They just missed April Fool’s Day, but New York Times staffers still did their best comic relief this month insisting that their paper isn’t LGBTQ-friendly enough.
The latest example of immature leftist Times staffers getting triggered had them angry at a human resources executive for… doing her job. HR executive Natalia Villalobos encouraged employees to communicate directly with her department instead of complaining in a Slack forum tailored for LGBTQ staffers.
In most workplaces in our country, asking employees to contact human resources directly would be seen as supportive of workers who might have legitimate HR concerns. Not here. Times LGBTQ staffers were offended by Villalobos’ simple request.
The New York Times building in Midtown Manhattan (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)
Let’s be honest. Times staffers were offended because they wanted to be and a poor HR person got caught in the middle. The Times LGBTQ community has been at war with the paper for several months. This incident was just another excuse for them to complain that management won’t cave to their every demand.
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And because they know media like The Daily Beast will give them one-sided coverage like this: "A New York Times executive stepped in it last week when she seemed to encourage a Slack room full of LGBTQ staffers not to raise workplace concerns in the channel dedicated to… raising employee concerns."
The employee argument we are supposed to accept is that the most pro-LGBTQ newspaper in the country is somehow against the LGBTQ community, especially transgenders. In reality, it’s hard to find issues that the Times isn’t leftist on. And that’s been true in some cases since before World War II.
This is the same organization that got a 1932 Pulitzer Prize covering up Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s genocide of Ukraine, now employs an economist who calls Republicans "Economic Terrorists" because they want to cut the budget, and defends anti-American editorial board member Mara Gay who whined about going to Long Island and finding pickup trucks with, "in some cases just dozens of American flags."
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And don’t forget, the supposedly anti-LGBTQ paper regularly bashes conservatives over every LGBTQ issue. Just as an example, here are a few Times headlines from the last year for news stories involving the GOP and transgenders. "After Roe, Republicans Sharpen Attacks on Gay and Transgender Rights"; "How Montana Took a Hard Right Turn Toward Christian Nationalism"; and "G.O.P. State Lawmakers Push a Growing Wave of Anti-Transgender Bills."
I’m sure you noted the paper's right-wing shift. Even artificial intelligence like ChatGPT couldn’t list all of the examples of Times left-wingery. It’s superhuman, not God-like.
None of the evidence satisfies extremists at the paper. They fear that their news outlet might quote the opinion of someone who doesn’t agree with them 1,000,000%. And their complaints are only the latest of several staff rebellions as the young, woke "journalists" relive their college years in a political remake of "Mean Girls."
So, naturally, staffers pretended they were irked when a human resources executive offered them "resources." "I can’t help but feel lately like I’m expected to just shut up and deal with the negativity because it might make some of my coworkers feel uncomfortable if I speak up," one Times employee reportedly commented.
Villalobos responded that her "post was meant to support the community by offering channels for reporting workplace concerns like discrimination and harassment so that they are received by HR and other partners who can help address them efficiently." In other words, she wanted to make sure the complaints got to the right people.
How dare she!
Unfortunately for Villalobos, you can’t satisfy the mob – especially the mob at the Times. The paper’s leadership tried that repeatedly and failed.
It’s hard not to wonder what academic safe space produced a view that the Times is against them – Berkeley? Or maybe the Ivys. Some college campus where every opposing thought is met with furious anger, followed by blankies and warm oat milk.
This latest episode of "How I Met the Woke Mob" actually began with a January story headlined, "When Students Change Gender Identity, and Parents Don’t Know." That included too much diversity of opinion and sent staffers into their desks for pitchforks and torches.
In February, about 200 Times staffers signed a letter to management complaining of "serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people." This was coordinated with another letter from LGBTQ advocacy groups – you know, exactly the kind of thing neutral journalists aren’t ever supposed to do.
But young Times staffers are sure they are right. All other views are wrong and should be banned. They claimed that their bias isn’t really inappropriate, it’s about workplace discrimination, instead. In other words, only write stories they agree with, or you are discriminating against them.
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The mob didn’t like the paper’s response, which called them out for their activism. Grown-ups (Yes, the Times still has a few) then organized a counter letter, making it clear that the fight wasn’t about how staffers are treated, it was about journalistic ethics. "Factual, accurate journalism that is written, edited, and published in accordance with Times standards does not create a hostile workplace," they wrote.
The New York Times building in New York City (Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images)
The comedic saga continued earlier this month in what seems like a long, drawn-out episode of "The Office." The mob sent yet another letter to management on April 6. What the Daily Beast described as "a legion of New York-based writers, most of whom have contributed to The New York Times" fired off their letter to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger complaining about "a workplace with a documented history of institutional homophobia."
Sure.
It’s a sign of the Times how bad things are in their office when no one can talk to one another. They simply send group hate mail. Divorce attorneys and psychiatrists make a fortune off of this sort of behavior.
Sadly, the radicals know Times leadership will bow to their demands because it keeps doing so. The Times mob took over the paper in 2019 when executives were bullied into changing an accurate headline because it was seen as too pro-President Donald Trump.
The headline simply said: "TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM," but it sent leftist heads spinning. Times journalists blasted Executive Editor Dean Baquet who apologized, of course, and changed it quickly. The paper even ran a story about the crisis of writing an accurate headline.
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The mob’s demands only grew more severe in 2020 after the paper ran an op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. Cotton urged Trump to "Send In the Troops" to stop nationwide leftist riots. In that show of poor leadership, the Times held a staff whine tasting and backed off running the editorial in print. The op-ed cost editorial page editor James Bennet his job. And opinion columnist and editor Bari Weiss exited, posting a harsh rebuke of the paper in her resignation letter.
It’s only a matter of Times before the paper waves the rainbow flag of surrender.