Feeling like I should take a break, step away from the end of the world for just a minute and return to a post I started a month ago on a topic less apocalyptic. Here are
The Fucking New York Times
So I'm having coffee the other morning--now several weeks ago--and I pick up The New York Times and I see this article: "New Biden Administration Rules for Charter Schools Spur Bipartisan Backlash," by Erica L. Green.
And I say to myself, "There are new rules for charter schools?" because I had been gone for six weeks on The Greatest Road Trip Ever and I hadn't been paying attention to this stuff. So I start reading.
Immediately, as often happens when reading the Times, my head starts to hurt and then I get angry--I swear if it weren't for the Arts Section and Tyler Kepner, I'd give it up for good.
So I continue reading like I'm jabbing at a bruise to see if it still hurts and then, and I can not stress this enough, I am heartbroken all over again at the loss of the great Eric Boehlert. In addition to the personal tragedy for his family and friends, his death was a disaster for anyone interested in meaningful journalism criticism and for the nation. I keep searching and learning from, among many others, @jayrosen_nyu and PressThink, and from @froomkin and Press Watch, and lately from @equalityAlec and his newsletter. I also get an occasional laugh through grinding teeth thanks to New York Times Pitchbot and @DougJBalloon, and that's a good thing. Still, I miss Mr. Boehlert's voice.
Now, I'm not an expert, but I did teach English for twenty-five years and I do know how to read a newspaper. The fact is, every week I see things in the Times that I would not have accepted from my ninth graders. The unsupported claims, selective sourcing and vague attributions, all just go to show what I've been saying for a while now: The New York Times is killing us. With the Times, as with other Big Media, there is no issue that cannot be spun up into a both-sides political process story or reduced to a horse race. They twist facts to suit theories, they cobble together prefabricated narratives to soothe their corporate overlords and the "liberals" who stop by for a shot of self-righteousness with a crossword chaser. They live and breathe access, and we die a little every day because of it.
It is especially galling when the Times slides by while still getting a bunch of credit for being objective and even left-leaning. I know. Wait until you hear what the Washington Post is up to. Maybe next week. For now, the Times.
First I want to stipulate that I don't know Erica L. Green and I have no idea what her politics are. There's no knowing--at least from where I'm sitting--how much of this is her and how much is the elite gravitational pull of the Times as it sucks up the work of good reporters and feeds it into the drivel machine where it gets processed and extruded as the prefab narratives acceptable to the editors.
And so, even though she penned this latest steaming pile of charter puffery, she is well-regarded by some I respect. Therefore, no jumping to conclusions. Instead, I did my research. Maybe it's the Times. Maybe.
First I searched Green's twitter--as one does--where I saw photos of her gushing over Dean Baquet. Not a good start. Dean Baquet, for those of you who don't know, is the outgoing editor of the New York Times and bears enormous responsibility for the demolition of Hillary Clinton and the ascension of Donald Trump--all because Baquet was afraid of being called mean names, and let's be honest, also he got a little tingle out of owning the Libs.
Troubling but not dispositive, so in the spirit of fairness I kept looking. I checked out her LinkedIn profile and saw she has worked good jobs and won awards. Then I looked back at the charter school article at those weasel quotes and unsupported assertions and loaded language, none of which belongs in the work of a professional reporter published in a fancy newspaper. I kept thinking Green must know better.
I looked up other examples of her work in the Times archive and found an article she wrote a couple of years ago about charter schools double dipping--taking the Covid relief money sent to states for public schools AND grabbing up PPP money by suddenly declaring themselves businesses. Not surprising, but not bad reporting.
I also found a good article from 2020 on the impending changes at DOE in the transition from Trump to Biden. And back in 2019 she wrote a pretty good article hammering Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for her attempt to use pandemic relief funds to bolster private and religious schools and to support her push for vouchers. She also issued guidance that would force school districts to shift additional funds to wealthy private schools. A little over a month later Green wrote this one calling out DeVos for ditching an Obama rule protecting kids from for-profit colleges and universities who graduated them with lots of debt and no prospects. DeVos was a vile Education Secretary and ought to be hammered for any number of things--these among them. Green did, and she did it using--wait for it-- facts.
It was straight reporting, using quotes actually attributed to actual people (there are a few "Educators are Pleading" and "For-profit leaders have said" and "Congressional Democrats and student advocates" are saying things and these and all the rest should have been much more specific in order to be more persuasive. Still and all, good, honest efforts. As I kept going I saw lots of articles saying meaningful things about important issues in education and about the students who are navigating the education system. I became confused.
