The NYT’s reporting of football’s dangers provides a revealing look at the American psyche

OPINION NYT’s reporting on the dangers of football offers a revealing look at the American psyche CATHAL KELLY PUBLISHED 4 HOURS AGO UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO Open this photo in gallery: New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart (centre) was helped off the field after being sacked during a preseason NFL game earlier this month. ADAM HUNGER/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 31 COMMENTS SHARE SAVE FOR LATER Listen to this article Learn more about audio Log in or create a free account to listen to this article. On Tuesday, after a three-day run, football knocked trade war off the top of the New York Times’ web stack. The big story: brain injury. The Times broke this story and has owned it ever since. The newest wrinkle – that many more pros than had previously been thought end up developing serious cognitive issues. The headline on that main story: “Study’s Alarming Finding: At Least 1 in 4 N.F.L. Players Gets Brain Disease.” And then, tucked in just below that, a second headline: “How to Minimize Risk if Your Child Plays Football.” I think it’s fair to say that the New York Times employs some of the smarter Americans. So why are they so stupid? How does anyone with the sense God gave a goat get from ‘Bullets kill’ to ‘Here’s how your kids can still have fun with bullets’? Opinion: The U.S. isn’t negotiating trade with Canada. This is a shakedown It’s not that they’re stupid. It’s that they’re American. Everybody’s looking for a lesson out of the last few days, preferably one that U-turns us back in the direction of the pre-2016 status quo. That’s when Canada liked to think it was America, minus the woo-hoo’ing. That’s what’s made the last 10 years so psychically uncomfortable. We thought that was us in the mirror at the border, but it’s someone else. How did we get it so wrong? These two schizophrenic headlines, paired by the fantastically well-educated, Democrat-voting, pussyhat-wearing, upper-middle-class cream of our neighbouring crop, are as close as you’re going to get to an explanation. They strongly suggest that America is just not like us. I’m talking deep down. They don’t think like us. They don’t share our vision of how the world is, or how it should be. Despite all the superficial similarities, we are different peoples. If someone says to Canadians that guns kill people, or that a faulty drug made people sick, we all stop. Then we go into fix-it mode. This is not to say we get it right, but that negative actions create collective reactions. We have…