Censorship At The New York Times
When a publication publishes you at 10am — for the entire world to see — but by 11am, or less than an hour later, they unpublish you, they yank your work down, this is what is known in journalism as censorship.
The reason the New York Times publishes me, and then takes me down, is because they are conflicted. At 10am, you’re okay, but less than an hour later, Mama slaps your little hands with a Big Girl ruler.
What the New York Times doesn’t understand is that it’s better for me to publish, and then be unpublished because the censorship issue is so blatantly obvious. Now, I get to say, the New York Times censors what we have to say when they disagree with us in terms of what is civil comment. If they don’t agree with you, they take you down. I was talking about the election. Suddenly, they didn’t like it so I was easily erased. Allow me to put it here.
You see things on a motorcycle in America that you cannot possibly see from the tight bubble of a car. This past summer, having been a part of every single riot in America, riding my bike city to city, and accompanied by a sixteen-year old boy, we find ourselves today engaged in both writing, and photographing American culture bleeding out in both implosion and explosion. I was compelled to become aware of the differences, both in terms of demographic geography, and economic disparity that symbolizes who we really are.
Along the way, I have been making dozens of comments in the New York Times. I have been allowed to articulate what I see from the dramas of the road. My tone is mean.
President Biden would face the hatred of millions of Americans. President Trump would face the loathing of millions of Americans.
The culture is conflicted. We know.
Our problem is that society has stayed inside the safety bubble of the car. It has been an object lesson for me to watch the sixteen-year-old drive the bike upfront, while I am clinging to him riding shotgun. I want him to see us for who we could become. I give him my camera, and what he photographs is far more insightful than anything in my face that I think is relevant.
I am so not the point. He is why we are here on the road in the cold, at the top of a mountain, intently reading our phones. In the distance, the Blue Ridge freezing blue comes to light.
A similitude of civil war as the collision of victory and defeat.