Steven Hayward over at PowerLine mocks the editors of The New York Times -- no sophistry required to do that -- over their support for the proposition that Princeton University should expunge Woodrow Wilson from his place of honor on its campus. Hayward points out that the Times had endorsed Wilson, an "unrepentant racist," in 1912 and 1916, long after Wilson's attitudes had manifested in policies that were plainly evident even to those editors.
Curiously, today's editors made no mention of the manifest racism of their predecessors, or even the paper's own error in that endorsement. All the news that's fit to print, indeed.
Regardless, we are aghast that the iconic center of Bill de Blasio's Manhattan still goes by the name of "Times Square," named as it is for an institution that went out of its way, with malice aforethought, to endorse the unrepentant racist Woodrow Wilson. We await on pins and needles the editorial from the not-all-that repentant NYT, 2015 edition, to demand that Times Square revert to its historical name, Longacre Square, in the spirit of the, er, times.
Liberal hypocrisy? Say it ain't so.
ReplyDeleteJosephus Daniels (May 18, 1862 – January 15, 1948) was a progressive Democrat, and newspaper editor and publisher (The Raleigh News and Observer) from North Carolina who was appointed by United States President Woodrow Wilson to serve as Secretary of the Navy during World War I. He was also a close friend and supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served as his Ambassador to Mexico, 1933-41 and on the board of trustees of the University of North Carolina.
Josephus Daniels along with other progressives deliberately used racism in the White Supremacy Campaign of 1898 to utterly defeat the “fusion” alliance of blacks and Republicans. That ushered in decades of total Democratic Party and segregationist rule.This deserves emphasis: It was Democrats and progressives who dubbed it the White Supremacy Campaign, and racism was an essential tool for progressives. To achieve their goals, they whipped up racial hatred, knowingly and deliberately.
A statue of Daniels stands to this day in Nash Square in Raleigh across from the N&O offices. The newspaper today and every day quotes him approvingly on its editorial page. His legacy is there in plain sight, yet so far hasn’t stirred much interest.
I say take the statue DOWN! There's no place in Raleigh for a statue honoring this asshole.