#Media lies about critical race theory and other commentary

Media watch: Three Press Lies About CRT

“Sensing that they are losing control of the narrative on race, left-leaning media outlets have launched a furious counterattack” against critics of race theories, writes Christopher F. Rufo at The Wall Street Journal. “Liberal pundits . . . have begun spinning a new mythology that presents critical race theory as a benign academic concept, casts its detractors as right-wing extremists driven by racial resentment and portrays legislation against critical race theory as an attempt to ban teaching about the history of slavery and racism.” But “all three charges are false”: CRT is a “radical” lens that aims to overthrow bedrock American principles; the anti-CRT coalition is “nonpartisan, multiracial and mainstream”; and far from censoring the teaching of history (including the history of slavery and racism), bans against CRT are aimed at preventing brainwashing, the opposite of real historical inquiry. Bottom line, “Americans should have no hesitation in opposing” CRT. 

Foreign desk: Britain’s ‘Brilliant Revolt’

“In defiance of virtually the entire elite, and in the face of a relentless, well-oiled campaign of fear that said leaving the EU would propel the UK into a grim future of food shortages, medicine scarcity and probably fascism to boot,” Brits voted five years ago to exit the European Union, cheers Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill. The “epoch-shattering decision” shocked politicians and pundits, who demanded “a second referendum to correct the destructive idiocy of the low-education masses.” The “mercifully bloodless civil war between the people and the elites” that followed gave us “historic clarity.” Elites’ “bitter rage” confirmed they don’t believe people have the right “to play a greater role in determining the fate of the nation and the fate of their own lives.”

Culture critic: Leftists Inflamed Parents 

Parents are “rebelling against left-wing indoctrination of their children at school,” and the “counterrevolution” might just be enough to “topple the edifice of left-wing lies about our culture,” hopes the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon. The woke militants who “reckoned on ordinary Americans remaining docile” made a huge miscalculation: “Most people can live with busybodies messing up policy. But mess with their children, and you’ve woken the kraken.” Even those uninterested in left-wing ideology have “learned the hard way that left-wing ideology is interested in them and their children.” They know that the racial theories invading schools aim “to displace rational analysis with passionate advocacy, to dragoon the next generation into a movement designed to destroy the institutions, the culture, the wealth and the success of America.”

Conservative: Is J.D. Vance Trump 2.0?

“J.D. Vance is the man Republicans have been praying for since the day Donald Trump stormed to the party’s presidential nomination five years ago,” Daniel McCarthy notes at The Spectator. The “Hillbilly Elegy” author and Ohio Senate candidate has a lot of the “traits conservatives liked about Trump”: He, too, is a political outsider, speaks to disaffected working classes and embraces a populist policy mix. His candidacy “puts to the test the much-debated question of whether the positive side of Trump Republicanism can win elections, including the party’s own primaries, without the ex-president’s uniquely galvanizing personality.” But as a memoirist, storytelling might be one of Vance’s pitfalls. “The very polish that makes him appealing to voters who found Trump too abrasive also makes his delivery rather dull. He looks and sounds like what he is today: a Yale Law graduate who made money as a venture capitalist and published a national bestseller.”

Urban beat: Blue Leaders To Blame for Crime

President Biden tried to blame legal gun owners for the recent surge in crime in blue cities and states — and ended up eschewing “the main reason for the crime wave: poor leadership in Democratic-run cities,” argues Jon Gabriel at The Arizona Republic. “Until all Americans, left and right, have confidence in law enforcement, both crime and gun sales will ­increase.” 

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board