Julia Curlee is a trans woman who ably served the CIA under four presidents. That ended last year, after the second Trump administration decided she was the wrong kind of American. Now, she’s sharing her story publicly.

Speaking of terrible things that have stuck in my mind¹, I’ve been hung up on something I read a few weeks ago. Following Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s moronic reference to “DEI bike lanes”, the Department of Transportation began stripping evidence-based tools and information on bike safety from government websites. Never mind that data shows bike lanes make roads safer for all users, including drivers, all without causing congestion. This idiotic new front in the cultural wars must be fought, truth be damned.

It gets dumber. When NPR inquired about these website changes, they received a response from a DOT spokesperson which included the following:

“Since nearly 80% of the population uses cars to get to work and
their important medical appointments, we are taking a closer look at federal guidance to ensure American families have the infrastructure they need,”² the spokesperson said. “This is a common sense approach despite the Left’s belief that everyone should ride a bike to their shoebox-sized apartment to eat crickets to achieve a phony climate agenda.”

I’ve added emphasis to that last sentence, because it’s so profoundly stupid that it makes me want to scream.

The spokesperson who provided this quote was not named in the piece. I would argue they also should not have been quoted at all. Doing so elevated a completely ridiculous reply in a way it did not deserve. It would serve no useful purpose to quote the ravings of a dementia patient, and that’s the level we’re on here.

The media should strive to be unbiased, and they’re not actually doing that very well lately. When one side perpetually acts in bad faith, lazy both-sides journalism is just a weapon for them to spread their misinformation. Journalists aren’t supposed to be mere stenographers, and putting falsehoods on equal footing with facts and data is bad for society.

In other words, printing that quote without calling it out normalized nonsense. When someone attempts to pass off bullshit as reasoned discussion, reporting it as straight news isn’t being unbiased. It’s just being used.

Footnotes:

1. After that post, I heard from multiple fans of the hummingbird moth. I’m sorry to have yucked your figurative yums. I can only say that I know what I don’t like, and I don’t like that bug! But hey, more hummingbird moths for you folks to enjoy. *Shudder* ↩︎

2. I feel compelled to note that of course a huge percentage of Americans currently use cars frequently, because decades of transportation policy has privileged cars at the expense of our health, our safety, and our sanity. That doesn’t mean we have to continue the folly forever. ↩︎