The New York Times has one of the most expansive comment features that are appended to some/most of their important news articles, and also regular columns and OpEds. A year or so ago, they announced that most comments are vetted by an A.I. service provided by Google, that replaced what had been actual junior editors who approved every comment.
They are similar to comment threads here on DK, but there is a time lag that can be as long as a day, so the main article could have faded along with the comment thread. Here’s a Times article today, As Calls Mount for Ralph Northam to Resign, Some Virginians Mull a Second Chance with my comment below, (my user name there is “Call Me Al”) which contains an earlier comment from a reader that I endorse:
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To the N.Y. Times:
If Gov. Ralph Northam elicits images of lynching, if the group dynamics are to be understood, it's not the past atrocities against Blacks, but the current contagious of hatred that warrants evaluation. Lynch mobs, or political movements that morph into homicidal rage, are as human as they are ugly, and often result in irrational escalating hatred.
What is unusual here, is this is a mob of Democratic elected officials that doesn't even reflect their constituency.This comment received over 1500 recs on a previous N.Y. Times article:
--I am a black man, but I am not offended by the photo, though it is obviously in poor taste. It looks like a joke to me, since Klansmen and black men don't generally have a beer together. Probably because they called him "coons man" in College.
It seems that my Party (Democrats) can't seem to avoid falling into one identity pothole after another, and the circular firing squad is in full force again.
If this keeps up, I will be staying home in November of 2020. Or, I might try to find Al Franken, to console him on his earlier electronic lynching
I'm (Arodb) white, born in D.C. in 1940. We poor kids often made do with burnt cork on our face to trick-or-treat without the least sense of insulting our colored neighbors across the street.
Democrats, in response to an irrational president, are succumbing to a group dynamic that will no longer provide a rational choice to Trump-Republicanism
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