The city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is described as “overwhelmingly Democratic,” but the hometown newspaper’s editorial board is filled with relics from the “great America” Donald Trump wants to give back.
Apparently, if you call a racist a racist you’re just as bad as GOP superstar Joseph McCarthy in his crusade against alleged Communists (people he didn’t like).
Earlier this week, the newspaper published an editorial calling the act of correctly labeling someone a racist “the new McCarthyism.”
In defense of Donald Trump labeling black-majority countries “shitholes,” a group of people who clearly need to be fired from their jobs informed us that people who accuse others of racism it is simply a “term of malice and libel — almost beyond refutation, as the words ‘communist’ or ‘communist sympathizer’ were in the 1950s.”
“Moreover, the accuser somehow covers himself in an immunity of superiority. If I call you a racist, I probably will not be called one,” these awesome folks add. “And, finally, having chosen the ultimate epithet, I have dodged the obligation to converse or build.”
Next, we launch into a wholehearted defense of Donald Trump and a ridiculous argument that calling his remarks racist somehow hurts the immigrants he wants to expel from our country:
If Donald Trump is called a racist for saying some nations are “shithole countries,” does that help pass a “Dreamers” bill to keep gifted young people in this nation — people who have something to give the United States and are undocumented only because they were brought here by their parents illegally?
That’s the goal, is it not? To save the Dreamers? That’s what the White House meeting last week was about. It’s what the whole week was about, until we went down the “racist” rabbit hole.
The Post-Gazette’s editorial board would have you believe that calling racist remarks racist somehow destroys the fight for decency in America, calling Trump’s plans for immigrants “reasonable.” Besides, there was nothing racist at all about calling black-majority countries “shitholes” while demanding that we take in more immigrants from white countries like “Norway.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking: there’s no way this can get worse. But it does, because the Post-Gazette’s editorial board is filled with horrible people:
If the president had used the world “hellhole” instead, would that have been racist?
If he had used the word “failed states,” would that have been racist?
But there are nations that are hellholes in this world. And there are failed states. It is not racist to say that this country cannot take only the worst people from the worst places and that we want some of the best people from the best places, many of which are inhabited by people of color. That’s not racism, it is reason.
[…]Did the president use a crudity in a private meeting? He says he did not. No one who was there has said he did on the record. But if he did, so what? So what? America today is a sadly crass place where many of us use vulgar, corrosive language we ought not use in private and work conversations. How many of us would like to see and share a transcript of everything we have said in private conversations or at work?
And how many presidents have said crass things in the Oval Office in private meetings? Think of Kennedy, Clinton and Nixon, to name three.
According to the Editorial Board, a person can only be racist if they were hardcore segregationists or murder African-Americans:
We need to confine the word “racist” to people like Bull Connor and Dylann Roof. For if every person who speaks inelegantly, or from a position of privilege, or ignorance, or expresses an idea we dislike, or happens to be a white male, is a racist, the term is devoid of meaning.
We have to stop calling each other names in this country and battle each other with ideas and issues, not slanders.
Maybe they’re on to something, though. For instance, when their hero Donald Trump called Mexicans rapists, drug dealers, and murderers, he probably shouldn’t have done that. When he said that countries with lots of black people are “shitholes,” that was also a bad idea as well. In fact, he probably shouldn’t toss out insults like “Crooked Hillary” and “Sloppy Steve” either. In fact, he should just stop talking.
It’s interesting that the Editorial Board ended by telling us that it’s time to battle with ideas rather than “slanders” while wholeheartedly defending someone who does that on a daily basis. It’s even more interesting that they chose to run this piece of Martin Luther King Day.
F*ck the Post-Gazette Editorial Board. F*ck Donald Trump. F*ck everyone like them.
Featured image via screengrab