This a superb example of one form of Addictive Stupidity – people who have lulled themselves to sleep on the ambrosia of past glory, demanding that Reality apply to anyone but themselves, fine and upstanding New York Times journalists as they most certainly are. You’ll need a heart of stone not to laugh.

Meanwhile here is my more substantive piece over at Commentator on this theme, taking a brisk world tour from Beijing in 1860 as we burned down part of the city via 1960s New York and round to today’s Athens and Paris, where if they are not burning down their own cities they may well be doing so soon:

… those seeking new ways to engage the Negro politically should remember that public resources have always been the fuel for low-income urban political organization. If organizers can deliver millions of dollars in cash benefits to the ghetto masses, it seems reasonable to expect that the masses will deliver their loyalties to their benefactors. At least, they have always done so in the past.

Get ’em hooked, on opium or on welfare. Doesn’t matter which.

Then you have ’em. Never fails.