Over the last two weeks, one of the biggest stories has been about the fashion brand Balenciaga being caught using children to market sexualized products in a photoshoot that included documents referencing child pornography cases.
And, as we saw yesterday with The View, the real scandal here isn't the open sexualization and exploitation of children. It's not that the brand tried to shift the blame. It's not that major celebrities still endorse the brand after weak semi-apologies.
The REAL problem is that conservatives and Republicans noticed.
Here's the New York Times seriously trying to tie a Balenciaga ad we ALL saw with our own eyes showing little girls holding stuffed bears with sex gear on, to "QAnon" conspiracies.
It took three NYT writers to create a story about how a major fashion brand used kids in sexual images that we ALL saw with our own eyes really just shows how bad Republicans are.
Hey, Lizzie, it's not a conspiracy.
Balenciaga took the ad down and admitted it was messed up. Heck, even the NYT spells out how crazy sick these ads were.
One campaign featured photos of children clutching handbags that look like teddy bears in bondage gear. Another campaign featured photos that include paperwork about child pornography laws. Together, they ignited a firestorm that traveled from the internet to Fox News, fueled by allegations that Balenciaga condoned child exploitation. The controversy has become one of the most explicit collisions of internet culture, politics, fashion and conspiracy theories to date.
Yeah.
But look at what they write next:
As online criticism of the campaigns spread, the story was picked up across right-leaning media outlets, including The New York Post and the prime time Fox News show "Tucker Carlson Tonight." The show has helped to publicize and mainstream QAnon, the internet conspiracy theory that "a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media."
"Here you have a major international retail brand promoting kiddie porn and sex with children," Mr. Carlson told viewers on Nov. 22, "and not promoting it subtly but right out in the open."
Notice how they explicitly try to connect The New York Post and Tucker Carlson to QAnon to discredit them?
That's obJecTive jOuRnAliSm for you: Owning your opponents by stumping for perverts and pedophiles.
Good job with that one: You really proved there aren't a bunch of Satan-worshipping pedophiles running our media and society!
Needless to say, the Right was not going to take this unhinged attack lying down.
What's going on here?
Two things.
First, from Aaron Renn:
They'll never miss an opportunity to smear the right falsely and try to deflect blame from their own scandals.
Second, here's the meme I have to post over and over again:
