The Double Standards of Postmodern Justice

Our institutions offer no principles to explain why some people’s lives are harmed or destroyed, and others’ lives are not.

Victor Davis Hanson

"The New York Times recently hired as a writer and board member Sarah Jeong. The Times knew that in recent years Jeong had posted a series of unapologetically racist anti-white tweets. She had offered wisdom such as “#CancelWhitePeople” and expressed hatred for males.
"Yet when the Times discovered less graphic versions of such tweets from newly hired technology writer Quinn Norton earlier this year, the newspaper immediately fired Norton.
"The message of disparate treatment was that what bothers the New York Times is not racism per se, but who is the racist and who are her targets.
"Over at The Atlantic, there are also no ostensible rules concerning who is and is not fired, and for what reason. Essayist Kevin Williamson was allegedly dropped by The Atlantic for his prior incendiary suggestion that abortion might warrant the death penalty.
"Fine, it is a free country, and private companies can fire whomever they chose. But The Atlantic had no problem hiring writer Julia Ioffe. She had been let go at Politico for tweeting that President Trump might have engaged in incest with his daughter Ivanka.
"Again, the impression conveyed is that The Atlantic is not so concerned with inflammatory speech as with calibrating at whom the venom is directed. If Ioffe had tweeted the same perversities about Barack Obama and his daughters, The Atlantic surely would have fired her immediately.
" 'The American people are losing confidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation not just because after 15 months, he has not charged anyone with Russian collusion — the original reason he was appointed. Instead, the pushback is due to the growing sense that rules are made up ad hoc." . . .