Useful idiots, Kristof edition
19th January 2019
Scott Johnson at Powerline does some fisking.
Lo these many years since the Russian Revolution and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the New York Times is still doing public relations for Communism. The most recent example — I find it almost unbelievable — is Nicholas Kristof’s January 18 Times column “Why Infants May Be More Likely to Die in America Than Cuba” (accessible here on Outline).
For those not aware of it, Outline (https://outline.com) offers a tool that, if you paste in a piece’s URL, will eliminate all the tedious persiflage and just give you the story in an easily readable form. It will also pierce many paywalls, such as that of the New York Times.
“Cuba has the Medicare of All that many Americans dream about” may be true in a sense, but this is so old and so lame. Kristof’s column is based on Cuba’s low infant mortality rate as reported. He acknowledges the gauzy veil of Cuban health care statistics yet he fails to get at the essential problems they raise. He is a fool for Communism. He promotes what Jay Nordlinger aptly derided as “The myth of Cuban health care” in his 2007 NR column on Michael Moore’s Sicko.
Jay noted that “Cuba’s infant-mortality rate remains respectable,” but put it in the context that Kristof failed to provide. Jay noted, for example, “if there is any sign of abnormality, any reason for concern — the pregnancy is ‘interrupted.’ That is the going euphemism for abortion. The abortion rate in Cuba is sky-high, perversely keeping the infant-mortality rate down.” See also Katherine Hirschfeld’s case study below. The word “abortion” doesn’t appear in Kristof’s column.