in the wool racist. Using it N-word as a 20 year-old college student, stuffing a deer's head in a black family's mailbox, etc.

OK, if this is proof of a man's character and automatically condemns him to a "political death sentence", why is Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Kux Klan, still in the Senate? Surely his history of proud racism (you don't join the KKK unless you're proud to be a racist), use of the N-word (to Brit Hume in a Fox interview in be late 90's ), night riding, lynching, burning crosses, all the things that the KKK is famous for, would condemn him to trek back to his little store in West Virginia? And remember, the fact that it was long ago does not matter. It didn't matter with George Allen. But no! Byrd remains firmly ensconced in the Senate and hacks like Peter Beinart do not say boo!

Moving on to Trent Lott, Beinart says that Lott "endorsed Strom Thurmond for president." In the first place this is factually incorrect, Strom Thurmond was not running President, therefore he could not be endorsed for president! He was having his 100th birthday party. Trent Lott was engaging in the hyperbole of someone who had been asked to say something good about the guest of honor at a party, that's all. And yet Beinart condemns him as a racist.


Now, to the most egregious example of hypocrisy in the entire article: Beinart says " Journalists shouldn't be hypocrites: You can't ask politicians to be unscripted and then decapitate them anytime they misspeak" is jaw dropping! This is exactly the kind of thing that journalists like Beinart do so well. Given that Beinart thinks he's a journalist and also thinks he is actually consistent in his moral pronouncements, the level of doublethink approaches Orwellian proportions.

Beinart, is just another far left hack writer in a mediocre, far left publication but he deserves watching because he is an example of the mendacity and tenacity of the Left.