Then I found an article Green wrote in March of 2021 that was strongly critical of plans to give billions in pandemic assistance to non-public schools as part of the pending American Rescue Plan. Well, not just critical of the plans, exactly. But really hostile to a couple of the American Rescue Planners. Anyway, this article is revealing in a couple of different ways that show how we get to Biden and the charter school rules, and it bears an extended examination. What I'm saying is, this post is going to be about this article, from March 2021. We'll get to the charter school article misadventure next time.
From March 13, 2021
Schumer and a Teachers’ Union Leader Secure Billions for Private Schools
The article starts out looking like it's going to be a routine tale of "Dems in Disarray" where Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer diverted some American Rescue Plan funds from public to non-public schools, and a bunch of Democrats were pissed. In fact, the first twelve paragraphs are filled with scolding over changes in the direction of policy, snide accusations of secret shifty dealing, and finger-wagging reports of political infighting Dems in Disarray!
However, the whole thing reeks of editorializing and reads less like a news story and more like a complaint letter from a disgruntled constituent. Start with the subhead:
The pandemic relief bill includes $2.75 billion for private schools. How it got there is an unlikely political tale, involving Orthodox Jewish lobbying, the Senate majority leader and a teachers’ union president.
If that doesn't set off alarm bells or raise the hair on the back of your neck, you need to read it again. In addition to the typical shibboleths of Union! Teachers' Union! we get not just lobbying, but Orthodox Jewish lobbying. This is a mistake, right? More on that later. Read on...
The opening paragraph (emphasis mine):
WASHINGTON — Tucked into the $1.9 trillion pandemic rescue law is something of a surprise coming from a Democratic Congress and a president long seen as a champion of public education — nearly $3 billion earmarked for private schools.
First, it's all so sneaky. The "surprise" money was "tucked" into the bill. One would be justified in wondering about the source of this characterization, and it might not be as troubling if it were not immediately followed by the "surprise" assertion, with the question left hanging: "something of a surprise" to whom? We find out later that the two parties willing to go on the record with their "surprise" and displeasure were a lobbyist for public school superintendents and the Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, both of whom understandably preferred the previous version of the bill. However, the use of the objective voice in promoting an entirely subjective point of view is... questionable.
The second paragraph kicks it up a notch (emphasis mine).
More surprising is who got it there: Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader whose loyalty to his constituents diverged from the wishes of his party, and Randi Weingarten, the leader of one of the nation’s most powerful teachers’ unions, who acknowledged that the federal government had an obligation to help all schools recover from the pandemic, even those who do not accept her group.
Describing Schumer's actions as a matter of "loyalty to his constituents" is a pretty loaded way to describe what happened, and suggesting that those actions represent a departure from the "wishes of his party" is just plain wrong. The final bill, as amended, passed 50-49 in the Senate and 220-211 in the House, having received a total of 268 out of 269 possible Democratic votes in Congress.
Hardly a picture of party upheaval, but in Big Medialand, where everything is a squelch the rabble-fluff the gentry nail, you must use your depraved Dems in Disarray! hammer. Now everybody get back to business as usual because that's where the money is.
In order to advance that narrative, the Times often resorts to journalistic tricks. The manipulation of quotations is something I used to have to warn my ninth-grade students about constantly. First up, and this one drives me crazy, is the use of what @airbagmoments refers to as "generic attribution" where reporters hide the identities of purported sources who are allowed to contribute to and shape the story without going on the record. I call them weasel quotes because, even though I accept that at their best they provide a window into that which otherwise would remain hidden, their use should be extremely limited. Unfortunately, an awful lot of fancy newspapers don't care much about that part.
What you won't see are direct, first-hand quotes from lawmakers who were really really pissed that Schumer pulled a fast one. You won't see stories of broken dishes over broken promises. Instead, the reporting works hard to manufacture conflict among Dems as "critics noted" that Dems had "signaled they wanted to take a different direction" using mostly secondhand complaints and a couple of "very disappointed"s.
It takes a skilled, skeptical reporter to avoid the abuse of "on background" or "deep background" camouflage to pass on information. Sources can exploit their anonymity and the reporter to advance a personal agenda. Maybe they have an ax to grind or a rival they want to damage.
Generally it's a reporter's job to suss out the motives of the source and factor them into the decision to use the information because using it is effectively putting the credibility of the reporter and the news outlet up as collateral against the veracity of the information. They are vouching for the source and their motives.
