Find better ‘victims,’ don’t promote e-bikes, ban ’em and other commentary

Media watch: Find Better ‘Victims’!

The New York Times just published “a head-scratcher of a tear-jerker,” snarks Becket Adams at The Hill: It “tried to frame as a sympathetic character an illegal immigrant whose acts of identity theft, multiple drunk driving convictions, and three deportation orders have made life a living hell for his victims.” The New Yorker, meanwhile, offered “another whopper,” about how “Orville Etoria, a Jamaican national who’d lived in New York for nearly 50 years, was shackled and put on an ICE flight to Eswatini” — yet he’s a convicted murderer. “Sob stories aren’t good journalism,” but if you’re “going to engage in such gross emotional manipulation,” then “at least do us the favor of finding a victim worthy of sympathy.”

Central Park beat: Don’t Promote E-bikes, Ban ’Em

When planning Central Park, Frederick Law Olmstead envisioned a place where people could escape “the bustle and jar of the streets,” but “visitors today dodge e-bikes, delivery vehicles, and pedicabs at every turn,” laments Yael Bar Tur at City Journal. Worse: The Central Park Conservancy means to “allow e-bikes inside the park,” remove “traffic signals,” and turn the park drive “into an e-vehicle and delivery-bike superhighway.” In its own safety survey, “the most common concern was ‘speeding bikes and e-bikes’ (31 percent),” yet the Conservancy is still eying “banning horse and carriage rides” to make room for “more hazardous forms of transportation.” Don’t destroy “a historic industry”; look at “stronger traffic enforcement, fewer e-vehicles, and banning delivery vehicles from Central Park altogether.”

Culture critic: RIP to the Unmatched Stoppard

“Tom Stoppard, whose death at age 88 was announced on Saturday,” was “undoubtedly the most intellectually daring, historically inquisitive and encyclopedically knowledgeable” modern playwright, muses The Wall Street Journal’s Charles Isherwood. “Born in Czechoslovakia to Jewish parents who had to leave the country during the rise of the Nazis,” he “ultimately arrived in England, where he established himself as an audacious new talent with ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ in 1966.” Then came “a corpus of dramas and comedies that married thought and feeling with dazzling dexterity,” earning him “five Tony Awards for best play (a record) and an Oscar.” He was the rare playwright (or artist, period) who managed “to sustain the high quality of [his] work virtually from the beginning of [his] career until its conclusion.”

Liberal: Now They Question ‘Legal Authority’

Racket News’ Matt Taibbi marvels at how President Trump’s media critics keep insisting he “does not have the legal authority” to march toward war on Venezuela, when he’s using the same “post-9/11 Authorization to Use Military Force” that every other prez this century has “repeatedly invoked” to “justify bombing campaigns, NSA surveillance, acts of ‘anticipatory self-defense,’ and a long list of other dubious policies.” Think back: “Twelve years ago we had reports that the U.S. killed 76 children and 29 adults across eight years of failed efforts to drone one suspected terrorist, Ayman Zawahiri, and killed about 1,000 more bystanders while targeting 40 others,” yet outlets like The New York Times “ran fawning portraits of Barack Obama’s ‘Terror Tuesdays’ drone-targeting ritual.”

Conservative: Who Has Christians Under Siege?

“At this time of year,” writes Commentary’s Seth Mandel from Israel, “the only landmark more visible from afar than the Dome of the Rock is arguably the Christmas tree outside the Jerusalem YMCA.” Contra claims that “the Jewish state is hostile, sometimes violently, toward Christians,” in fact “the Christian population of Israel is still growing, some years even as a percentage of the total population.” Bethlehem? Its “Christian population is struggling” because it’s in “the Palestinian territories.” Indeed, “The Christian population of Gaza has plummeted since Hamas’s 2007 takeover. The community’s population in Bethlehem has deteriorated since the Palestinian Authority took control of the city in 1994.” Beyond violence and the PA’s erasure of Christians from school curricula, it’s “increasingly difficult for Christians to buy land in places under Palestinian control.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board