Yesterday, we told you about Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who saw Ilya Shapiro’s genuinely anti-racist take on Joe Biden’s commitment to nominating a SCOTUS justice to replace Stephen Breyer based on race and sex and decided that Shapiro deserved to be punished.
I hate to draw attention to this troll because attention is what he craves. But now that @GeorgetownLaw has hired him, I feel an obligation to condemn his overt and nauseating racism, which has been a matter of public record for some time. I am deeply ashamed of my alma mater. pic.twitter.com/OQaHPzZ8gK
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) January 27, 2022
Stern was deeply ashamed of his alma mater. Fortunately, thanks to Stern’s efforts, Georgetown Law sent out an email denouncing Shapiro’s “appalling” racist and sexist thoughts despite the fact that nothing Shapiro wrote indicated that he is either racist or sexist.
Mark Joseph Stern is paid to provide accurate information and analysis to his audience.
Here, he’s deliberately misleading in order to try to get someone fired. Bad at his job, mouse of a man. https://t.co/4auSFteiNT
— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) January 27, 2022
And now that he’s been called out for being a petty and dishonest little troll, Stern’s trying to pretend that his intentions were pure as the driven snow:
I have not called on @GeorgetownLaw to fire Ilya Shapiro and I don't intend to. In my view, GULC should not make any hasty decisions about his future at this moment. The last thing anyone needs is another alleged martyr of cancel culture. https://t.co/cXOyPLcmND
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) January 27, 2022
This friggin’ guy.
“In my view, GULC should not make any hasty decisions about his future at this moment.”
This implies that there is legitimate case for firing him for political speech. https://t.co/Oh8eOoAyNU
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) January 28, 2022
“I didn’t call for him to be fired, I just said his tweet was so racist you could understand the school deciding to fire him.”
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) January 28, 2022
He literally tagged Georgetown Law in his tweet.
He argued it was bad for Yale Law to punish Trent Colbert because it fed conservative victimhood narratives. Not because, you know, the guy did nothing wrong.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) January 28, 2022
Any intellectually honest person understood exactly what point Shapiro was trying to make. Stern deliberately misrepresented Shapiro’s remarks in order to get Shapiro into trouble. And now he’s trying to convince us that he’s the good guy in this scenario.
Please.
Yes you did. https://t.co/6QCwinVVH0
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) January 28, 2022
"I didn't try to cancel this guy who I just tried to cancel."
Maybe this stuff works on the Slate Slack channel, but I don't think anyone else is buying it. https://t.co/KrbZwuLeEr
— Robert Tracinski (@Tracinski) January 28, 2022
You know what you did, Mark. And you’re proud of it. So be a man and own it.
“Alleged martyr of cancel culture” https://t.co/VfsJXF6hc0
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) January 28, 2022
"alleged martyr"
I can see what is most important to this weasel. https://t.co/A4scH6sKCk
— Mars The Avenger (@xynkox) January 28, 2022
Stern chose those words very, very carefully.
Stern: I don’t want the guy I tried to get fired to be fired because if he’s fired then people will notice that I got him fired and they might think that cancel culture exists. https://t.co/1iWC8d07YO
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) January 28, 2022
The only reason you mentioned GULC was to get him fired. Own up to being a weasel. Or, you can accept Ilya's sincere apology and be a man. https://t.co/AOQxQ1tMQs
— Nathan Wurtzel (@NathanWurtzel) January 28, 2022
So you just misrepresented what he said to accuse him of "overt and nauseating" racism while tagging his employer with no expectations anything would happen to him? You were disingenuous then, and you're disingenuous now. https://t.co/d4sCHSXF2u
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) January 28, 2022
And he’ll be disingenuous tomorrow.
https://t.co/AYLWc3FZZW pic.twitter.com/ECn50ad7Ln
— NoLongerPapaP (@NoLongerPapaP) January 28, 2022
We know what you're doing and we know the kind of person you have revealed yourself to be.
— AmishDude (@TheAmishDude) January 27, 2022
***
Update:
If you were curious, the answer is yes: Mark Joseph Stern is still an ass.
Not surprised we got to "poor Ilya is the real victim here." But gotta admit I'm dazzled at how fast we got there.
— Matthew Stiegler (@MatthewStiegler) January 28, 2022
I am more dazzled by the argument that publicly criticizing a public figure constitutes an inherent attempt to get him fired—even if you do not demand, and in fact vocally oppose, his firing. The mental gymnastics deployed to make Ilya the real victim are pathetic and shameless.
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) January 28, 2022
The key difference is that you tagged his employer.
— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 28, 2022
What possible reason could Stern have had for tagging Georgetown Law if he wasn’t trying to get Shapiro fired from Georgetown Law?
If we take this logic seriously (and no one should) then the end result is that no one can ever criticize a public figure because doing so amounts to canceling them. It is such a brazenly bad-faith effort to shield a very specific segment of the commentariat from criticism.
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) January 28, 2022
Brazenly bad-faith actor, heal thyself.
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