WHEN LEFTIES OR DEMOCRATS DO SOMETHING AWFUL, THE PRESS SHIFTS THE FOCUS TO . . . HOW REPUBLICANS WILL CAPITALIZE ON IT. So the New York Times’ Vivian Yee’s take on the fake hate crime at Albany is this: “It was a turnabout tailor-made to delight conservative media outlets and to ignite social-media recriminations.”

Ann Althouse calls this “scurrilous” and comments: “Why invent delight in the minds of conservatives? That’s really a repackaging of what seems to be your own disappointment that a terrible racist attack didn’t happen! Shameful.”

To be a leftist today is to be sad whenever it turns out that a woman wasn’t raped, or a black person wasn’t lynched. Which is most of the time, it seems. . . .