I’d like to see that angle explored with this story, though it’s possibly just an apolitical crank.
The New York Times said on Friday it had received in its mailroom an envelope containing white powder, raising fears of a possible recurrence of anthrax-tainted letters sent to newsrooms and other offices in late 2001.
“At about 12:30 p.m. (1630 GMT) this afternoon & an employee opened an envelope that contained a white powdery substance. The envelope was handwritten and addressed to the New York Times, not to any individual. The postmark was from Philadelphia with no return address,” said Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis.
Emergency vehicles and an ambulance were parked outside the newspaper’s offices on 43rd Street to investigate the incident. The New York Police Department confirmed it was investigating the incident.
Conservatives have criticized the Times recent weeks for writing about the Bush administration’s covert efforts to stamp out terrorism financing.
Last week they were posting home addresses and instructions to kill people. It’s not a big leap.
Dugger, the NYT didn’t get an envelope filled with white powder because of generalized conservative bitching about the liberal media. It got the envelope because of focused conservative bitching about the NYT.
Your attempt at an equal comparison doesn’t pass muster, unless you can prove a concerted effort of pre-9/11 liberal animosity against The World Trade Center itself, not against what the WTC may or may not have “represented.”
If there were a bunch of liberal blogs out there calling for the decapitated head of Rupert Murdoch, and then Rupert Murdoch were beheaded, then you’d have something.
This is like a bad call-in show: keep getting more outrageous in your assertions until the calls come in.
BTW, in line with the above Cracker Jack reasoning, I was wondering if progressives caused the 9/11 disaster since they are always critical of capitalism and the towers were symbols of capitalism.
Dugger, What do you think, America????
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
It’s not too much of a reach to blame the New York Times for attracting negative attention with their headline hunting treasonous reporting.
I see no need to blame it on the “Cons”, as if there is nothing wrong with what they did, except the conservatives’ reaction to it.
Whasa matter, Farris? Got a furball?
But there is nothing wrong with what they did. they did their job (for once) and reported a story that is pretty much common knowledge. Yes, the government checks banking records for terrorists. Been doing it for years. Somebody please point out to me where the “treason” comes from? And why is the conservative reaction so over the top?
If you tell a dog to attack often enough, it probably will.
Uh- duros? “Pretty much common knowledge?”
If it was “pretty much common knowledge,” then why write the story at all? Why so many breathless references to the super “secret” program in the original article?
If it was “pretty much common knowledge,” why did Lichtblau write a story twelve months earlier noodle-whipping the Bush administration for not doing enough monitoring of financial transactions that could tell us where the terorists were? Why didn’t he already know about “swift?”
If it was “pretty much common knowledge,” then why did the government and members of the 9/11 commissions ask the Times not to disclose the CLASSIFIED program?
If it was “pretty much common knowledge,” the how did the government have any succesful operations because of information they found through the program?
Let hear you do some ’splainin’.
Frank, the right inflames the situation with words/phrases such as “treasonous”, “giving aid and comfort to Al-Queda”, etc., which were all used agains the NYT by right wing talking heads. Since many of the talking heads speak for much of the far-right fringes of society, someone may feel justified with this type of terrorization.
Ding!
(Uh- Oliver? Where exactly were those instructions to kill people?)
Sorry duros, I’ll dumb it down for you.
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: It’s a false assumption to say that because somebody sent powder to the NYT, it was because of the Rumsfled/Cheney articles.
If you need any more explanation, watch the 2nd episode of The West Wing.
“If it was pretty much common knowledge, then why write the story at all?”
Ya, I mean everybody already knew that planes had hit the Twin Towers on the morning of Sept 12. So why did the NY Times have to devote so much breathless coverage to it?
“It s a false assumption to say that because we haven’t had a terrorist attack since 9-11 it’s because of anything that Rumsfled/Cheney/Bush have done.”
Glad we could clear this up.
Classic yellow journalism from todays MSM….
The last two paragraphs have absolutely no connection, none. You could have easily replaced the last paragraph with
“Oliver Willis, a known liberal ‘bomb ‘thrower’ has recently been crtical of the New York Time’s support of the president’s pre-Iraq war assesment….”
See, yellow journalism is fun, easy too!
The Swift program and the government efforts to trace terrorist funds are not common knowledge per se, more accurately, they are an “open secret.” The Swift program has been written about before, it actually has a website, and Bush himself has regularly stated that we are tracking terrorist finances. What, bin Laden reads the Times, but doesn’t watch press conferences? What’s more, the story in the WSJ was approved by the White House and covered nearly all the same ground as the NYT, so to claim that the NYT is treasonous but the WSJ isn’t is pure partisan hackery. This goes hand in hand with the nonsense that the travel section story on Rumsfeld and Cheney was a bit of retribution for the flack over the Swift story. The same retribution they handed down for the Clintons, apparently, when they ran a similar story on them. Too bad Rumsfeld and Cheney both knew about the article and Rumsfeld actually approved of the photo they used. Maybe they can arrange around the clock security for them, maybe call it something catchy, like the Secret Service.
Check out the threats from wingnut posters.
Ann Coulter openly wished for the deaths of the Times editors and reporters.
By conflating the NYT’s article with treason, righties are obviously implying that the editors and reporters deserve to die.
It starts as talk of “treason,” but by the time it hits the fringes, it’s all about execution.
There are tons of examples. Mostly of prominent pundits calling the NYT “treasonous” and/or “traitorous,” but it isn’t hard to follow that thread to smaller bloggers and right wing commentors (of which there are plenty) who make the leap to violence and call for the harrassment and even deaths of the editors and reporters. Given the fanning of extreme nationalism (or “patriotism,” if you’re a die hard Bush humper) in this country over the last 5 years, it isn’t hard for anyone with a clear head to see the danger in throwing the “traitor” and “treason” labels around when common sense should tell you that for many the appropriate penalty would then be death.
Of course, none of this is really about whether the Times committed treason or not. It’s all just a push by the White House to a.)continue to strengthen the increasingly eliminationist meme that the liberal press hates America (a view lovingly embraced by many of the trolls here), b.)to intimidate the press to further dilute its coverage of suspicious White House activities regardless of the potential threat to our Constitutional liberties and the rule of law, and c.)to pander to the idiot 33-36% who lap up this administration’s wholly transparent bs like starving kittens, and d.)be tossed into the “re-elect us or you’ll all die” propaganda blitz that, along with the occasional terrifying threat of “aspirational” terrorism from clans of village idiots, will hopefully terrify enough of those fringe voters to push them back into the fold come November. Maybe the GOP will get lucky and between Diebold and Israel’s demented notion of what constitutes a “proportional response” (Hezbollah has utterly played them.)they’ll have all their election bases covered in the Fall.
Thank God for the missile shield!
“The postmark was from Philadelphia . . . ”
They don’t call him cyrus the virus for nothing.
If it was handled by the postal workers in Philly, it was probably supposed to go the LA Times.