Jumping To Conclusions

Quick question: do you think the New York Times would have printed a boy-isn't-that-cute profile of a kid who read Mein Kampf when he was little, thought the Nazis ideas sounded really cool, and went on to lead a branch of the Aryan Nations? Somehow, I doubt it. So what's up with this New York Times puffery about Charlotte Kates, one of the organizers of the pro-terrorism conference at Rutgers?

My favorite part is right at the beginning:

WHEN Charlotte L. Kates was in elementary school, she devoured a series of books on foreign countries. One nation, however, captured her imagination. She was in the family car on her way to a children's arts festival in Philadelphia, when, she said, the utopian vision of a communist society in the Soviet Union leapt off the pages and inspired her to be a revolutionary.

Sounds like a common story for young communists in the 1930s, when the New York Times was busy covering up Stalin's crimes and many people thought the USSR was a neat idea. Only, read further, and you see this: "Ms. Kates, 23..." That's right; when she "was in elementary school," it would have been about 1990. After the Berlin Wall fell. After everyone, including the Soviet Union, had rejected communism. But she joined the Communist Party anyway. Boy, isn't that cute?

And she "agitated to loosen the dress code at her [middle] school and reduce the lunch fees." Boy, isn't that cute?

And, oh yeah, she supports Palestinian terrorism. And the total elimination of Israel. Boy, isn't that cute?