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“Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?,” asks a New York Times headline that teases a cure to what ails the New York Times. The newspaper has shown some recent indications of a healthy desire to step back from the progressive ledge, and let’s hope that Sunday’s guest essay is another baby step toward a post-ideological journalism. David Litt writes in the Times: Not too long ago, I felt a civic duty to be rude to my wife’s younger brother… I was one of President Barack Obama’s speechwriters and had an Ivy League degree; he was a huge Joe Rogan fan and went on to get his electrician’s license. My early memories of Matt are hazy — I was mostly trying to impress his parents. Still we got along, chatting amiably on holidays and at family events. Then the pandemic hit,
and our preferences began to feel like more than differences in taste. We were on opposite sides of a cultural civil war. The deepest divide was vaccination. I wasn’t shocked when Matt didn’t get the Covid shot. But I was baffled. Turning down a vaccine during a pandemic seemed like a rejection of science and self-preservation. It felt like he was tearing up the social contract that, until that point, I’d imagined we shared. Had Matt been a friend rather than a family member, I probably would have cut off contact completely. Mr. Litt goes on to explain how, despite his brother-in-law’s continued noncompliance with Mr. Litt’s opinions, the two have found
common interests that have nothing to do with ideology. The men have even managed to forge a friendship while surfing together off the Jersey Shore.
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