Losing Proposition

I agree with Margaret Sullivan that the Gray Lady completely missed the boat with its non-GOTCHA story about Zohran Mamdani's Columbia University application. 

But can someone tell me how we arrived at the place where Ben Ryan, the driving force behind the NYT piece, got labeled by anyone as a "right-wing freelancer" and a "major transphobe"? Ben was so destroyed by Clinton's loss in 2016 that he wound up in Bellevue, prompting the Daily Caller to gleefully make fun of him for it. (Wow, what a right-winger.) Later, Ben ripped me a new asshole for a comment I made online about Billy Porter's wearing a dress, which was intended to be pro genderqueer but was written tongue-in-cheek leading Ben to think I was being otherwise. (If anything, his overreaction shows that he's extremely sensitive to the gender plight.) 

"Regardless of whether there will ever be any winners in the battle of the genders, I choose being kind over waging war," he wrote earlier this year, in a piece that fleshed out his unenviable position reporting on pediatric gender medicine, which led to his getting ripped a new asshole, largely by the left. His infraction? Not being pro-trans in the "right" way. (Spoiler: As a science journalist, he has a nagging belief in science, which used to be a big-D Democratic tenet.) 

How depressing -- not to mention shockingly counterproductive -- that we have reached the point where everyone who doesn't agree with 100% of the most extreme orthodoxy is now instantly labeled "right-wing" or "anti-trans." At least when the right idiotically called all people they disagreed with "socialists" they were going after members of the OPPOSITE party. Look for Dems to continue losing national elections until this (and more) stops. 

By the way: Am I the only one who remembers how well things were going -- a pro-trans NBA boycott! -- before these unforced errors opened the door for the right to turn this nonballot issue into the most important thing on the minds of low-information voters, aka the majority of the electorate?