Even the style manual (AP, because who wants to shell out ten bucks for the NY Times book which, if different, explains a lot) says you "should provide information about the setting in which a quotation was obtained," and you need a very good reason to accept information that you intend to print anonymously. Is ginning up a fake fight between Democratic insiders really that good a reason? Would even a real fight be good enough?
At any rate, it appears that the story is just too juicy to pass up, even if it's delivered by a bunch of gossips "who wish to remain anonymous." (And not for nothing, where are the stories of Republicans at each other's throats over... whatever it is they believe in? I guess the Cheney-Kinsinger axis of resistance scratches that itch for this decade, although I struggle to find stories of McConnell aides talking about how "insulted" he is. Republicans don't talk, you say? That's one canned narrative. Reporters aren't digging hard enough, I say. Might ruin the fairy story )
At its worst, this sort of generic or weasel attribution--the whole "critics" or "advocates" or "people said" bullshit--is just a dodge, a method of slipping in a point of view that the writer finds useful.
There's so much wrong with the article that, before we get even further into the weeds, we need to state for the record some of the information the article glosses over on its way to where it always wanted to go.
First, the money shot:
Even though the headline cries "Billions for Private Schools," except for one sentence attacking Schumer for including "12 times more funding than the House had allowed," it isn't until the jumbled thirteenth paragraph that the article supplies the following crucial context for the funding, and even then it's included grudgingly as justification for a concession (emphasis mine):
The magnitude of the overall education funding — more than double the amount of schools funding allocated in the last two relief bills combined — played some part in the concession that private schools should continue to receive billions in relief funds. The $125 billion in funding for K-12 education requires districts to set aside percentages of funding to address learning loss, invest in summer school and other programming to help students recover from educational disruptions during the pandemic.
Yes, that's right. The school funding in this "controversial" bill, at $125 billion, is twice the amount included in the two previous bills, combined. It's even more if you include the $39 billion for early childhood programs. If you're thinking "That's a lot of money," you are correct. In fact, using the report's own numbers, the 2.75 billion for non-public schools is about two percent of funds marked for education. Nevertheless, the problem is billions for private schools!
Just three paragraphs later, we are told the rest of the truth about the money: There's no there there. In fact, the $2.75 billion represents essentially no change from the big Coronavirus relief bill--The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021--passed just a few months earlier in December 2020. No change. According to the Times' own reporting, the funding for private and parochial schools in the 2020 bill was $2.75 billion, exactly the same as this 2021 bill, not that you'd know that from this paragraph:
Proponents of the move argue that it was merely a continuation of the same amount afforded to private schools — which also had access to the government’s aid program for small businesses earlier in the pandemic — in a $2.3 trillion catchall package passed in December.
"Proponents argue" is more than clumsy and worse than poor reporting. It's dishonest. Not only do "proponents" of the funding argue that. It happens to be true. Also true? The same safeguards were adopted to ensure the funds went to the poorest schools.
So if there's tons of money for public schools and the amount of money for non-public schools is the same, maybe this overheated article is not really about the money. What then? What's all the hubbub?
Now, into the weeds, and as we travel through, please recall that we're here because this American Rescue Plan article is filled with the same kinds of imprecision and journalistic sleight-of-hand that are present in the more recent one this past May, the one on charter schools--the one that started this whole thing and to which we'll return next time barring yet another apocalypse. The two pieces have a lot in common and looking at these problems here will help when we get to looking at them there.
Taken at face value, this Schumer-Weingarten article in brief:
The deal, which came after Mr. Schumer was lobbied by the powerful Orthodox Jewish community in New York City, riled other Democratic leaders and public school advocates who have spent years beating back efforts by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to funnel federal money to private schools, including in the last two coronavirus relief bills.
“I am pleased that the Education and Labor Committee was able to take a leadership role in crafting this COVID-19 relief package, and I am grateful to my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate for supporting this critical funding for K-12 education.”
Senator Patty Murray, the chairwoman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was said to have been so unhappy that she fought to secure last-minute language that stipulated the money be used for “nonpublic schools that enroll a significant percentage of low‐income students and are most impacted by the qualifying emergency.”
Said to have been? Really? By? To? This tidbit is used early in the article to bolster the notion of Democratic discord. But a fair reading of the article shows that Murray was simply concerned that the new bill contain the same protections requiring public funds go to the poorest non-public schools as were in the previous December 2020 bill. And those changes were made. In fact, in the article's very next sentence Murray declares how proud she is of "what the American Rescue Plan will deliver to our students and schools...."
