Things to Study, Things to Ignore

There’s a lot of criticism falling on the New York Times right now for their stupid piece about which boxes Mamdani checked on this Columbia application. The piece was apparently sourced from some right wing nutter and the paper is being defended by the guy responsible for butter emails, who now has a title that includes the words “standards and trust”. It was a clear piece of trolling by a right winger who wanted to point out that Mamdani was not a white man, and also to make blacks in New York City think that Mamdani was trying to pretend to be black to get into Columbia. Here’s Eric Adams picking up that thread.

I’m guessing Mamdani will respond to this appropriately and it won’t have a long life as a “scandal,” but the Times is both trying to advance a pretty weak and stupid attack as well as trolling the left, subscribers or not. They are very successful at it. It’s corrosive and terrible, and I wish it could be ignored more easily.

Something else I could do without is the performative “will s/he or won’t s/he” around these big votes. It’s very clear that two things are true about the Trumpian Congress: everything Trump wants to pass is going to pass, and most of the doubts expressed by Republicans are bullshit. The DC press should be far more skeptical about the blather than escapes the pieholes of Republican Members of Congress. It’s the votes that count, including the pattern of voting.

It’s worth studying Mamdani’s campaign and taking away the lessons that might be more universally applied. It’s worth noting how eager Republicans were to vote for a bill that is going to destroy their districts. The trolling by outlets like the Times, and the gallons of virtual ink spilled over the supposed qualms of Republican Members of Congress should mostly be ignored.