Well, the New York Times didn’t actually call former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani a racist in its lead editorial Tuesday, which it has strongly implied in the past on its news pages. That’s about the best that can be said for “Rudy Giuliani’s Racial Myths,” in which the Times attacks its old enemy as a race-baiter for criticizing Black Lives Matter, which the paper referred to as a “civil-rights movement” on Sunday’s front page. Meanwhile, actual race-baiter Al Sharpton is portrayed in the Times lecturing others on race-baiting.

For a nation heartsick over the killings of black men by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota, and the ambush murders of officers by a gunman in Dallas, here comes Rudolph Giuliani, bringing his trademark brew of poisonous disinformation to the discussion. In his view, the problem is black gangs, murderous black children, the refusal of black protesters to look in the mirror at their “racist” selves, and black parents’ failure to teach their children to respect the police. “What we’ve got to hear from the black community,” said Mr. Giuliani, in a Sunday morning talk-show appearance that seemed to double as a lecture to black America, “is how and what they are doing among themselves about the crime problem in the black community.” He added, “We wonder, do black lives matter, or only the very few black lives that are killed by white policemen?” Here’s a better question: How, we wonder, will the country ever get beyond its stunted discourse about racialized violence when people like Mr. Giuliani continue to try to change the subject?.... .... Unnerved by black anger, Americans like Mr. Giuliani cling to false equivalencies. They have, for example, defamed the Black Lives Matter movement as a “war on cops.” (Tell that to the protesters in Dallas who smiled for photos with officers who were protecting their march.) The debate is full of such untruths and misdirections. There is the colossal Texas lie, the one that says a “good guy with a gun” can always stop a bad guy with a gun (in Dallas, where some marchers and bystanders were armed, it took a bomb). There is Mr. Giuliani’s ludicrous suggestion that black people don’t know they need to be careful around cops, or somehow are complicit in their brutalizing.... .... We can only hope that in the heat and anger of this wretched summer, Americans’ impulse to pull together is stronger than the divisiveness of race-baiting moralists...

Speaking of race-baiters...a nytimes.com search suggests the Times has not once used that term to describe the truly inflammatory Al Sharpton, the professional racial agitator turned MSNBC host. In fact, the paper has a history of fawning over Sharpton, a long-time controversial left-wing racial activist in New York City. Sharpton supported the rape hoax of Tawana Brawley against the NYPD, and referred to Hasidic Jews as “diamond merchants” after the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn in 1991 – events rarely if ever chronicled in the paper’s many favorable write-ups of the man.

Perhaps most serious was the aftermath of his racially inflammatory store protest in Harlem in 1995. As the Daily Caller explained, Sharpton sided with a black record store owner against the Jewish owner of Freddie’s Fashion Mart, spouting: “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Later a protester set fire to the store, and seven employees died of smoke inhalation.

Bizarrely, the Times has even written a story on the inflammatory Sharpton warning others against “race-baiting”: “The Rev. Al Sharpton sent out a stern warning on Saturday against race-baiting in the contest for the 13th Congressional District in New York.”

And a 2006 article suggested Sharpton’s “race-baiting” days were over -- though if you rely on the Times, they had never started: “Once labeled a race-baiting firebrand, Mr. Sharpton is now considered to be closer to the center of the broader leadership group.”