For shame!
There's a legitimate reason many conservatives distrust the New York Times: It's penchant for flagrantly biased reporting.
Consider this simple paragraph in an article from Saturday's Times:
"Perhaps more so than in any other place in the city, the loss of power
for people living in public housing projects forced a return to a primal
existence. Opened fire hydrants became community wells. Sleep-and-wake
cycles were timed to sunsets and sunrises. People huddled for warmth
around lighted gas stoves as if they were roaring fires. Darkness became
menacing, a thing to be feared." (Emphasis mine)
Times reporters Cara Buckley and Michael Wilson want their readers to think that nobody is worse off in the Big Apple after Hurricane Sandy than the folks who live in the city's massive public housing projects. Life is hard enough for these people on a normal day; being without electricity and running water is simply too difficult to bear.
“We don’t dare throw out garbage at night,” a projects resident explained to Buckley and Wilson, since the hallways are too dangerous in the dark. Somebody else had to drink room-temperature Corona beer.
Yes, I suppose that is tragic, considering the fact that 111 families in Breezy Point, Queens, just had their homes burn to the ground. Having block after block of family memories and shelter reduced to ashes isn't primal, I guess. Maybe the darkness is less menacing in Breezy Point because nothing's left for any thugs to hide behind.
I suppose folks in the projects are to be pitied above the Staten Islanders whose homes were washed away in the storm surge, and who are relying on the kindness of neighbors and complete strangers from other parts of the island who are helping them find missing relatives, food, and shelter in the absence of anybody from FEMA and the Red Cross. There are many reasons why Staten Island is the only Republican borough in all of New York City, and having to rely on non-government assistance in the aftermath of the worst storm to ever hit the city must obscure their plight from the hopelessly liberal lenses of flagrantly socialistic Times reporters.
Or, at least, that's the impression Buckley and Wilson give their readers, since the rest of the world seems far more aware of the destruction and primal conditions being experienced by mostly white, mostly blue collar New Yorkers in the more historically self-sufficient neighborhoods along the Staten Island and Queens waterfronts.
And speaking of waterfronts, Buckley and Wilson appear to blame heartless city planners for relegating city housing projects to vulnerable waterfront locations, completely ignoring the masses of housing projects sprawling across the interiors of Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem.
What shoddy reporting. What pandering to social liberalism. What a completely fraudulent piece of amateurish propaganda.
To the consternation of many friends of mine, I read the Times daily. But I know how to read it. For one thing, the Times is never my primary source for national or political news. Its main value to me is its coverage of New York City issues. But even then, I put on my own lenses of skepticism and read each paragraph with an eye for what other media outlets - from the Wall Street Journal to Gothamist.com to the city's scrappy neighborhood newspapers - are also saying about the same subjects.
This time, I'm simply appalled that in the same edition that bemoans the suffering being afflicted upon the decimated neighborhoods of Staten Island and Queens, the Times thought it was appropriate to couch the discomforts being visited upon residents of public housing towers in such an erroneously sympathetic narrative.
Yes, I feel sorry for all of the New Yorkers who are having to stumble along without electricity in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. But let's keep a measure of perspective here, shall we? Room-temperature Corona in NO WAY competes for sympathy alongside the abject misery being visited on other parts of the city.
The liberal media hates it when conservatives call them on the carpet for being biased.
But people who still have carpet in their homes are better off than people with no homes. You'd think the Times would have a better grasp of that primal fact.
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TO HELP WITH HURRICANE SANDY RELIEF EFFORTS:
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