Weekly Standard
"On Thursday, March 29, Ben Carson found himself in the news again. This time the problem wasn't his purchase of an expensive dining hutch (for which the housing secretary received condign criticism, including from this magazine) or his aim of shortening his agency's garbled mission statement (for which he deserved no criticism at all, in our view).
"This time, rather, Carson has committed a new offense—that of rejecting his predecessors' policies.
" 'The policy shift," explains the New York Times, "detailed in interviews with 20 current and former Department of Housing and Urban Development officials and in internal agency emails, is meant to roll back the Obama administration's attempts to reverse decades of racial, ethnic and income segregation in federally subsidized housing and development projects."
"The implication given by the Times report is that whereas the Obama administration simply wanted to "reverse decades of racial, ethnic and income segregation"—and who wouldn't want to do that?—the nasty ol' Trump administration wants to "roll back" all those efforts. Nothing in the remainder of this 1,200 word story would lead the reader to believe the narrative is any more complicated than that.
" . . . and (3) Carson's HUD chose not to punish Houston city officials for blocking the placement of a mixed-race public housing development near a wealthier, predominantly white neighborhood.
"Readers may draw their own conclusions about the merits or deficiencies of the Times story. In any case, it arises from a commonplace phenomenon that goes something like this: The new administration interprets its mission differently from the previous administration; bureaucrats accustomed to the former way of doing things take their complaints to the New York Times; the paper publishes a story about the new agency's scandalous betrayal of its mission.
"On Thursday, March 29, Ben Carson found himself in the news again. This time the problem wasn't his purchase of an expensive dining hutch (for which the housing secretary received condign criticism, including from this magazine) or his aim of shortening his agency's garbled mission statement (for which he deserved no criticism at all, in our view).
"This time, rather, Carson has committed a new offense—that of rejecting his predecessors' policies.
" 'The policy shift," explains the New York Times, "detailed in interviews with 20 current and former Department of Housing and Urban Development officials and in internal agency emails, is meant to roll back the Obama administration's attempts to reverse decades of racial, ethnic and income segregation in federally subsidized housing and development projects."
"The implication given by the Times report is that whereas the Obama administration simply wanted to "reverse decades of racial, ethnic and income segregation"—and who wouldn't want to do that?—the nasty ol' Trump administration wants to "roll back" all those efforts. Nothing in the remainder of this 1,200 word story would lead the reader to believe the narrative is any more complicated than that.
" . . . and (3) Carson's HUD chose not to punish Houston city officials for blocking the placement of a mixed-race public housing development near a wealthier, predominantly white neighborhood.
"Readers may draw their own conclusions about the merits or deficiencies of the Times story. In any case, it arises from a commonplace phenomenon that goes something like this: The new administration interprets its mission differently from the previous administration; bureaucrats accustomed to the former way of doing things take their complaints to the New York Times; the paper publishes a story about the new agency's scandalous betrayal of its mission.
"Fair enough, but forgive us if we fail to be outraged." . . .
