There’s a derogatory nickname given to women who force their opinions and wants on everyone else through browbeating and selfishness dressed as moral certitude. These women are “Karens,” and the name has become something of an accusation that sums up the behaviors and attitudes everyone has experienced from these kinds of women at some point.
It does leave good people named “Karen” getting wrapped up in the trend, so I’m here to recommend a new name for this kind of person. How about a “New York Times,” or “NYT” for short? I think it fits well.
As Nick Arama reported on Sunday, the New York Times has lost its blue checkmark on Twitter after it refused to pay Elon Musk for the privilege of a blue check mark. Like many leftist things, it simply wanted to be handed the thing because of how it identifies.
“The New York Times, which has nearly 55 million followers on Twitter, said on Thursday that it would not pay for the verified badge for its institutional accounts, including @nytimes. The Times also told its journalists that it would not reimburse them for a Twitter Blue subscription, except in rare cases when it was necessary for reporting,” reported Fox News.
As Arama reported, Musk fired back that there were no free rides for any publication, especially for the New York Times, which he also called out as being hypocritical, propagandistic, and the “Twitter equivalent of diarrhea.”
While I do think major news organizations need some sort of identifier so that people aren’t easily fooled by accounts that intentionally try to act and look similar in various ways, I have to agree with Musk based on what the New York Times is.
The NYT is definitely something of a “Karen.” Its reporting is hardly reporting in the classic sense. Everything it does has a touch of agenda behind it, and its favorite tools to use to push this agenda are a false sense of morality, guilt-baiting, proselytizing for modern culture, and divisive commentary that has the capability of turning a group into an “other” with a single report. People who read it seem to have some sort of addiction to social justice and depending on your identity, the NYT is either your source for confirming you’re a victim or you receiving your daily whipping for being an oppressor.
There’s little doubt that the NYT is still very influential, especially to the left.
This makes the New York Times something that should have to pay for a blue checkmark; an influencer.
There are news organizations out there that should be identified as news organizations but the New York Times stopped being one of them a long time ago. It’s not trustworthy or reliable. It’s filled to the brim with activists posing as reporters. It is a den of radical leftists.
It cannot be trusted to tell the truth and, as such, has no right to be the “paper of record” for the United States of America. It has no right demanding it is verified at the de facto town square so that it can continue claiming legitimacy as a news organization, while it sells talking points and narratives to leftists from the Seattle activist to the Washington Democrat.
Influencers shouldn’t get the same treatment as legitimate businesses. They should have to go through the same channels as everyone else does.
Moreover, I think Musk’s move is the beginning of something great for our society. The NYT has been held in too high esteem for too long, and the removal of its verification badge can be both a symbolic way of removing it from its vaunted position as America’s first newspaper and also slowly removing it from the forefront of America’s mind as such, as it struggles to reach people’s news feeds on Twitter.
While this isn’t going to sink the NYT or force it to change, it will do damage over time.
And that’s a good thing. The NYT is a ship that needs to sink.
