Bizarre Article Even By New York Times's Bizarre Standards

The New York Times has just run a very long and very weird article about a Washington, D.C., police officer’s attempt to secure a meeting with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in order to berate him and, more important, to get him to denounce his fellow-Republican lawmakers for being insufficiently horrified by the events of Jan. 6.

It's hard to know what's more bizarre: A police officer demanding to see the House minority leader in order to urge him to stop permitting members of his caucus from putting out accounts of the events of Jan. 6 that this officer doesn't like? Or the New York Times's taking these arrogant requests from a police officer seriously?

Apparently, the police officer featured in the Times article is under the impression that the leader of a legislative caucus has powers to command his members what to do and what not to do. He can order them to say what he wants them to say and he can stop them from saying what he doesn't want them to say. The police officer and, apparently, the Times is unaware that a caucus leader has powers to whip votes but has no power to stop elected legislators from expressing their views.

According to the New York Times’s solemn report, Officer Fanone

had a clear request at the ready: for the minority leader to publicly denounce the lies Republican lawmakers have been telling about the deadly attack. He wanted Mr. McCarthy to push them to stop downplaying the storming of the building, blaming left-wing extremists for an assault carried out by former President Donald J. Trump’s right-wing supporters and spreading the baseless conspiracy theory that the F.B.I. secretly planned it.

Leave aside the Times’s tendentious "reporting"--"lies," "deadly attack," "storming of the building," "assault," "right-wing supporters," "baseless conspiracy theory"--the request is ridiculous on its face. How is Leader Kevin McCarthy responsible for the views of the members of his caucus? And why would the New York Times, and presumably Officer Fanone, think that McCarthy--whatever his own personal view of Trump or of the events of Jan. 6--would accept the Times and Officer Fantone's rendering of what happened on Jan. 6 as remotely accurate?

Imagine how the New York Times would cover an NYPD police officer's relentless pursuit of Speaker Nancy Pelosi in order to get her to denounce the members of her caucus who were urging the defunding of the police! Chances are that the FBI would soon be paying the NYPD officer a "visit"--and the Times would doubtless be purring with approval, while denouncing the officer as mentally unstable, or worse, a "stalker."

The Times goes on in its inimitable way:

Officer Fanone’s effort comes as some far-right House Republicans have spread misinformation about the riot, sought to portray it as a mostly peaceful event and voted against honoring police officers who responded.

One House Republican accused a U.S. Capitol Police officer of “lying in wait” to carry out an “execution” of a rioter. And 21 House Republicans voted last week against a bill to award Congressional Gold Medals to the officers who defended the Capitol Jan. 6.

“I asked him to denounce the 21 House Republicans that voted against the Gold Medal bill, recognizing my co-workers and colleagues that fought to secure the Capitol on Jan. 6,” Officer Fanone said.

A number of obvious questions arise. First, from what we know about the events of Jan. 6, the police scarcely acquitted themselves in glory. It was one of the biggest policing fiascoes in modern times. There should be no medal awards whatsoever. To the contrary: wide-scale dismissals were clearly in order.

Second, given the manifest police incompetence on display on Jan. 6, this police officer would probably be more usefully employed in training and in improving his policing skills than in worrying about how a party leader was handling his caucus.

Third, the police officer makes no mention of the killing of Ashi Babbitt. The Times also makes no mention of her other than the sneering reference to a Republican congressman's talking about the "execution" of a "rioter." This is par for the course for much of the "liberal" media: Ashli Babbitt was a "rioter" who got her just desserts. However, the police officer should be worried about the performance of his fellow-police officers that day. Officer Fanone should be making the effort to address the serious questions that have been raised about the killing of Ashli Babbitt.

Who killed Ashli Babbitt? Why is that officer's name being withheld? Why did he kill her? He did not appear to be in any immediate danger from a petite, unarmed woman. Various Internet sites, as well as the lawyer representing the Babbitt family, have identified the alleged perpetrator as someone who a few years ago had left a loaded handgun in a public restroom in the Capitol. Is that the reason why his name is being withheld? Because the Capitol police would be on the hook for a wrongful-death suit, given that it had manifestly failed in its duty to dismiss an employee who had committed a transgression of this magnitude?

Clearly, these are the sorts of issues that Officer Fanone, still an active-duty cop, should be more appropriately concerned with, not what goes on in Kevin McCarthy's caucus. But then of course Fanone would then not get slobbering coverage in the New York Times.

The article ends with a flourish stunning for its lack of self-awareness. According to the Times, Fanone was troubled that the

Republican strategy appeared to be to try to make the public forget about the attack as the party looked to retake the House in next year’s midterm elections.

“When you’re that obsessed with gaining power that you’re wiling to trample over a bunch of police officers, that’s sickening,” he said in an interview.

Perish the thought that the Democrats and their unofficial spokesman, the New York Times, might be using the events of Jan. 6 to win elections and hold onto power! Such a thing is unthinkable. The Democrats and their media allies talk all day and every day about Jan. 6 only because they want to get to the bottom of what happened that day. Of course, they make sure never to ask any key questions such as: What did the FBI know and when did they know it? How deeply was the FBI involved in any of the plans for instigating violence? And, of course, who killed Ashli Babbitt, and why?

They don’t ask such questions because the answers would drastically alter the dubious narrative they want to force everyone to accept as unquestionable.