For months, my Friday "What the Heck" feature has selected three stories of the week that I found to be the most jaw-droppingly confusing. I enjoy writing it, but I'm taking this week off to call out the hypocrisy and attempted gaslighting by former conservative, now New York Times opinion columnist David French.
On Friday of last week he attempted a sleight of hand that, if it was about any other topic, might be worthy of an eyeroll and a renewed commitment to simply ignore the man who has found prestige more desirable than principle. But this is about child abuse, and that's something that can't be ignored.
The cultural axiom always used to be, "look at what Europe is doing today and that's where the U.S. will be in five years." It makes sense. U.S. pop culture is largely driven by progressives. Progressives love what they see as sophisticated European society, and thus they do their best to drive our culture towards an imitation of what's happening across the pond.
But every rule has its exception, and how delightful that the one time U.S. progressives decide to chart a different course than their European brethren is on the issue of abusing children in the name of politics. In case you missed it:
After such a big win for sanity, I was curious how many of those who have been cheering the supposed "right" of parents to abuse their children in this way would handle it. Perhaps the most bizarre response came from French, who feigned admiration for European leaders:
Say what? Is French doing his best Donald Trump impression here – pretending that he's always believed something he has previously argued against? Just three months ago, here's what French wrote in a Times piece shaming Republican Governors DeSantis (FL) and Abbott (TX) for their efforts to ban this form of child abuse:
"And because every culture war action against civil liberties has its mirror image on the other side, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas issued a directive to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate as "abuse" both surgical and pharmaceutical interventions for transgender children, regardless of the good faith and desires of the parents, children and care givers involved."
French then went on to quote Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger who asserted that parents have the "primary role" in the upbringing of children. "To simply presume that parents are abusive because they may dissent from state consensus on transgender care," French wrote, "is to violate this principle of American law."
Leave aside French's sickening deference to leftwing euphemisms like "transgender care" and "pharmaceutical interventions" to describe child abuse, and notice the big picture. In March, David French was telling everyone that subjecting children to chemical castration, puberty blockers, and surgical mutilation in the name of transgenderism was a fundamental "principle of American law" and a legitimate exercise of "civil liberties." He was blasting American lawmakers who were getting in the way of the "good faith" of "parents and caregivers" who were carrying out such abuse.
Yet now, he pretends to agree with those in Europe who are putting the brakes on the abuse? Sorry, Mr. French. As one who has, on a number of occasions, bent over backwards to allow you the benefit of the doubt in your comically predictable weekly pummeling of the right, this just doesn't fly.
You cast your lot with the "caregivers" mutilating children. If you're now siding with the rest of us who believe government has a duty to protect kids against abusive parents, great. But you don't get to pretend that you've been with us all along.
Have the courage to renounce your previous position, the character to repent of it publicly, and the humility to apologize to all those you misled.
