It's often said that the denizens of the New York Times live in a bubble, and nowhere is it more obvious than at the Times' editorial page on the matter of James O'Keefe's undercover reporting revealing how Google intends to skew the 2020 election in favor of Democrats.

Get a load of this tweet sequence:

so it seems to me that this 'investigation' about Google's bias is really just a bunch of non technical ppl mixing up algorithmic bias w/ political bias. am i wrong? could one of you smart technologists who follow me explain? https://t.co/aP5NXo71Cf

— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel) June 24, 2019

i mean obviously the video snippets from their 'whistleblower' are all completely contextless and thus not to be taken seriously. but the part about fairness and algos. that's just them seeing the word bias and not understanding what it means, right?

— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel) June 24, 2019

i realize i look like a total boob here because i'm attempting to engage or even spend time responding to ppl who seem to operate exclusively in bad faith. i get that. i also see that this is a huge story on half the internet and i still struggle w/ how to address that if at all

— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel) June 24, 2019

anyhow, if you need me i'll just be here gettin owned by everyone about this!

— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel) June 24, 2019

Clueless? No kidding. He even used the word "boob" to describe his situation.

Now, I don't want to be mean to the guy, I've been an editorial writer myself and understand where he's coming from, and secondly, I appreciate his honesty -- think about how many of them out there aren't this honest. But cripes, how does anyone get this clueless!

Poor little feller must have been asked to do an editorial what the implications of a Google executive caught on tape describing how the company planned to use its powers slant the 2020 election, and he couldn't see how this was an issue. He was lost. He was looking for help. He must be so steeped in a culture of certainty at the Times that he couldn't see anything wrong, let alone anyone who thinks differently. Isn't it always a good thing when the left wins an election? 

Google, by way of contrast, could see an issue, and the Google official in question deleted or privatized her social media accounts as a result. Google also removed O'Keefe's YouTube presentation about the matter, since they own YouTube. And Google itself is known to be under fire for this very issue of censorship anyway. They have been facing talk of anti-trust action in Congress for months, and have signaled that they know they've got a problem, based on their bland denials of any bias in Google algorithms.

Meanwhile, back at Twitter, the rightwingers tried to "school" the Timesman even as he could only believe that they were acting in bad faith. You can see the "education" here.

He just didn't get it.

Life's tough when you're a leftist. It's even tougher when you're a Timesman leftist. Maybe his editorial page colleague, Sarah Jeong, can explain it out to him.

Image credit: Haxorjoe, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0