The first time The New York Times’ Bari Weiss showed up on our radar was after the website Babe published that #MeToo hit piece on comic Aziz Ansari. Was he guilty of sexual assault or just of being a bad date? Weiss sided with Ansari, writing an opinion piece called, “Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader.”
Weiss was hired by The Times in 2017 and is considered one of the more conservative voices at the paper, so naturally the readership hates her, and according to The Huffington Post, employees at the paper hate her too.
The current crisis? It involves a deleted tweet that we’ll let Weiss explain:
Do you need another sign of civilization's end? Here's one: I tweeted "Immigrants: we get the job done" with a video of Mirai Nagasu's triple axel. The line is a Hamilton reference. I know she was born in Cali. Her parents are immigrants. I was celebrating her and them. (1/2)
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) February 12, 2018
For this tweet I am being told I am a racist, a ghoul and that I deserve to die. So I deleted the tweet. That's where we are.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) February 12, 2018
Apparently Weiss was guilty of “otherizing” Nagasu, an American citizen by birth.
Many people have similarly celebrated her story. For example: https://t.co/liPqq26pHX
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) February 12, 2018
Weiss is absolutely right about that. Check out the Women’s March’s tweet on the same subject:
Congratulations to @mirai_nagasu, a daughter of immigrants, and now the first American woman to land a triple axel at the #Olympics.
Immigrants make America great! pic.twitter.com/ydaY9r4xmG
— Women's March (@womensmarch) February 12, 2018
ThinkProgress took the immigration angle even further in its coverage:
If it were up to Trump, these U.S. Olympians wouldn’t have made history https://t.co/1vSphP2cwE pic.twitter.com/vyxHFFCJ8o
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) February 14, 2018
In a piece in HuffPost Wednesday, Ashley Feinberg (who notably was “not owned” by Sen. Ted Cruz after his Twitter account zinged her over at Deadspin) published some leaked transcripts from Slack, The Times’ internal group chat platform, showing how unhappy people inside the organization are with Weiss.
laughing extremely hard at this dumbass NYT employee who thinks a stupid tweet from Bari Weiss is similar to Japanese internmenthttps://t.co/KPL6smlEE3 pic.twitter.com/lTJOuQsSNL
— Yaniv Kaufmann (@notwokieleaks) February 14, 2018
It’s true; another employee saw Weiss’ tweet and “felt that tweet denied Mirai her full citizenship just as the internment [of Japanese-Americans during World War II] did.”
The reactions to that Bari Weiss tweet are so wildly out of proportion to the offense. She was trying to be woke on immigration but said something stupid and now people are throwing around accusations of her causing Japanese internment flashbacks
— Yaniv Kaufmann (@notwokieleaks) February 14, 2018
The people in that article are desperately trying to claim they're victims, but the fact they even care about this makes it so extraordinarily obvious they're children of immense privilege
This is not the kind of thing actual victims give a shit about
— Yaniv Kaufmann (@notwokieleaks) February 14, 2018
And that's not even getting into another issue, which is the fact freakouts like this no longer even care what the speaker's intention was
So someone tries to make pro-immigration points and still gets shit on because of the flawed way she tried to shoehorn it into a story
— Yaniv Kaufmann (@notwokieleaks) February 14, 2018
There was obviously no racist intention. She muddled a point she was trying to make and clearly meant nothing offensive by it
It's funny to laugh at her, but if you're actually offended by that you're just looking for reasons to take offense
— Yaniv Kaufmann (@notwokieleaks) February 14, 2018
This is a good thread despite the fact that I don't think Bari's tweet was stupid. I just think it was read in the most uncharitable way possible because leftists are ragemad about her other opinions. https://t.co/XphXVCDdws
— neontaster ? (@neontaster) February 14, 2018
and that she's actually been persuasive in those arguments… https://t.co/lVMkQivqm5
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) February 14, 2018
Some are coming to Weiss’ defense, although Feinberg seems to think they’re all white.
probably just a coincidence that everyone coming to bari weiss’s defense is white
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) February 14, 2018
Area white person has opinion on subject that she contends white people should not have opinions about. https://t.co/tty0UzagME
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) February 14, 2018
Probably just a coincidence that everyone attacking her are liberal and idiots ready to attack anyone who isn't down with everything they want. #Caring https://t.co/QOTfrde127
— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) February 14, 2018
Like following a script… https://t.co/dpt3ihjW1q
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) February 14, 2018
Fuckin clockwork https://t.co/HBjscRKovC
— Grant (@GrantGambling) February 14, 2018
I love how openly racist liberals are. https://t.co/plAJFgYQO7
— EducatédHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) February 14, 2018
I guess I'm, like, half-allowed to have an opinion on the matter? https://t.co/lX4P2w2DE9
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) February 14, 2018
probably just a coincidence that everyone going after her is a smug leftist https://t.co/qoUmZyPfVl
— Ben McDonald (@Bmac0507) February 14, 2018
Imagine actually thinking like this. https://t.co/pv0w65XnHA
— Adam Rubenstein (@RubensteinAdam) February 14, 2018
“Conservative” Bret Stephens has survived at The New York Times despite his inaugural column last Spring driving subscribers to near-madness; we imagine Weiss will be OK.
Journalists usually receive leaks. But for the colleagues of @bariweiss, they slime her anonymously and leak it to a rival publication. Over what? A tweet that quotes Hamilton in praise of the daughter of immigrants. Pathetic is too kind a word. https://t.co/BIy1TEjHYB
— Eli Lake (@EliLake) February 14, 2018
As a real immigrant, and the father of a half-Chinese, half-Iranian first-generation American, let me just say: The pile-on against my friend and ex-colleague @bariweiss is malicious, wrong and disgusting.
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) February 14, 2018
Related:
The jury is out on whether Aziz Ansari gets a pass from the #MeToo movement
NYT hits NEW LOW with ‘slut-shaming’ headline on Nikki Haley op-ed
