City Pages, a progressive blog owned by The Star Tribune, mocked conservative writer Katherine Kersten as being “super horny for the Founding Fathers” in a Monday article.
City Pages news editor Mike Mullen was responding to an op-ed Kersten published over the weekend that questioned The New York Times’ 1619 Project. Kersten, a senior policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, called the project the “latest chapter in the American left’s ongoing campaign to rewrite history.”
“This movement approaches history, in all its messy complexity, not as a search for truth but as a vehicle for advancing a political agenda,” Kersten writes in her article. “The 1619 Project aims to recast Americans’ concept of their nation as one founded on freedom, equality and opportunity into one irremediably corrupted by slavery, inequality and racism.”
As The Minnesota Sun reported, she was called “disgusting,” a “white supremacist,” a racist, and a bigot for writing the article.
Responding to Kersten, Mullen said it was a “severely unnecessary” article and the “whitest take ever” before calling Kersten the “church-lady-in-residence at the Center of the American Experiment.”
“Kersten is super horny for the Founding Fathers, and is convinced they didn’t do anything other than spread freedom and liberty. If the generations of people born into slavery who knew nothing but toil and torture had simply waited to be born in a different century, they, too, would appreciate the Founders’ brilliance in all its glory,” writes Mullen.
He suggests that Kersten was attempting to “set some sort of record for factual inaccuracy and moral bankruptcy in the fewest words possible.” Mullen takes issue with Kersten’s description of slavery as a “universal, unquestioned practice throughout most of human history.”
“Among those who definitely questioned slavery: people with a conscience, abolitionists… slaves,” he writes, noting that Nikole Hannah-Jones, a lead author for the 1619 Project, replied to Kersten on Twitter.
“Forgive Hannah-Jones for assuming facts would’ve helped. She doesn’t know Kersten,” Mullen concludes his article. “Then again, maybe Kersten is just short-sighted, like those slaves who never lived to see freedom. Let’s hope she does some thinking and waits a little while before delving back into this topic. How’s another 400 years sound?”
– – –
Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News, The Ohio Star, and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
