Imagine if I tweeted that I wished to ‘cancel black people’?

Or boasted: ‘It’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old black men.’

Or spoke of ‘dumbass f***ing black people marking up the internet like dogs p*ssing on fire hydrants.’

Now imagine me also tweeting ‘all women must die’, ‘all women are equally garbage in my eyes’ and ‘all women are trash that will never be loved.’

Imagine if I tweeted anything like this replacing 'white' with 'black'

How long do you think I would stay in my job as Editor-at-Large of DailyMail.com - one second or two?

And how much vitriolic, sanctimonious criticism would the New York Times pour on my head after I was fired – one bucket or two?

Finally, imagine the ridicule that would envelop me if I tried to excuse my disgusting, loathsome, racist misogyny by saying I was only responding to trolls with satirical ‘counter- trolling’?

All of this sounds vaguely preposterous, right?

I mean, no journalist in their right mind, given the current hyper politically-correct climate world we live in, would even contemplate behaving in such a manner?

Yet that is exactly what Sarah Jeong, a well-known Asian writer at The Verge, did.

Only she was talking about white men.

And rather than being fired, Ms Jeong has just been HIRED by the New York Times to be their new star tech writer.

The New York Times HIRED Sarah Jeong (pictured), despite old tweets she had written mocking white people

It would be quite funny if it didn’t highlight such a pathetic stinking hypocrisy at the heart of America’s mainstream media.

For the same New York Times has led the charge in constantly berating and attacking President Trump for racist, misogynist and abusive rhetoric.

The paper, whose subscriptions have quadrupled since it morphed into a relentless Trump-bashing organ, repeatedly beseeches the President to speak in a less inflammatory manner, professing to abhor the way he has coarsened public discourse.

Yet here it is hiring someone who when it comes to hysterical rabid racist sexist tweeting makes Trump look like a choirboy.

The NYT said it was aware of Jeong’s vile social media history, but explained: ‘Her journalism and the fact she is a young Asian woman have made her a subject of frequent online harassment. For a period of time, she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers. She sees now that this approach only served to feed the vitriol we too often see on social media. She regrets it and The Times does not condone it.’

Jeong – in contrast to Guardians of the Galaxy film director James Gunn who was just fired by Disney for old offensive tweets - made no apology.

Instead, she said: ‘I deeply regret that I mimicked the language of my harassers.’

Ah, I see.

So Ms Jeong is the poor unwitting VICTIM here…

Of course! How silly of me to think otherwise.

What a load of absurd, handwringing, delusional poppycock.

Let’s be very clear here: if someone calls me a ‘f***ing white b*astard’ on Twitter, as often happens if I write about race issues, I don’t respond by calling my abuser a ‘f***ing black b*stard’ – because that would just make me as racist and abusive as them.

(I can 100% guarantee that when I post this column, I will be subjected to all manner of racist, sexist abuse)

Jeong knows that, the New York Times knows that, everyone knows that.

Everyone also knows that if Donald Trump ever pulled that stunt, they would all scream blue murder so loudly and for so long, their vocal chords would explode.

The NYT said it was confident that Jeong will be ‘an important voice’ for the paper going forward.

The NYT said it was aware of Jeong’s vile social media history, but it was confident that Jeong will be ‘an important voice’ for the paper going forward

Really?

How important is it that America’s most prestigious newspaper –if you don’t believe that assertion, just hang out with any of the people who work there and they’ll soon tell you – now has such a blatantly racist man-hating voice on its staff?

The NYT hypocrisy over this goes much deeper than its attitude to President Trump’s tweets and public utterances – though Trump will gleefully cite this as further evidence of the media’s double standard.

It recently unceremoniously fired another tech writer Quinn Norton within hours of hiring her after old racist tweets she had posted were unearthed.

And the NYT’s sports pages have savagely condemned baseball fans that cheered Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Josh Hader after racial slurs emerged which he had posted on Twitter as a schoolboy.

Why were Norton and Hader not entitled to the same leniency as Jeong?

NYT hypocrisy over this goes much deeper than its attitude to Trump. It unceremoniously fired tech writer Quinn Norton (left) within hours of hiring her after old racist tweets she had posted were unearthed. And the NYT’s sports pages have savagely condemned fans that cheered Brewers pitcher Josh Hader (right) after racial slurs emerged which he had posted in school

All this comes as President Trump’s on-going war with US mainstream media plummets ever-lower depths of mutually abusive, mutually beneficial nonsense.

CNN, my old employers, spend all day every day hammering Trump in an almost exclusively negative way. Then they squeal like indignant children when Trump returns fire with fire.

Both sides know their fury is phony and based purely on self-interest.

For CNN, as with the NYT, 24/7 partisan Trump-bashing sells; ratings go up, advertising revenue surges.

For Trump, anti-press diatribes rally his base.

President Trump’s on-going war with US mainstream media plummets ever-lower depths of mutually abusive, mutually beneficial nonsense. For CNN, as with the NYT, 24/7 partisan Trump-bashing sells; ratings go up, ad revenue surges. Anti-press diatribes rally his base

I don’t agree with the President when he says the press is the ‘enemy of the people’. A free press is the absolute cornerstone of any democracy.

But where I do have some sympathy with him is the abject refusal by many in the US media to ever give him due credit for anything.

In the past week, Trump has enjoyed some significant successes – including stunning new economic growth numbers, forging a better trade deal with Europe and the return of US servicemen bodies from North Korea.

Yet CNN, which I watch regularly and still consider a fine news network, could barely bring itself to mention these positive stories, preferring to obsess about alleged Russian collusion.

That is their right, obviously.

But that certainly wasn’t how they treated Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama. I know, because I was there. Obama was afforded a far higher degree of fairness despite waging an unprecedented draconian war on the press that dwarfs anything Trump has so far done.

Yesterday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders spoke of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’.

Yesterday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders spoke of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ and I agree it's a very real thing

It’s a very real thing – I’m currently in LA, where half the people I meet spontaneously foam at the mouth at the mention of his name - and utterly self-defeating for those who suffer from it.

As I have regularly warned, perpetual outrage over everything Trump does diminishes the power of necessary outrage over things that are genuinely outrageous – like the appalling child separation immigration policy.

It’s also plays right into Trump’s hands if the same media that spends so much of its time being faux-outraged at him refuses to apply the same standards to its own staff that it demands from him.

The New York Times decision to hire racist, sexist, profanity-loving man-hater Sarah Jeong doesn’t just makes the paper look ridiculously hypocritical, it weakens them and makes Trump stronger.