Once again The New York Times, defenders of the rich and powerful, safe space for the privileged to exchange knowing nods and clutch their pearls, finds a way to turn an enormous victory for the American people into bad news for Democrats. Never miss an opportunity to reinforce the narrative.
Schumer and a Teachers’ Union Leader Secure Billions for Private Schools
Just a word about "billions." Sounds like a lot, right? And it's technically true, but we're talking about 2.7 "billions" out of about 125 billions, or less than 2%. It's still a lot, but billions, without context, sounds scarier.
Throughout the article the choice of words to describe people and events leads to what feels like a predetermined narrative--manipulation and betrayal by Schumer and Weingarten. The story is "an unlikely political tale" of "surprise" money Schumer "tucked" into a bill "in the 11th hour" leading to "clashes" because colleagues were "caught... off guard."
The article reserves special rancor for Randi Weingarten, who is consistently identified as "the leader of one of the nation’s most powerful teachers’ unions," like it's a pejorative. This is nothing new for the American Federation of Teachers president. She is frequently a target of the assembled armies in the school choice movement. A staunch opponent of vouchers and proponent of charter regulation, she has often come under intense attacks from school choicers and allied anti-union associates.
First, the article inflates Weingarten to chief power broker, reporting that "several people said" she was "[i]ntegral to swaying Democrats to go along, particularly Ms. Pelosi."
Oh, several people said. What did she do, anyway? Hypnotize them? You know how devious those... union leaders are.
The article goes on to charge Weingarten with reversing her earlier opposition, withdrawing her objection to the shift of public money to private schools describing it this way (emphasis mine):
Last year, Ms. Weingarten led calls to reject orders from Ms. DeVos to force public school districts to increase the amount of federal relief funding they share with private schools, beyond what the law required to help them recover.
At the time, private schools were going out of business everyday [sic], particularly small schools that served predominantly low-income students, and private schools were among the only ones still trying to keep their doors open for in-person learning during the pandemic.
But Ms. Weingarten said Ms. DeVos’s guidance “funnels more money to private schools and undercuts the aid that goes to the students who need it most” because the funding could have supported wealthy students.
This time around, Ms. Weingarten changed her tune.But what Weingarten had actually opposed was the diversion of money already appropriated for public schools in the CARES Act, passed by Congress in March of 2020. The DeVos DOE followed up with guidance shifting funds from public to private schools including religious schools she had long supported. Her unilateral attempt to, according to NPR, "reroute hundreds of millions of dollars in coronavirus aid money to K-12 private school students." What does that have to do with 2021's 125 billion dollar bill passed entirely and almost unanimously by Congressional Democrats.
The DeVos guidance and the rule that accompanied it in June 2020, amounted to a scheme to bypass the clear language of the CARES Act which called for the Title 1 approach of tying funding to numbers of low-income students. Instead, DeVos wanted an increase in the amount of money governors and school districts would be required to hand over to private schools, even those serving wealthy student populations. It was a money grab and Weingarten, along with national school superintendents association executive director Dan Domenech, advised school districts to just ignore it.
Anybody can see the difference between siphoning off funding and providing more funding. Anybody can see the difference between funding rich schools and funding poor schools. Almost anybody.
In the second paragraph there are things so wrong and strange that we need to take them one at a time. First, we step through the looking-glass to a place where, inexplicably, sympathy for private schools rolls down like waters. Weingarten has been a villain for supporting public money for private schools, but is now also condemned for not doing it before. We're told that "private schools were going out of business everyday [sic]." Putting aside the everyday problem of every day, what is the source of this information? Where is the data? If you said "not there" you win. This is an assertion in support of a point of view.
Next we are told that the schools most impacted were "particularly small schools that served predominantly low-income students." Ouch! I don't know how one collects that data, and apparently neither does the writer because there is no evidence here to substantiate this claim.
Finally we learn that those small schools serving poor kids and going out of business every day were "among the only ones still trying to keep their doors open for in-person learning during the pandemic." Is that even true? "Among" is a weasel word that lets you lump things together to make a point. "The Chicago Cubs are among the best 30 teams in Major League Baseball." I was among the top 35,000 teachers in Los Angeles in my time.
At least the third paragraph is a straightforward magic trick. We see a fact offered as Weingarten's opinion, devaluing the notion that federal funding for wealthier families in wealthier schools should take a back seat to poor schools.
