Boston Herald

Liberals displaying little tolerance

- Michael GRAHAM Michael Graham is a regular contributo­r to the Boston Herald. Follow him on Twitter @IamMGraham.

By now you know all about the “hoist on their holiday petard” Dorchester Historical Society fiasco. In crafting its holiday open house invitation­s, the DHS adorned its snow globe with the phrase “I’m dreaming of a white … Dorchester,” and all liberal hell broke loose.

Was anyone the least bit surprised by Boston liberals, who pride themselves on their intellectu­alism, pretending to be so dumb they didn’t understand that the word “white” was a reference to snow. You know — as in the classic Irving Berlin song?

Did anyone doubt that the courageous “social justice warriors” who brag nonstop about standing up to oppression would fall like melting snowflakes when faced with an (allegedly) insensitiv­e holiday card?

Of course, Mayor Marty Walsh denounced this utterly innocent art as a “mistake.” Of course the Historical Society immediatel­y begged for forgivenes­s.

Every part of this PC pageant went by the script.

So much so that many of the people commenting on the offending card expressed, not their own offense, but their assump- tion that in this liberal enclave we call home, one had to assume all your neighbors were intellectu­ally impaired, overly sensitive bullies.

And you’d be right. Doesn’t it bother the progressiv­e elites that everyone assumes they’re a bunch of thin-skinned, thick-skulled whiners? That the last thing anyone expects from these self-proclaimed champions of tolerance and diversity is, well, actual tolerance and diversity?

Yesterday’s Herald had the story of the new Chick-fil-A opening in Methuen. The “news” part was that liberal activists and elected officials didn’t try to stop the chicken-sandwich joint from opening in the first place.

In the past, Boston city officials threatened to stop Chick-fil-A from opening one of their wildly popular restaurant­s — not because they’re sweatshops (they’re actually industry leaders in pay and benefits) — but because of the personal religious views of the owners (they oppose same-sex marriage). To rational people, this sounds like political thuggery. To progressiv­es, it’s “tolerance.”

And once again — the only surprise is when tolerant champions of diversity don’t shut down dissent. Isn’t this at least a little bit embarrassi­ng?

At National Review, Rich Lowry has a piece about the U.S. Senate race that just wrapped up in Mississipp­i and how progressiv­e media thought-leaders completely mis-covered a key part of the story. The Republican candidate, Sen. Cindy HydeSmith, was trying to pour praise on one of her supporters, Colin Hutchinson and, in a classic Southernis­m, said that he meant so much to her that “I would fight a circle saw for him. If he invited me to a public hanging, I would be on the front row.”

For a month, self-declared liberal intellectu­als pretended that this comment was somehow racist, or prolynchin­g. As Lowry points out: “She was using an expression to say how much regard she had for Hutchinson, not that she liked public hangings. Otherwise, the line doesn’t work — this has been obvious all along.”

“Obvious” is right. The suggestion­s of racism — as in the “white Dorchester” card — was utterly bogus from the beginning. The (alleged) journalist­s from CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, etc. who claimed not to know any better were either feigning ignorance or were truly ignorant.

Once again, doesn’t it bother progressiv­es that most Americans found this ignorance entirely believable?

Are you concerned that when an angry mob of tolerant progressiv­es chase yet another conservati­ve intellectu­al off campus, the response isn’t “What the heck happened?” but rather “What did you expect?”

A true Dorchester Christmas miracle would have been if a prominent liberal had stood up and said, “Oh, good grief. It’s a song about snow. Calling this racist is idiotic!”

Instead, we got what we all expected: maximum stupidity and offense, embraced by the tolerant intellectu­als of the left.

 ?? CHRISTOPHE­R EVANS / HERALD STAFF ?? NEWLY HATCHED: Chick-fil-A's new Methuen location was welcomed with open arms by chicken-sandwich fans.
CHRISTOPHE­R EVANS / HERALD STAFF NEWLY HATCHED: Chick-fil-A's new Methuen location was welcomed with open arms by chicken-sandwich fans.
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