by Ed Driscoll
New York Times Claims ‘Republicans of Color’ Are Distorting the American Dream.
New York Times reporter Jazmine Ulloa wrote:
“For decades, politicians have used the phrase ‘the American dream’ to describe a promise of economic opportunity and upward mobility, of prosperity through hard work.”
“Now, a new crop of Republican candidates and elected officials are using the phrase in a different way, invoking the same promise but arguing in speeches, ads and mailings that the American dream is dying or in danger, threatened by what they see as rampant crime, unchecked illegal immigration, burdensome government regulations and liberal social policies.”
She continued:
“But historians and other scholars warn that some Republicans are distorting a defining American idea and turning it into an exclusionary political message … The Republican Party is using it as a dog whistle. They are saying here is the potential of what you can have, if we can exclude others from ‘stealing it’ from you.”
More here: Headline Fail of the Week.
The New York Times published an article on “How a Storied Phrase Became a Partisan Battleground,” in which reporter Jazmine Ulloa claims, “A touchstone of political and social discourse, the nearly 100-year-old phrase ‘the American dream,’ is being repurposed — critics say distorted — particularly by Republicans of color.”
The article says that “a new crop of Republican candidates and elected officials are using the phrase in a different way, invoking the same promise but arguing in speeches, ads and mailings that the American dream is dying or in danger, threatened by what they see as rampant crime, unchecked illegal immigration, burdensome government regulations and liberal social policies,” and notes that many of the Republicans doing so are people of color, “including immigrants and the children of immigrants, for whom the phrase first popularized in 1931 has a deep resonance.”
In what is perhaps the most insane line in a deeply flawed article, Ulloa claims that “in the same way that many Trump supporters have tried to turn the American flag into an emblem of the right, so too have these Republicans sought to claim the phrase as their own, repurposing it as a spinoff of the Make America Great Again slogan.”
The Gray Lady wants it both ways: to claim with the “1619 Project” that America was born from Original Sin and is therefore irreparably damaged and evil. But also that “the American Dream” is a racist dog whistle when used by the right — and especially by “Republicans of color.” (Though as James Taranto likes to say, “if you can hear the whistle, then you’re the dog.”)
(Classical reference in headline.)