My latest in PJ Media:
It’s no surprise, really, considering the fact that, as the perspicacious Stephen Kruiser noted Thursday, the New York Times is no longer a news source, but “one big hyperventilating leftist Opinion section.” Still, to see the Times refer to Osama bin Laden as a “devoted family man” was startling, and even the Times’ editorial politburo seemed to agree: after an outcry, they changed the title of their article (a review of Peter Bergen’s book about bin Laden) from “Osama bin Laden, the Fanatical Terrorist and the Devoted Family Man” to “A Fuller Picture of Osama Bin Laden’s Life.” Remember back in school how they’d tell us always to go with our first answer, because it was most likely to be correct? So now, the Times should have stuck it out with its first headline, because it reflects more accurately what Times editors really think.
Robert O’Neill, who as a Navy SEAL in 2011 killed Osama bin Laden, had a trenchant response to the Times’ original headline: “Family man. He used his wife as a human shield. Lucky for me he was taller than her.”
Amid all the outrage and ridicule, however, few noted the real import of the Times’ first headline, and the similar significance of the Washington Post’s reference to Islamic State (ISIS) caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar” in 2019. The Times and the Post speak respectfully about people such as Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi because, quite simply, they respect them. They do not believe that these men were evil, and so they do not portray them as such.
This is a result of the values they shared with the dead terrorists. The New York Times and the Washington Post are two of the flagship publications of the Leftist intelligentsia that has contempt for Americans, despises America’s history and heritage, and regularly publishes propaganda about “systemic racism” and other imagined American evils. They would never admit it, but they have a congruence of outlook with bin Laden and al-Baghdadi, who dedicated their lives to destroying the United States as it is currently constituted and the remnants of the Judeo-Christian civilization that the Times and the Post regard with open distaste.
They also have a longstanding admiration for brutal authoritarians, which should be no surprise given the Left’s rapidly encroaching authoritarianism today. This goes back a long way: on July 9, 1933, just over five months after he became Chancellor of Germany and years after his virulent anti-Semitism and propensity for violence had become notorious worldwide, the New York Times published a fawning puff piece on Hitler that rivals even today’s media adulation of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi in its one-sidedness, myopia, and disdain for essential facts.
There is more. Read the rest here.
Wellington says
The New York Times reveals its true colors again and again, even though (as here) it does occasionally have to backtrack at times (though when this leftist rag does it doesn’t really mean it).
mike says
let the NYT make this a front page story on 9-11
let’s see if they have the grapes to snub the 3000 plus that dies at the hands of this family man
just another example putting Islam on a pedestal
all in the name of optics and topping Islamophobia
this is a crime
William Tyson says
UK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQbCOIfvy_c
mr clive delmonte says
Maybe Osama was a family man.
He didn’t seem to care much about other mens’ families.
Walter Sieruk says
There seems to be a need to reiterate the obvious . Which is “So what ?” Osama Bin Laden may have had “family values” So did that murderous gangster chief John Gotti have “family values.”
What “family value” Bin Laden had sure didn’t carry over to him feeling sad , even a little bit ,about about all the families he destroyed and ruined because he had in sinister insidious and evil hand in those heinous affronts which occurred on September 11, 2001.
All he could do that day while watching, on television those al Qaeda jihadist terror murder attacks is sit around a grin.
We may all be sure that this “family man ” is now suffering in the fires of hell
gravenimage says
He did not even love his own family–this is a lie from beginning to end.
mortimer says
He led his own family into disaster. He took two wives and their children into a gloomy life in caves, holes in the ground and a claustrophobic hideout at Abbotabad where their lives were constantly threatened by immanent attack. A real family man wouldn’t have his family in a war zone.
On the surface, the ‘family man’ claim is disproved.
Raja says
A nice dose for “islamophobia” for today’s world. Every time, when there is push from the evil side there must also be shove from the other.
In these loony times they have shrugged off all insult and humiliation inflicted by an enemy, such is the spine of the cockroaches.
They are blissfully unaware that the devil inspired man was aiming for death of millions of infidels.
gravenimage says
New York Times Calls Osama bin Laden a ‘Devoted Family Man’
………….
Changing the title of this grotesque story does not improve it. This is also a lie–bin Laden was a polygamist who neglected, abused, and beat his many children.
Kashyap says
New York Times journalism apparently has lost mental balance. Not sure if NYT journalists are on payrolls of an Islamic organization. .
Giacomo Latta says
If any such ”news” organization allows the acceptance of tips (not scoops) by its journalists it is certainly the New York Times.
Ren says
Osama bin Laden was a ‘Devoted Family Man’ and a devoted terrorist as well.
Rarely says
Rumour has it that Stalin was a loving “family man” too. If true it might look good on his resume but I don’t think it would have helped him much when he got to the pearly gates.
OLD GUY says
Well of course he was, it was his family. Bin Laden just hated the west and all non-islamic people and would enslave or kill the rest of us. You could say the same about KKK leaders, Nazi’s and most Dictators who also murdered thousands of people they hated. The question is why would the N.Y. Times due this story at this time or ever?
Crusades Were Right says
“… A stern upholder of his country’s interests, this self-made man left his mark in the field of international politics, often controversially.
Adolf, we hardly knew ye.”
lol
Kepha says
Osama Bin Laden may well have been a devoted family man. Mao Zedong was quite a bon vivant when not running a ruinous civil war. Adolf Hitler had a sense of style. Pol Pot truly cared about getting “imperialists” out of Cambodia. But that doesn’t stop thsee people from being otherwise evil.