The focus on Weingarten is a bit bizarre and feels almost personal. She worked for and supported a bill that provided twice as much money to public schools than previous bills combined. The bill allowed for the same amount for non-public school students as before, and contained similar protections to ensure the cash got to the neediest schools. Yet, she "changed her tune." Only, I can't find any evidence that she actually did.
I can find no evidence that Weingarten opposed the December 2020 bill because of its 2.75 billions for states to support non-public schools. It may exist, but I don't see it in this article and I haven't found it in contemporaneous reports about the passage of that previous bill. In fact, an article in the December 4, 2020 issue of Forward, weeks before the December 2020 bill was passed, described Weingarten's position this way:
Randi Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers president, said she is fine with some of the current federal programs that support certain low-income students and those with disabilities who attend private schools.“There are different kinds of ways that we have been able to support religious institutions,” Weingarten said. “Unfortunately in the last few years the Trump administration and Betsy DeVos in particular has tried to pit communities against each other rather than trying to find ways to address the real needs.”
To my ear, this is no different from the position Weingarten took on the 2021 bill. In fact, comparing Weingarten's opposition to DeVos's scheme to hijack public school funding to Schumer's legislative maneuvering and Weingarten's support for the ARP is disingenuous.
Yet, this is what we're left with:
This time around, Ms. Weingarten changed her tune.
All this is just daft. The article seems to be condemning Weingarten not only for changing her position but also for not changing it sooner--when it could have helped all those poor private schools. Which were actually rich, because that was the DeVos policy that Weingarten actually opposed. Which means it wasn't really a change of position at all.
The concern in this section for all those poor rich private schools seem inconsistent with the foregoing tone of the piece. It shimmers with resentment over the private schools that didn't survive and puts the responsibility squarely on Randi Weingarten. Why all the hyperventilating? What is the article suggesting here? That Weingarten killed all these poor private schools singlehandedly? That she wanted to kill them when they were a certain kind of school but now she "changed her tune"?
Even if it were true, it would seem like a bizarre way of describing it. I'm guessing "changed her tune" is fancy reporter speak for "I don't like her."
Or maybe the article is angry with unions and organized labor in general. Maybe that's why Weingarten's union, the American Federation of Teachers, is never mentioned by name (I fixed that here) and is described, along with its million-and-a-half members, as "her group." Is there anti-labor sentiment at the New York Times? Is their antipathy for the teachers union connected to their fondness for charter schools? Asking for a couple million friends.
Or... maybe the article is just making the case that in-person learning is a good thing. Maybe the best thing, even in December 2020. But good for whom? Is this just more Timesian sucking up to the beautiful people in the audience whose schools all have nice air conditioning and the nanny quit and the kids are driving them nuts?
At any rate, the derision continues in the very next paragraph as Weingarten explains her decision (emphasis mine):
In an interview, she defended her support of the [funding for non-public schools] provision, saying that it was different from previous efforts to fund private schools that she had protested under the Trump administration, which sought to carve out a more significant percentage of funding and use it to advance private school tuition vouchers. The new law also had more safeguards, she said, such as requiring that it be spent on poor students and stipulating that private schools not be reimbursed.
This is just not honest. Weingarten didn't just say the bill was different; it was different. Prohibitions on vouchers. Preferences for private schools serving the neediest students. And lots of people were saying so including the American Association of School Administrators and Speaker Pelosi and Senator Murray. Something else not honest: embedding a clearly factual statement ("which sought... vouchers") at the end of a "she said" sentence in order to devalue it or imply that it's a matter of opinion. Not good.
But there's something else not right here. What is the article comparing in order to demonstrate Weingarten's "change of tune"? Her positions on two different Covid relief bills? No. The article compares Weingarten's opposition to the extralegal DeVos scheme with Chuck Schumer's legislative maneuvering which, again, resulted in a bill approved by Democrats almost unanimously. Not apples to apples. Apples to larceny.
I've been working on this post for weeks, and up to now I haven't been able to figure out why it's been so difficult. Now I think I know. It seems to me the article promotes two notions: 1. Schumer is a sneaky bastard who played hardball with the amendment process and pissed off a bunch of Democrats in the House, which we dealt with earlier, and 2. Chuck Schumer and Randi Weingarten are sneaky bastards who betrayed their principles in shifting public money to private schools. The trouble is, the article fails to adequately support one and conflates several different ideas in order to support the other.
