{"id":1732,"date":"2005-07-24T00:47:49","date_gmt":"2005-07-24T07:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/07\/24\/john-roberts-wears-plaid-pants\/"},"modified":"2005-07-24T00:47:49","modified_gmt":"2005-07-24T07:47:49","slug":"john-roberts-wears-plaid-pants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1732","title":{"rendered":"John Roberts Wears Plaid Pants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, first go and look at this New York Times<\/em> profile of John Roberts<\/a>, making sure to look at the accompanying slideshow of photos<\/a>. Note the plaid pants.<\/p>\n

Did you get the impression that the Times <\/em>is trying to imply that Roberts is gay? I didn’t, either. But check out what right-wing alpha-blog Powerline <\/a>says:<\/p>\n

They Were Already Beneath Contempt…<\/strong><\/p>\n

…but now some Democrats have sunk lower. They are hinting that John Roberts is a homosexual because he was once photographed–more than thirty years ago–wearing plaid pants. You think I’m making this up?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, I kinda think they are making it up, in a groupthink\/urban myth sort of way.<\/p>\n

Ann Althouse<\/a>, who is usually much <\/em>more sane than this, also sees homo-baiting in the Times<\/em>‘ portrait of Roberts:<\/p>\n

I do think the NYT piece was subtly constructed to plant this idea. Just look at the series of photographs they chose: young John in plaid pants, young John with his boys’ school pals, young John in a wrestling suit with his fellow wrestlers, John with footballers, and — the final pic — John smiling in an all-male wedding photograph.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sorry, but which of these things does Ann think implies gayness? Plaid pants? Having boyhood pals? Wrestling and football? Being a groomsman? Thank goodness Ann is (I think) straight, because her gaydar sucks.<\/p>\n

As I said in the comments of Ann’s follow-up post<\/a> (in which she backed away from her initial claim a bit), there’s no point in paying any attention to conservative critiques of the Times anymore. No matter how innocent the Times <\/em>is, conservatives (and even some conservative-friendly moderates like Ann) will find malice in what the Times <\/i>does – no matter how ludicrous they’re being, and no matter how little evidence they have. The Times <\/em>could print “Bush nominee is a saint” and someone like Ann would find malice hidden in it. (“Saints? A lot of the saints were killed! I do think the Times <\/em>headline was subtly constructed to suggest that Roberts should be murdered.”)<\/p>\n

This wacky thinking appears to be widespread in the righty blogsphere; check out how many trackbacks this post on Reasoned Audacity<\/a> got. (Link via Unfogged<\/a>). Unbelievably, they believe this crap.<\/p>\n

Marty Schwimmer has a good post on this – “Anatomy of a Rumour”<\/a> – showing how Wonkette’s joke<\/a> became serious claims that liberals think that someone who wears plaid pants is gay.<\/p>\n

P.S. I did find one line in the Times <\/em>piece odd – they noted that, in his high school yearbook, Roberts is credited with playing Peppermint Patty in the school production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” What’s even odder than the cross-gender casting, is that the character of Peppermint Patty doesn’t even appear in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” Maybe this was an in-joke between the yearbook editors and Roberts? [Edited to add – then again, maybe she did appear. See Robert’s correction in the comments.]<\/em><\/p>\n

P.P.S. (added later): It’s pretty funny to compare Powerline’s “no low too low for them” view of Democrats with how Democrats view themselves<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, first go and look at this New York Times profile of John Roberts, making sure to look at the accompanying slideshow of photos. Note the plaid pants. Did you get the impression that the Times is trying to imply … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservative-zaniness-right-wingers-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}