Thread by @AlexandraErin

So the thing about dunking on Bret Stephens - it's fun, but it's also cathartic.

Because for years now, the right-wing has been running a multi-pronged grift that is designed to collapse the world to a single narrow set of allowed viewpoints, and it backfired on him this time.

First of all, the reason Bret Stephens has a job is a perverse kind of Affirmative Action, the only kind of Affirmative Action that works the way critics of Affirmative Action imagine it to work.

He was hired to be a "token conservative".

The reason the New York Times needs a "token conservative" is because, well, it's a liberal rag, right? So left-wing. Radical left-wing extremist hotbed. So they hire Bret Stephens. And Ross Douthat. And they constantly give editorial space to right-wing thinkers and speakers.

The perception that NYT -- a staid corporate institution so set in its ways it's called "The Old Gray Lady" -- is particularly liberal is more or less manufactured by men like Douthat and Stephens so they can get jobs there, while discrediting and diminishing liberal output.

Two prongs: shut up or discredit the liberal output, increase the conservative output, and if you'll notice... it doesn't matter who works for the NYT or who gets the column space, the criticism of it as being liberally biased *never* diminishes.

Absolutely.

Honestly? Bari Weiss is just about as reactionary an editor as they could ask for.

Conservatives rule the roost at the opinion side of the NYT and at the very least they heavily skew the coverage on the reporting side.

On college campuses, conservatives run the same game. Liberal professors espousing liberal ideals are labeled "a threat to free speech" - whole courses are deemed inimical to freedom (dare we say, politically incorrect?), whole subjects rendered taboo by conservative demands.

We can't offer trigger warnings... why, telling someone what's in a story or lecture is AGAINST FREE SPEECH. Pronouns must never be spoken of. Feminism is verboten, that's the market place of ideas means. Don't like a speaker? Protesting is THE HECKLER'S VETO.

Bret Stephens is so used to winning this game that he was very casual about CC:ing the provost on his email about speech he found offensive.

He says he had no thought of professional consequences....

...but he has not, to my knowledge, offered a better explanation.

I fully believe he did not intend to, say, demand the professor's job. I think he was content to rely on the *implication* to carry the threat.

And I believe he thought that because frequently the implication is enough. He had a whole lot more followers than his victim. He has the institutional might of the Paper of Record behind him (even referenced it in his subject line).

In truth, I believe he didn't want the offender fired any more than he wanted the offender to come and say it to his face.

What he wanted was for the other man to back down, meekly. To show that his remarks lacked courage and integrity. To be put in his place.

Now, to be very clear, I have RTed and will continue to RT people who mentioned Bret going after the man's job. Because he did. That he did so in a way that is practically ineffectual and that relied on inference rather than direct threat isn't a defense. It shows his cowardice.

It blew up in his face, though. It blew up because his victim was not cowed, his victim did not blink.

And on top of all that, his victim got the popular support of the crowd. I don't think we can ignore the privilege dynamics at play there... I think the response would have been more divided if the professor had not been a white man.

Anyway.

This is not the first time that right-wing hypocrisy on free speech has failed but it was one of the more rapid and spectacular disintegrations of their old and long-running con.

So like I said: cathartic.

So enjoy the memes. Enjoy the jokes. Share the joy.

And if you got something from this thread, tip your weird Twitter pundit.

paypal.me/AlexandraErin