how they celebrate MLK day at the New York Times: "lets get David Duke to write an op ed..."

Wow, the New York Times has a jump the shark moment: they invite Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, founded by her father explicitly on the fascist model, to write about Islam today - on Martin Luther King day. Hmm, I'm surprised they didn't invite David Duke to write about MLK, just to make things nice and cozy. Of course, there is no explanation that the FN actually liked to beat up CharlieHebdo journalists in the nineties and sued the journal repeatedly - but what the hell, ignorance is such bliss! I'm expecting an op ed piece on how the Holocaust didn't happen from her father, Jean Marie Le Pen, for Rosh Hashanan. Here is a link to the history of the FN's relationship to Charlie Hebdo that the NYT, in its infinite ignorance, never bothered to share.

"Remembering Charlie Hebdo in the 90s

MARK LEE HUNTER 8 January 2015
"Charlie Hebdo was about more than its fiercely satirical cartoons. It changed the French media and legal landscape forever and was instrumental in the struggle to protect hard-hitting investigative reporting.

As I write, the news coverage of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo’s offices has been remarkably good, detailing the weekly’s provocations of Islam over the years. Less has been said about Charlie’s running battle with the French extreme right, and its role in widening the space for investigative reporting in France.

I met the staff in the mid-1990s, shortly after the Front National party, a heterogeneous mix that included neo-fascists (and a few real fascists), won municipal elections in four French cities. I was making the rounds of reporters who covered the party, to draw up a list of precautions. The Front’s members regularly beat up journalists at the time, and Charlie’s former editor, Philippe Val, was among those they attacked. Val was calling for the government to ban the party.

The day we met, Val told me that he and his staff had been threatened with attack if they attended a book fair in a Front city, Toulon. To my amazement, he asked me what they should do. He was scared for his people and rightfully so. We found an idea that might lower the risk. Val publicly demanded protection from the Mayor of Toulon. It was the Mayor’s duty to provide it. Instead he said, 'We don’t protect garbage. We collect it.' The state stepped in, and Charlie Hebdo went to Toulon."

Of course, it is the leader of this party that we should turn to in the light of the massacre of the editorial board.
Actually, I can't really mock this sick decision. It is too sick. It is too stupid. It is an unconscious signal about how the elite really feel about the world. It is a reminder that the NYT was an active collaborator in the lies that took the US into Iraq. "