Krysten Sinema is no my favorite candidate. But the clueless approach the New York Times took to her life story really is just horrifying. The story (link is to companion story in Slate because NYT has a paywall) says that Sinema said she didn’t have electricity or water for parts of her growing up. The New York Times did some real digging (oh boy) and found that at divorce proceedings found that mother and father talked about electricity billing and water billing. That's it, and they think that’s enough to claim that Sinema is embellishing her story. It seems they didn’t do any other work (couldn't be pulled away from their three martini lunch). Maybe if they could pull themselves away from their fluffy lifestyle they might have done some research on being homeless and then try and you know, do some follow up work like try and actually find the bills. And say if they couldn’t.
I worked with homeless populations for ten years. It is overwhelming and exhausting. One thing is that many homeless people are deeply ashamed of their condition. They tend to make things up to suggest they are able to take better care of themselves and in this case their children better than they can. I have seen this with case workers and social workers. It can be really frustrating because they don’t get the help they need. But at the same time I can understand. It is so painful to admit something like you don’t have electricity. It doesn’t matter that it was in court. The shame dominates the fear. The NYT needed some corroborative evidence. But they obviously only worry about that when dealing with rich, privileged, white accused rapists.
The NYT is an ugly, irresponsible rag.