I must admit to a fondness for the Washington Post editorial
board, much like I once had fondness for The New Republic as the
voice of the thoughtful and responsible center-left. I obviously
find myself in disagreement with the Post, quite often, but I
have found that under Fred Hiatt the editorial pages there have
actually been often more fair than the news pages -- not more
conservative (although that, too, by a smidgen), but more fair:
less apt to employ histrionics, less likely to skew arguments and
to misrepresent the other side, etc.
But when election season rolls around, the Post editorials revert
to liberal form. And the paper's rage against conservative
Virginia AG candidate Ken Cuccinelli knows no bounds. Last
Friday, the Post dropped this stink-bomb entitled "Mr.
Cuccinelli's bigotry." The Post was incensed about these
comments of Mr. Cuccinelli: " My view is that homosexual acts,
not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re
intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country
it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. ... They
don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it
represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite)
behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is
not healthy to society.”
The Post then wrote this absolute howler of a sentence: "Appeals
to 'natural law' and 'intrinsic' rights and wrongs were the usual
cliches deployed to justify the old-time religion of hatred then
directed at African Americans, Jews, Italians, Irish and other
immigrants." Uh, well, NO, NO. NO. Last I checked, "natural law"
provided the theoretical basis for the founding, embraced by
Thomas Jefferson and most of the others who founded this great
nation. As in: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights...."
In short, this sentence in the Post editorial is just laughably
outrageous.
The rest of the editorial is over-the-top as well. It asserts
that Cuccinelli -- a thoughtful, constructive legislator who has
shown diligence, compassion, and fairness on multiple issues --
occupies "the far-right fringe of the party, the ultimate small
tenter." (It then attributes those thoughts to "many of his
fellow Republicans," a convenient formulation putting words in
the mouths of others. Who, pray tell, are these "many...
Republicans" who think this about Cuccinelli? If there are so
many, why is Cuccinelli enjoying a large lead in the polls and
overwhelming GOP support? One would think the Post is adult
enough to avoid that refuge of scoundrels known as the "nameless
'many'" formulation. One could just as easily say that many
Washingtonians think the Washington Post editorial page is, oh, I
dunno, perhaps "Communist." I myself don't believe that about the
Post, and I would vigorously defend its editorial page from that
charge -- except that I don't know where to aim my defense, since
I don't know who these "many" people are.) This "far-right
fringe" allegation is utter nonsense; I meanwhile await the day
when the Post will call John Holdren, Kevin Jennings, and other
White House appointees the 'far-left fringe" of the Democratic
Party.
Meanwhile, whether or not one agrees with Cuccinelli's take on
homosexual acts, it is not bigotry. Every person on earth has the
right to disapprove of ACTS which they find offensive. An act is
a choice; being black, Jew, Italian, etc., is not a choice.
Me? I think what people do in private is usually their own
business. But the question is whether it is egregiously
outrageous for a public official to hold Cuccinelli's views.
I note that at a Catholic Church in the Washington area on
Sunday, the priest noted in his homily that the Post's editorial
effectively called every single traditionalist Catholic a bigot.
The Post, he said, insulted all of us. (Clarification: I myself
am not Catholic. The "us" was the priest's congregation.) The
priest had a reasonable point, which begs this question:
Is the Post's editorial page guilty of anti-Catholic bigotry?
(Or, more likely, is it just completely tone-deaf and guilty of a
pathetically insular worldview which does not even come close to
understanding the cultural views of those who aren't part of the
liberal self-anointed elite? Did it mean to insult every
traditional Catholic in its reading audience? If not, then its
cultural ignorance is astonishing.)
I believe the Post can do much better than this. And if polls are
to be believed, it will have at least four full years to gain a
better chance at understanding Cuccinelli, because Cuccinelli
looks likely to become Attorney General, despite the Post's
overreactive fulminations against him.
