Did Charles Blow “Blow Up” his Son’s Fake Racial Incident to Promote his Book?
February 1, 2015 by Daniel Greenfield 5 Comments
Charles Blow, a guy you probably never heard of if you aren’t a New York Times subscriber, suddenly came on the radar with his claims that his son had been racially profiled at Yale.
He just left one minor thing out.
Charles Blow, a black, left-wing New York Times columnist, took to Twitter and the pages of the Times to excoriate Yale and a campus police officer over his son being detained at gunpoint. Apparently, Blow’s son met the description of a campus burglar. After learning of the incident, an incensed Blow published a series of racially-charged Tweets followed by a racially-charged Times column.
According to the Washington Examiner, Blow tweeted, “This is exactly why I have no patience for people trying to convince me that the fear these young black men feel isn’t real.” Blow also tweeted out slogans associated with protests involving race and the police: “I can’t breathe” and “Black lives matter.”…
What Blow’s readers and Twitter followers weren’t told, though, was the race of the police officer in question.
As it turns out, the officer is black. Yale’s police chief is also black.
Before the “incident”, Blow had been trying to climb on the racist #BlackLivesMatter bandwagon with earlier columns. That hadn’t worked too well, but a personal incident provided the “perfect” touch.
But there was another reason why Charles Blow, an obscure New York Times hack, would have needed attention.
His memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones had come out at the end of September. The New York Times had predictably given it a tongue bath and much of Blow’s Twitter feed was given over to promoting it. It’s still pinned to the top of his feed.
But the book tour was over and whatever attention the memoir of a 44-year-old man who had never done anything interested in his life had managed to pick up was fading fast. Blow had gotten some attention by “revealing” that he was bisexual in his book and that he had been sexually abused. The mileage of that was gone. So Blow may have gotten a little desperate.
The Yale incident certainly brought him plenty of attention outside of his tiny privileged New York Times circle, though it came with some tough questions about why he faked a racial incident involving a black cop.
The answer may be as simple as moving copies of his book.
Blow has always been a cynical figure.
The Twitter social justice hashtag ridden rant about his son, coming ever so coincidentally after a Tamir Rice column, racializing the incident while leaving out the fact that this was a black cop, is typical. Tie it to the end of a memoir that had no reason for existing except Blow’s numerous powerful friends and pinned to the top of his Twitter feed and it’s inevitable.
But Charles Blow is no more cynical than the white hipsters shouting “Black lives matters”. Like them he’s another privileged leftist looking to get in on a trend.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/did-charles-blow-blow-up-his-sons-fake-racial-incident-to-promote-his-book/
