THE NEW YORK TIMES STILL WON'T SHOW MARK ROBINSON'S TRUE CHARACTER

A couple of weeks ago, North Carolina's sewer-mouthed lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, won the state's Republican gubernatorial primary. As I told you just after Primary Day, The New York Times responded to Robinson's victory with two mealy-mouthed articles that offered only a faint glimpse of the candidate's character and ignorant opinions.

Today, the Times seems intent on making up for that oversight -- but the new Times story isn't much better than the two that preceded it.

I see what happened. A decision was made to answer the question "How would Robinson govern?" rather than "What kind of person is Mark Robinson and is he fit to be governor?" The story implies that those who care about Robinson's character and fondness for extremely online verbal bomb throwing are focusing on the wrong things:

Mr. Robinson’s long history of inflammatory statements has generated a torrent of headlines since he became the Republican standard-bearer in this year’s most closely watched race for governor. But underlying his combative proclamations on race, abortion, education and religion is an exceptionally right-wing worldview — with deep roots in modern evangelical Christianity — that would make him one of the most conservative governors in America if elected.

News readers should be given a sense of how Robinson would govern if elected. But part of knowing how he would govern is knowing how he responds to cultural phenomena he disapproves of, since responding to cultural phenomena loudly and publicly has been such a huge part of his life. Saying he'd be a very conservative governor makes him seem like a normal politician -- maybe a Greg Abbott -- rather than the unserious Internet rage monster he actually is.

This piece, like the two that preceded it, provides a small taste of Robinson's rage without ever revealing it in full -- as if reading the Times is like going to a Hamptons cocktail party and quoting Robinson at length would be rude to the guests.

We're told:

[Robinson] has made comments widely seen as antisemitic. He once quoted Adolf Hitler on Facebook. He described the Parkland school shooting survivors who pushed for gun control as “spoiled, angry, know it all children.”

Let's start with the last example. Robinson didn't just call the Parkland activists "spoiled, angry, know it all children." He also called them "media prosti-tots" and compared them unfavorably to crying babies -- in a Facebook message (which is still up) that he posted less than two weeks after the shooting. Allow me to quote it at some length:

Let me see if I have this correct. A spoiled, angry, disobedient CHILD shot and killed 17 of his classmates, and now spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN are trying to tell law abiding ADULTS that we must give up our Constitutional RIGHT to own certain weapons. Cue Rod Serling because this must be an episode of the Twilight Zone? David Hogg and the rest of these silly little immature "media prosti-tots" need to grab a passy [pacifier], have seat in time out, and shut up. The very ideology of conservatism that your liberal mollycoddling string pullers have taught you to despise is exactly what you and your schools have desperately needed to prevent these massacres as well as the multitude of FAILURES that exist in public education. The conservative principles of excellence, hard work, self respect, RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE, and DISCIPLINE are what your schools need. Instead you have the liberal syndrome of rectal cranial inversion mixed with a healthy dose of just plain evil and stupid permeating your hallways. If, two days before this shooting, a hard nosed nonsense conservative had walked into that school and put into place the ideals and principles that would have avoided that massacre, you spoiled little bastards would have kicked and screamed like babies in a crib. That's what you are doing now. In fact you're doing less than that. A baby's cries are useful and necessary. You are simply making irritating noise.

As for the anti-Semitism, it's remarkable that the Times has published three news stories on Robinson since his primary victory and still refuses to quote his most notorious Facebook post (also still up):

It is at once funny and sad how African Americans need Hollywood to VALIDATE them. I have been bitting my tongue about this silly Black Panther comic book movie, but I can't any longer. It is absolutely AMAZING to me that people who know so little about their true history and REFUSE to acknowledge the pure sorry state of their current condition can get so excited about a fictional "hero" created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist. How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?

And yes, Robinson did quote Hitler, and that Facebook post is still up, too:

History who said it #1;
“Pride in one's own race - and that does not imply contempt for other races - is also a normal and healthy sentiment. I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves... They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilization to which we belong.”

In the current Times story, we are told this:

Mr. Robinson has often appeared at evangelical churches, where he espouses some of his most conservative views.

“That baby in your womb ain’t no clump of cells, and if you kill that child, you’re guilty of murder,” he said in August 2021 at the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh.

The same summer, he told congregants at Asbury Baptist Church in Seagrove, N.C., that “there’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality or any of that filth. And yes, I called it filth.”

I sometimes think that the Times represents a sort of upmarket New York pseudo-liberalism -- pro-choice, in favor of rights for lesbians and gay men, but centrist or right-wing on most other issues (the Middle East, crime, taxes, the rights of trans people). What the Times has published on Robinson has done nothing to make me rethink that theory.

Is Robinson anti-Semitic? Who cares? He's not a pro-Palestinian college student. Is he a Trump-like ignoramus who gets all his ideas from Fox News and other right-wing meme factories? Maybe -- but he might win (the race is close), so he needs to seem as if he's within the pale or right-wing ref-workers will be angry at the Times.

To his credit, Frank Bruni, a North Carolina native, quoted Robinson's “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist” remark in a January 2023 Times newsletter. But the politics desk is still pulling its punches.