The Right to Be Forgotten
The Right to Be Forgotten
How dare you tell people how proud we are of our President?
A coalition of Trump donors, voters, and former officials announced today they were demanding that all public media, including news outlets, cease to associate them with the President, notwithstanding their actual associations with him.
The coalition, calling itself the Victims of Anti-Whatshisname Media (VAWM), claimed that they had suffered discrimination for their connections with Donald Trump and, citing laws passed in the European Union, asserted a right to have all mention of those connections removed from public mention.
“The lying liberal media has made me a pariah even in Alabama, where folks were once proud that their former Senator served with such distinction in the Blanky-Blank Administration,” said Jeff Sessions, former Attorney General under Trump and chairman of the Victims of Anti-Whatshisname Media. “The least they can do is take his name out of their mouths, and everyone else’s.”
The coalition was formed shortly after Texas Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro called out top Texas Trump donors in a tweet, stirring the wrath of conservatives like the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel, who claimed Castro’s tweet was “teeing them up for retribution and harassment by the mobs” — even though the donations are a matter of public record.
When this was pointed out to Gary Toog of Cornhole, Pennsylvania, treasurer of the VAWM and an unemployed roofer who has been interviewed 38 times in a diner by the New York Times on the subject of what Democrats could do to win his vote away from Trump, he cried, “You mean anyone can just look up who gave money to Trump? It’s worse than I thought! What in hell’s the point of Citizen’s United if people can still find out what we did?”
Sources tell the Times that the coalition may expand to include current as well as former Trump associates. White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway has reportedly told friends that “it’s an outrage the drive-by media are tarring this Administration with unpopular policies and presidents.” Conway also reportedly complained that the media’s insistence on connecting her with the President who employs her has put a strain on her marriage to George Conway.
“It’s not that we’re ashamed of our support for You-Know-Who,” said Republican National Committee chairman Ronna [REDACTED] McDaniel. “All we of the Victims of Anti-Whatshisname Media are asking is that we not be held responsible for our actions. Isn’t that really what every American wants and deserves?”
[On page A12, Times executive editor Dean Baquet discusses our controversial decision to use the name of Donald Trump in this story.]
Brilliant. I think it was Matthew Yglesias, no wild-eyed lefty by any stretch, who said on twitter that if we tried to reintroduce the phone book today, people would completely lose their shit and call it doxing.
This donor brouhaha is, of course, exactly of a piece with people wanting to say the most blatantly racist shit while still being allowed to indignantly protest when you call them racist. If you’re embarrassed about giving Trump $2500, then you shouldn’t have sent him money. Public records, motherfuckers, public records.
Publishing the names of Trump campaign donors is completely beyond the pale because Americans have absolutely no right whatsoever to know who is supporting Donald Trump.
However, we at the New York Times had no choice but to publish the names and addresses of every Clinton donor, friend, acquaintance, neighbor, and employee. If we had not done so, then the right of the American people to send death threats and engage in boycotts would have been seriously abridged.