President Donald Trump's exceedingly silly efforts to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" became particularly obnoxious this week, as the White House announced that it would strip the Associated Press of access to presidential press briefings and Air Force One flights. The news organization's transgression? Sticking with Gulf of Mexico in its official style guide.
There are obvious hypocrisies running in both directions here. Many liberal and mainstream media organizations have embraced the progressive push to rename various public locations, landmarks, sports teams, etc., or to use new and awkward naming conventions in an effort to appease social justice activist groups. The A.P. deciding in July 2020—in the midst of the summer of unrest following the killing of George Floyd—that its style guide would henceforth capitalize black but not white is a good example of this.
But in this case, the MAGA hypocrisy is even more galling. If Joe Biden's White House had stripped a right-leaning news organization of Oval Office access because it refused to recognize the area in front of Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., as Black Lives Matter Plaza, conservatives would have gone ballistic. Imagine a Biden surrogate asserting that any journalists who failed to properly respect the space's new name were guilty of spreading misinformation—the opprobrium would be cacophonous and well-deserved.
