Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/06/new-york-times-calls-blackface.html
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“dark makeup,”
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“Racially tinged dark make-up”?
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Komplete koverage kontouring…
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NYTimes: “He said brown makeup.”
NYTimes: “Ok, go with that!”
Public: “Rabble, rabble, rabble… pitchforks…”
NYTimes: “Oooops”
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The governor looks better without so much make up on. And he should smile more.
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With a style guide like that, who needs The Onion?
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We need a NYT to English dictionary.
Enhanced interrogation = torture
Dark makeup = blackface
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They should have just put brown makeup in quotes like NPR did.
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From the article:
"The 57-year-old Virginia native comes from Loudoun County, a once largely rural area that now counts as one of Washington, D.C.'s outer suburbs. "
Guess where the KKK is currently very active in Va.?
ETA: Sensing a trend here:
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Dear NYT you are making it very hard for me to want to give you money for crossword access this year.
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Blackface demonstrates someone is supremely insensitive, ignorant of others feelings, probably a racist, and lacking total self awareness of privilege. This is sadly very common.
Being a Klansman is signing up for the shock troops in a race war. This is sadly perhaps more common than we understood.
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You know, I could understand the NYT having a hard time with things like this. I can understand being sensitive to the “liberal media” slur, I can understand not wanting to be seen as partisan. I think this decision (‘dark makeup’) was the wrong one, but I don’t think it’s completely zany that they thought about phrasing it different ways, either.
But they are the freaking New York Times. I think they are more powerful than they realize. Even when they’re being criticized, it’s because they’re directing the conversation. If they consistently took a stronger line on these things - if they were less shy about words like “lie” and “blackface” and “torture” and “racist,” they’d get criticized by the loonies, sure, but they’d also be making the kind of push that changes culture. A push that no one else can make the way they can.
The pen is mightier than the sword. Nobody’s got a mightier pen. I wish they’d see that.
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Seems that Va. politics is full of it. Sadly.
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Conservatives never attack FOX News like this. Why are we liberals so anxious to tear down the one of the finest news sources in the world? This looks to me like journalists trying to be objective in their reporting made a bad call, and when the readers pointed out the problem, they fixed it. Isn’t that a GOOD thing?
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The New York Times can handle criticism.
They aren’t going to fold over someone noticing they made a mistake.
Criticism isn’t an “attack”.
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Some fools in the media are trying to muddy the waters on the issue by saying the original Mary Poppins was just as racist because of the soot-covered faces in the chimney sweep scene.
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Agreed.
Jason is pointing out that this isn’t the first time they have backpedaled on something that should have been obvious. One of the finest should know better the first time. IMHO
Hell, NPR got it right.
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I find it really interesting why news outlets are being very difficult when it comes to calling out or reporting on racism. Like the word “racist” being banned from being used in reports for example, maybe they’re doing so with the excuse of trying to appear impartial but when done with enough regularity the impartiality does more harm than actually taking a stance.
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The mob has won. The headline should not have been changed because that is not what the Attorney General actually said. The headline “Virginia Attorney General Says He Also Dressed in Blackface” is inaccurate. The actual quote from him was, "Because of our ignorance and glib attitudes — and because we did not have an appreciation for the experiences and perspectives of others — we dressed up and put on wigs and brown makeup.” Even the initial headline is a bit “darker” than what the quote was. Probably changing the word says to admits even might make the altered headline OK but you shouldn’t say someone says something when they didn’t actually say it. If you want to offer a translation then do so in the article itself.
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