Democrats had railed against the push by President Donald J. Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, to use pandemic relief bills to aid private schools, only to do it themselves.
This doesn't pass the smell test. DeVos did not use the bill to aid schools and programs she favored. She went outside the bill to do so. That is what Democrats "railed against."
The article finishes with a quote from the executive director for public policy at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the guy who lobbied Schumer, suggesting we all just move along; there's nothing to see here.
Mr. Diament said that he did not expect that private schools would see this as a precedent to seek other forms of funding.
“In emergency contexts, whether they’re hurricanes, earthquakes, or global pandemics, those are situations where we need to all be in this together,” he said. “Those are exceptional situations, and that’s how they should be treated.”
After all the Dem-bashing over changing the bill, the article ends with the reassurance that it doesn't really mean what it clearly means: that the U.S. Government is now in the business of funding private religious schools. (See Espinoza v Montana, Carson v. Makin, Kennedy v Bremerton, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera)
To conclude, the surprise shift of funds from public to non-public schools may have been a surprise to Democrats, and it may have caused tension within the party, and it may have been done under pressure from Schumer's Jewish constituents in collaboration with AFT president Randi Weingarten, but there is precious little evidence in this article to support those claims. Just the other morning I read a Charles Blow opinion piece on the Times Op-Ed page and was shocked at how much better sourced and supported his opinion piece was than this ostensibly straight news.
It is now the later I promised, and we're returning to what is to my eyes a very troubling tone in the article. I'll report; you decide.
Now I don't want to be overly sensitive, but two Jewish leaders--one the leader of a union--being castigated over a change in a bill amounting to 2% and supported by 99.996 % of the caucus is not a good look for the Times or anybody else.
Using loaded language evoking duplicity (Schumer's "loyalty to his constituents diverged from the wishes of his party" and resulted in "Mr. Schumer's reversal," while Ms. Weingarten "changed her tune") and underhandedness (Mr. Schumer "caught his Democratic colleagues off guard" with the money he "tucked into" the bill "in the 11th hour" at the behest of "Jewish leaders in New York" through their "Orthodox Jewish lobbying," specifically from "Nathan J. Diament, the executive director for public policy at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.") is disquieting and certainly open to misinterpretation.
To be fair, the article does include this single sentence as a standalone paragraph, for balance, I guess:
"Mr. Schumer also faced pressure from a number of leaders in New York’s Catholic school ecosystem."
It also reminds us that as a United States senator, Schumer has 19.51 million constituents, including lots of Jews and lots of Catholics and lots of other faiths including Mets fans. In the whole state, there are about 1.75 million Jews with approximately 550,000 of them Orthodox.
After the brief nod to Catholics (and perhaps other?) interested parties who might like to see public money going to help fund their private schools, the next sentence begins, "In a statement to Jewish Insider, Mr. Schumer said..." and includes--just in case you missed it--reassurances that the bill will "enable private schools, like yeshivas and more, to receive assistance..." Magnifying the Orthodox Jewish community to bolster this conspiracy is... unseemly.
The truth is, the article offers no evidence whatsoever that the so-called "Jewish lobby" was the decisive force in changing the bill. Diament was clearly pleased to have successfully advocated for a restoration of money for private schools, as were "a number of leaders in New York’s Catholic school ecosystem" presumably, although the article never names them or the source of this information.
The final paragraph of the Weingarten story comes below. See if you can spot the connection to Schumer and Yeshivas.
“All of our children need to survive, and need to recover post-Covid, and it would be a ‘shonda’ if we didn’t actually provide the emotional support and nonreligious supports that all of our children need right now and in the aftermath of this emergency,” she said, using a Yiddish word for shame.
I'm aware of the thorny nature of these observations and I do not share them lightly. I don't ascribe any particular motivations to the writer or any specific biases apart from a reverence for privilege that writing for the Times requires. However, neither do I want to be squishy and pretend what I'm seeing isn't really there. You can see for yourself.
I understand that no reporter--no writer--really writes alone. And I know the Times must have armies of editors and dozens of bosses standing between the keyboard and publication. Nevertheless, the reliance on anonymous sourcing, the conflation of events to support a narrative, and the "Jewish conspiracy" tone are disturbing.
I like to think that Erica L. Green knows better--I've seen it--and that this is a New York Times problem. Green has an enormous platform and public education really needs passionate, powerful voices to help tell our true story. Please do better.
Even though it is The Fucking New York Times.
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