New York Times Apologizes for Making ‘Fetus’ the Wordle of the Day

New in PJ Media:

The New York Times posted an apology one minute after midnight on Monday: “At New York Times Games,” the Paper of Record announced sonorously, “we take our role seriously as a place to entertain and escape, and we want Wordle to remain distinct from the news.” Yes, you know how determined the Left is to avoid the politicization of everything, right? Wordle, the massively popular daily puzzle that has people guess a five-letter word every day, had crossed the line: Monday’s word (spoiler alert!) was “fetus,” and the Times felt it necessary to give the world a trigger warning.

“It’s been just over three months,” the Times’ Everdeen Mason observed, “since The New York Times acquired Wordle, the hugely popular puzzle created by Josh Wardle.” And in that span, apparently, everything had gone flawlessly. But not Monday: “Wordle continues to delight millions of people every day, but as we move it over to The Times’s technology, we have continued to discover challenges.” Challenges? It’s a five-letter-word game. What possible challenges could there be? Why, offense to the perpetually and instantly offended, of course: “Today, for example, some users may see an outdated answer that seems closely connected to a major recent news event. This is entirely unintentional and a coincidence — today’s original answer was loaded into Wordle last year.”

That’s what you get for working a year ahead, Gray Lady. What if you set up “crash” as a Wordle of the day and then Old Joe Biden’s stock market takes a dive? Would you issue an abject apology like the one you issued Monday if one of your Wordles of the day turns out to be “idiot” on the same day that Old Joe or Kamala Harris toss some more of their word salad wisdom at us?

The Times would no doubt consider such questions impertinent. But after cheering on the Left’s relentless politicization of everything for the last few years, it’s astonishing to see the Times make such an abrupt turnaround and decide that Wordle, apparently alone among everything in the world, must “remain distinct from the news.” News reporting is hopelessly political, entertainment is irritatingly political, and advertising is more about pushing social agendas than selling products, but Wordle must remain pure, unsullied by the headlines of the day!

This is, of course, only because “fetus” was the word in question, reminding the Times’ dwindling coterie of hardcore Leftist readers that Roe v. Wade could conceivably be overturned if the Left’s campaign of intimidation and violence fails to intimidate any of the Justices into changing his or her vote. If the word had been “steal,” as in “steal an election,” do you think that the Times would be apologizing for offending the tender sensibilities of those who believe that not every last detail regarding the 2020 presidential election was on the up-and-up?

There is more. Read the rest here.