Nothing will stop the Right from launching reactionary crusades against “woke” people and institutions they hate.
But the way this has been amplified, legitimized, and propagated by mainstream media pretending *any* part of this was about academic integrity and excellence is just disgusting.
If you google "New York Times Gorsuch plagiarism" the top hit is...a story about what a great writer Gorsuch is, and a link to allegations of plagiarism against Claudine Gay.
“They fell for it” is simply not a plausible explanation. It wasn’t in the fall of 2020 when Rufo publicly announced he was using “Critical Race Theory” as a demonizing tool against “wokeism” and the nation’s opinion leaders all helped him create an anti-“CRT” frenzy - and it certainly isn’t now.
This is the result of a deliberate decision to join this crusade. It’s indicative of the media favoring “neutrality”-theater journalism over accuracy - and, more generally, of an increasingly reactionary, anti-“woke” stance on the center and America’s elites rapidly accommodating extremism.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because Rufo is open about plagiarism (and antisemitism before that for Gay) being a kludge against "wokeness" and nothing he cares about on the merits. I guess that's to his credit but boy are people credulous
the major news media are simply bad actors when it comes to right wing goals, but they can only be effective in this so long as their target readership assumes it must be some wacky mixup or search for clicks
i used to try to convince people the news media was bad by bringing up the arguments in Manufacturing Consent that you don’t have to be some kook who believes in hate campaigns consciously coordinated by the news media to see the problem
but now uh…
