New York By God Times Stole Teenager's Failed College Application And Goddammit It Would DO IT AGAIN

All's fair if it's Zohran Mamdani.

Photo by Dmitry Shein.

Around these parts, we’re big fans of Smilin’ Zohran Mamdani, his policies, his campaign, his purty face and purty wife, and his goddamn joy. But you know who does not like the Muslim immigrant from Africa/Democratic nominee for New York City mayor? New York Times metaphorical (updated description, many of you thought I really meant he was their new assignment editor) assignment editor Chris Rufo — or the New York Times.

On Thursday afternoon before the holiday weekend, the Times dropped a real fucked up turd of a story on Mamdani (don’t worry, that’s a no-clicks-for-them archive link) — a real SCOOP! and GOTCHA! — about how as a teenager, 16 years ago, he had checked boxes pronouncing himself Asian and “Black or African American” when applying for Columbia. About halfway through the story, the Times deigned to mention he didn’t even get in. They also let us know the application was among the bounty of Columbia admissions records that had been hacked (by an anti-affirmative-action criminal group, apparently), and their intermediary was a man they had promised to keep anonymous but they eventually updated to let us know he liked to write about “I.Q. and race.”

This story was an ethical catastrophe — so of course the New York Times has doubled down, tripled down, and is braying all over the known universe that people being like “what the fucking FUCK New York Times?” proves it’s right.

Let us count some YOU FUCKING KIDDING US WITH THIS.

HEY! Y’all remember when Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails got hacked (NOT her “homebrew server” Secretary of State emails, you’ll be forgiven for thinking those were hacked because the Times among others continually conflated them)? Well a funny thing happened in 2024. Trump’s campaign emails got hacked, and among the materials was the vetting file for the couchfucker who is now somehow our vice president. But the Times and other major media declined to launder them for alleged hacker Iran, and said that it had a new policy after the Clinton debacle, and that was to not report on hacked materials unless they were super DUPER important, like say a 33-year-old mayoral candidate’s 16-year-old college application marking him as “African American” even though dude was born in Uganda but like isn’t Black Black.

Then the guy they got it from, “Cremieux,” whom they granted anonymity, was outed in five seconds as this guy Jordan Lasker (he’d already been outed by The Guardian, making the Times’s granted anonymity extra-weird). He’s a race scientist (“scientist”) and the Times calls him an academic, though his sibling and everybody else isn’t sure he’s even still in grad school anymore. And of course the criminal hacking of Columbia’s admissions materials was done for the sole purpose of “anti-affirmative-action,” which I think can fairly be boiled down to “we assume anyone non-white does not deserve to be there.”

So the Times used stolen materials from a then-minor who checked maybe the wrong box on his application but it’s nuanced* to help the cause of a race scientist, a criminal group of hackers who can at the least be said to have white supremacist aims, and, DUN DUN DUN … Christopher Rufo.

Semafor now reports that the Times went full-speed-ahead because “independent journalist” (LOL WHAT NOW?) Christopher Rufo was working on the story for his substack and they didn’t want to get “scooped” on Teenager 16 Years Ago Checked Maybe Wrong Box AND ALSO DIDN’T EVEN GET IN. I mentioned that part right? Didn’t even get in.

And over the weekend, as the rest of us were pointing out the ethical HOLY SHITBALLS, they made poor Dodai Stewart write Mamdani Once Claimed to Be Asian and African American. Should It Matter? (Also a no-click archive link.) It’s the New York Times explaining that since people had reactions to their ethically waterboarded piece, it matters.

First she quoted Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Cuomo backer, as being like “What? This is stupid. Shut the fuck up.” (Paraphrase.) But then the next quote, from an Eric Adams guy, goes like this:

Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for the Adams campaign, said that Mr. Mamdani had “misrepresented his racial identity to gain admission to Columbia University,” adding: “This is not just dishonest — it’s possibly fraudulent. It may have taken a place away from a qualified African American applicant and misused a process designed to correct real, systemic inequities.”

Right here would have been a good place for the Times’s Stewart to point out that Zohran Mamdani checking African American just because he’s from Africa did not in fact take “a place away from a qualified African American applicant” because he did not get in. I guess she or her editors just forgot!

Hey, even ‘70s vintage lunatic Curtis Sliwa, Guardian Angel, he of my childhood, got it righter than the Times:

“We could split hairs on why he put in that he was an African American,” Mr. Sliwa said in an interview on Friday. “But we are spending so much focus on the wrong things about Zohran. How about we stay focused on the issues?”

But what is more “the issues” than people of color going to Harvard and Columbia, or sometimes even being president of them — at least until the New York Times runs 62 stories on “Black Lady Harvard President Missed Doctoral Citation EVEN LONGER AGO THAN SIXTEEN YEARS”? Have you MET the New York Times?

Patrick Healy, who is now the Times editor for standards, explained all weekend that, since Mamdani had answered their questions and confirmed the college application, that made using the hacked materials kosher and also halal. So that’s a bullshit sandwich (bullshit is trayf and also haram). But he wasn’t the only one!

“The fact that this story engendered all the conversation and debate that it has feels like all the evidence you need that this was a legit line of reporting,” one senior reporter told Semafor.

And the fact that people got mad at me when I punched a kitten in the face proves it was a legit line of face-punching a kitten.

So if you need to cancel your New York Times subscription again, Wonkette stands ready to take your money.

FOOTNOTE! People argued all weekend over whether it was even the wrong box: Mamdani is from Uganda, of Indian heritage. Here’s a fascinating thread on that! But the Census defined African American as having origins in the Black racial groups of Africa, and we certainly wouldn’t call Elon Musk “African American” so it’s sort of maybe wrong, but also it’s not like the Census definition was on the application, and Mamdani wrote in “Uganda.” This whole story can suck my dick.

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THIS FUCKING GUY

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