Crying 'Treason'

The right goes into hysterics over The New York Times.

Cathy Young from the October 2006 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

The anti-Times hysteria reached a reductio ad absurdum when, on June 30, the New York Times travel section published a piece called "Weekends With the President's Men." The story described the village of St. Michaels on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld both have vacation homes. The article, which included photos of these homes, was greeted with howls of outrage from the right wing of the blogosphere, with Michelle Malkin, Powerline's John Hinderaker, and FrontPage's David Horowitz leading the charge. The Times, Malkin and others claimed, was doing nothing short of purposely or at least recklessly exposing Cheney and Rumsfeld to an Al Qaeda assassination plot.

Horowitz's article in FrontPage was headlined, "The NY Times points cranks, radicals, al-Qaeda operatives and would be assassins to the summer homes of Cheney and Rumsfeld." It opened with the claim that the article was "an apparent retaliation for criticism of its disclosure of classified intelligence to America's enemies."

In a post titled "A GPS for assassins?," Hinderaker generously wrote, "Frankly, it strikes me as over-the-top to believe that even the Times wants Rumsfeld and Cheney assassinated," but nonetheless gave plenty of space to Horowitz's and Malkin's fulminations on the controversy.

When a spokeswoman for Rumsfeld confirmed that the photos had been taken and published with his permission, and a spokesman for the Secret Service flatly stated that the article was not a security threat, Malkin was not appeased: "What news value and journalistic end was served by publishing the Cheney/Rumsfeld vacation home piece and the accompanying photo" "Because Rumsfeld gave permission" may cut it with the moonbats and fairweather privocrats. Not with me."

It's good to know that even if Rumsfeld is lax in looking out for his own safety when it's threatened by the Times, Michelle Malkin and other conservatives are on the job.