The New York Times proudly unveiled on the front of its Sunday May 10 issue an"expose" of nail salons in Manhattan by Sarah Maslin Nir, "The Price of Nice Nails" (Nir also criticized white "gentrification" among Hurricane Sandy volunteers in 2012.) The first part focused on alleged "rampant exploitation" of workers, and is causing major damage to a local industry composed mostly of lower class Asian workers. In her expose, privileged white reporter Nir certainly did her own part for "gentrification," helping heap onerous regulatory burdens on nail salons and hurting the mostly Asian workforce with a set of misleading articles. And the workers are responding with protests at NYT Co. headquarters.
New York
By Clay Waters | September 26, 2015 | 7:29 PM EDT
A heavily politicized preliminary version of Friday's front-page New York Times story on Pope Francis's visit to New York City was another example of the sudden respect a religious figure garners from the liberal newspaper -- at least when he happens to agree on the Times' pet issue of immigration. Reporters Marc Santora and Sharon Otterman noted that the Pope's "words cut against the current political climate in which the debate about immigration often has a harsh and unforgiving tone."
By Clay Waters | August 30, 2015 | 7:07 PM EDT
Ginia Bellafante's "Big City" column in Sunday's New York Times smacked of a particular brand of star-struck, fact-allergic old-style liberalism in which Bellafante, metro columnist and occasional reporter for the Times, went after an old enemy, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani: "The Dark Ages of Giuliani." Some urban liberals will apparently never forgive Giuliani for cleaning up the city and getting crime under control. After Giuliani made a common-sense observation about the homeless, Bellafante was so outraged she compared him to....Donald Trump.
By Clay Waters | August 22, 2015 | 5:53 PM EDT
Fresh off condemning libertarian "freedom" rhetoric as racist, TV producer David Simon, creator of the acclaimed HBO series "The Wire" and others, talked to the non-profit "public interest" news outlet ProPublica about his new miniseries "Show Me a Hero," on the desegregation of Yonkers, NY, after a federal judge ordered public housing projects to be built in white, wealthy parts of town. Simon lamented "the dynamic of hyper-segregation," then explained the term with the illiberal gesture of making insulting generalizations about an entire race: "White people, by and large, are not very good at sharing physical space or power or many other kinds of social dynamics with significant numbers of people of color."
By Randy Hall | July 23, 2015 | 5:18 PM EDT
During an interview with David Wallis posted in the New York Observer website on Thursday, Richard Dreyfuss -- best known for his starring roles in such movies as The Goodbye Girl, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Mr. Holland's Opus -- declared he thinks the Second Amendment should be changed because “it's obscurely written.”
The liberal actor claimed: “I would have made it clear. I would have said: 'This is for establishing militia, and everyone has the right to participate in that militia, and you can have a gun if you participate in that militia.'”
Before Rival Paper's Expose, NYT Heralded Phony 'Primates of Park Avenue,' on NYC's 'Retrograde,' Anti-Feminist Women
By Clay Waters | June 8, 2015 | 8:45 AM EDT Primates of Park Avenue is a new memoir by Wednesday Martin that purports to examine and explain the preposterously well-off women of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, much like Jane Goodall studied chimpanzees. Martin's prominent pre-publication essay in the New York Times mocked those "poor little rich women" for betraying feminism by being "dependent and comparatively disempowered." Times reporter Anne Barnard reacted to the essay with a liberal political rant and the paper ran no less than three reviews. But the New York Post outclassed its rival in journalistic integrity, finding many factual errors that will result in the publisher slapping an asterisk on the book.
Potted Plants: Husband and Wife Called 'Everyday Americans' at Hillary Clinton Event Really a Dem 'Power Couple'
By Tom Blumer | June 6, 2015 | 11:47 PM EDT Ruby Cramer, "a political reporter for BuzzFeed News ... based in New York," was on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton a couple of weeks ago in Hampton, New Hampshire.
Ms. Cramer was outraged at how "two actual everyday Americans" were "crushed" by the horde of reporters who attempted to ask Mrs. Clinton real questions. What Cramer reported the couple said during the course of the "press scrum" was more than a little suspicious. Gary and Lenore Patton may be very nice people, but the idea that they are "everyday Americans" trying to keep up with politics seemed absurd. They fooled Cramer, who in turn fooled longtime Clinton apparatchik Lanny Davis, who moaned about the press's "frenzy" in an awful column at the Hill I will address on Sunday.
Not News: Obama Education Secretary Threatens to 'Step In,' Plays Race Card Over Common Core Testing Opt-Outs
By Tom Blumer | April 29, 2015 | 9:27 PM EDT Well, this is awkward — or rather, it would be if the press cared about the federally-driven tyranny which is in the process of capturing the nation's public and private K-12 schools.
Common Core's proponents have insisted and still insist that "it was and will remain a state-led effort" (italics is theirs). Yet when faced with the "problem" of too many parents opting out of its intrusive testing regime — something they are supposedly free to do without penalty or reprisal — guess who steps in with threats and smears? You guessed it: Federal Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
By Clay Waters | April 20, 2015 | 9:21 PM EDT
Chris Christie who? Rachel Swarns, who for years fawned over Barack and Michelle Obama for the New York Times, wrote an "open letter" column to actor Adam Baldwin in defense of a left-wing group which tied up traffic in mid-town Manhattan in the name of a $15-an-hour "living wage."
By Tim Graham | April 16, 2015 | 1:37 PM EDT
Alec Baldwin, famous liberal actor (and public-radio talk show host at WNYC-FM), started a Twitter battle with fellow liberals about traffic-blocking protests in mid-town Manhattan on behalf of the "Fight for $15" minimum-wage demands. Occupy somewhere else, he seemed to proclaim to more than a million followers at his foundation's Twitter account.
By Brent Bozell | and By Tim Graham | March 7, 2015 | 7:47 AM EST
Kudos to our colleague Elizabeth Harrington at the Washington Free Beacon. She offers a familiar old slice of sleaze funded by the federal government. An “investigative theatre” company in New York called “The Civilians” has been granted almost $950,000 by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and believe it or not, the National Science Foundation. Its latest creation is a musical about porn titled Pretty Filthy.
By Cal Thomas | March 6, 2015 | 5:49 PM EST
Pop star Taylor Swift has donated $50,000 to the New York City public school system. Swift, who was named the world's sixth most powerful celebrity by Forbes magazine, has commendably performed numerous acts of charity since moving into her $20 million Tribeca residence last year, including visits with sick children at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
The age and cultural divide notwithstanding (she's 25, I'm not, and Elvis was my adolescent icon), I like Taylor Swift, but her money would have been better invested with much higher returns somewhere other than the dreadful New York City public schools, whose problems are not the result of insufficient funding.