Happy new year!
Just like you, my resolution is to read more newspapers in 2022.
Though, as three of them arrive on my driveway 365 mornings a year already, I don’t really know how I’m going to keep up with what I resolve.
Probably because I am that rare bird, a print subscriber to multiple newspapers, I received a solicitation in the mail aimed at getting me to subscribe to another one.
No, not the Financial Times, or the Wall Street Journal.
It was a “sample edition” of The Epoch Times, a publication I had certainly heard of, but had never held in my hands.
The reason I had heard of it is that it’s owned and operated by associates of Falun Gong, the “new religious movement” that began in China in the 1990s and now is headquartered here.
I will be momentarily charitable and note that a really good part of the whole Gong thing is that it is fanatically opposed, as am I, to the Chinese Communist Party.
I think that after that, we basically part ways.
Because wrapped around the two sections of the paper was a testimonial sheet headlined “What People are Saying” from five fans of The Epoch Times, one of whom I hadn’t heard of and so will skip.
The other four were from the kinds of media critics you wouldn’t want to read the same paper as they do. Sean Hannity: “I read The Epoch Times daily.” Strike one. Sebastian Gorka, the Trump acolyte and fish oil supplement spokesperson: “I congratulate you.” Strike two. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, censured by his House colleagues for his violent video: “It’s our favorite paper.” Strike three. And, for God’s sake, Larry Elder: “I rely on The Epoch Times.” Strike four, and you’re really, really out.
I opened the Opinion section anyway, and, wow, the ET is wrong about every single thing.
“Justice Thomas’s Moment Arrives” because of the upcoming abortion decision, the paper says. Clarence Thomas’s moment will never arrive. Columnist Michael Walsh puts quotes around “reproductive rights,” meaning he doesn’t believe in them.
“Suspended UK Doctor Unmasks Mask Mandate”: Author Andrew Davies is one of those nuts who thinks masks are dangerous because they make wearers “breathe in copious amounts of their own CO2”; he recommends the horse dewormer ivermectin instead.
“Fauci’s Claim to ‘Represent Science’ is Anti-Science”: Columnist Wesley J. Smith thinks the good doctor, still working to protect our health at 81, does so to “burnish his own reputation.”
“The Abortion Debate’s Absolutism”: Writer James Bowman says “Hispanics or Asians or immigrants in general or homosexuals or transsexuals” are “supposedly oppressed groups.”
“The Fed Will Break the Economy”: a coming “deflationary crash” is the real worry in the months ahead, says financial writer Steven Van Metre.
“Where Will the Widespread Embrace of Infertility Lead?” asks pundit Barbara Kay. To a better hope for the future of an overcrowded planet, perhaps?
“Abolish the CDC and NIH”: Wow. In the middle of a global pandemic, lawyer Rob Natelson thinks getting rid of the two major American centers for disease control is a good idea because they are “nuisances.”
“A Mom’s Research: Staying Steady in the Swirl of Transgenderism”: Big thinker Jean Chen tells us of sending her kid off to college and making sure she “avoided courses related to race, gender, class, inequality, etc.” because “Society is sprinting down an immoral track.”
Wait — here’s a fine sentiment! “Boycott the Beijing Olympics.” Right on! Still. Reading-wise, I’m not quite ready to return to the Pliocene epoch here in the year 2022.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.
