The original draft of the email below was sent to Washington Post media reporter Jeremy Barr and copied to several of his Post colleagues, as well as several folks at Fox News, the top ratings-getter of which, Tucker Carlson, seems to have become an obsession for young Mr. Barr. Post–deconstruction last wrote to Barr on March 12 when he withheld critical context in a story criticizing Carlson for questioning policy that dangerously obligates air-traffic controllers to wear virus facemasks on duty. Barr similarly withholds context today in a piece that tries to paint Carlson as the aggressor in a war started long ago by the radical left.
Dear Jeremy,
A careful reading of your story’s 29th paragraph today — a non-denial denial by a New York Times “spokesperson” — suggests the Gray Lady was indeed cravenly poised to reveal the location of Tucker Carlson’s Maine rental home last summer before its state-based spies got spooked by their target’s muscularly preemptive pushback [“The Bully Pundit,” C1, Apr. 16].
In any case, the essence of your piece boils down to this: The radical left and its wholly unprincipled media allies for years have been doxing outspoken conservatives, getting them fired, banning their books, drum-circling their families’ homes in the middle of the night, disrupting their peaceful dinners at restaurants, and even trying to keep them in jail without bail for thought crimes. (Even as many charges are dropped against Portland rioters, the face-paint/headdress dude who never lifted a finger against anyone on Jan. 6 is still in the slam.) But now that Carlson and others have taken to fighting fire with fire, you and your fellow lefties have suddenly gone soft and want to revert to Marquess of Queensberry rules.
Personally, this outspoken conservative with a record of physically protecting total strangers from violent actors — regardless of ideology — would embrace such a truce and a universally renewed rejection of totalitarian tactics. But since you folks on the left initiated the incivility in our modern, post-Stalin, post-McCarthy era (see Ted Kennedy v. Bob Bork), you’re going to have to initiate a new peace. Tucker Carlson and his 5.3 million viewers, I’m sure, will happily join in.
Yours, Darren McKinney