“But for heaven’s sake, it was a tweet”
Oh this is interesting. I wondered if I’d written anything about Bret Stephens here before so I did a search and I’ll be darned, look what I found from April 2018:
But sometimes a person’s worst tweets, like a person’s worst blurts or jokes or exclamations, tell you something.
Expressing a belief in a tweet – or on Facebook or Instagram – does not make that belief any less yours. That’s why I found it so odd when New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote an open letter to Williamson this weekend, apologizing to him over having his character “assassinated”.
“I jumped at your abortion comment, but for heaven’s sake, it was a tweet. When you write a whole book on the need to execute the tens of millions of American women who’ve had abortions, then I’ll worry,” Stephens wrote.
Easy for him; he’s not among the people Williamson would like to see hanged.
The first and last sentences are mine, the quoted passage is Jessica Valenti in The Guardian. The subject was a columnist at the Atlantic who was fired when staff learned that he had argued that women who get abortions should be executed.
So to Bret Stephens a tweet saying – not as a joke – that women should be executed for having abortions is merely a tweet, but a tweet saying – as a joke – that he is a bedbug is not mere at all. One the one hand, they (seriously) should be executed; on the other hand, he (heh) is a bedbug. It’s the second that he thinks really matters.
Dang. Beware the distortions of vanity, my friends, for they are the very spawn of the bedbug.
Right, so Kevin Williamson, a widely-read professional opinion writer, must be given The Benefit of the Doubt in called for women to be hanged, but a professor with a small Twitter following should be presumed to be … what… advocating “genocide” of … conservative NYT columnists?
Incidentally, not only did it turn out that Williamson repeated his “hang ’em high” view in an extensive podcast interview, but his ex-wife recently wrote a piece on Medium confirming that he held these and many other odious views, as well as being abusive. I can’t really recommend the piece, though, as it is a rather badly-written rambling mess from someone who wants to be a professional writer herself.
There’s also something weird about Stephens’s “you wouldn’t dare say that to my wife and kids!” taunt. At least it’s a variation from the stale, faux-macho “you wouldn’t dare say that to my face” implied threat. But it’s an odd thing when you think about it. Is he invoking the stereotype that his wife, being a mere woman, has delicate ears and only a terrible ruffian would repeat such things in the presence of a lady (or child… same thing, you know)? Or is he saying “I have managed to persuade a woman to marry me and bear my children, so I must be a good man and not deserving of your insult,” as if there aren’t assholes with wives and kids? Or is he saying that he should be judged by how (you should assume that) the Stephens household welcomes guests, as opposed to the things he uses one of the world’s largest soapboxes to say?
It is weird, isn’t it. He reminds me of the other maudlin what’s done to other people is meh but what’s done to me is TRAGIC Bret(t). “I’m a fine normal upstanding adult with spouse and children and basketball coaching and EVERYTHING.” It’s like respectability-tokens.
I was reading a book recently by someone who was examining the beef packing industry. He met someone who was a ruthless businessman, and managed to get an invitation to interview him. When he got to his office, he found he had a wife and kids and had taken in a young orphan and given him a new chance, so all of a sudden, he must not be a ruthless businessman.
A lot of people seem to think Ebenezer Scrooge, alone and childless, with his woman leaving him, is the archetype for all ruthless monstrous businessmen. They forget about the banality of evil. And the ruthless monstrous businessmen take advantage of that. See? My wife. My children. My dog. My fish. I’m good. Don’t look at that hotel of mine that just caught fire and burned up all my tenants because I didn’t follow fire safety code. Did I mention my wife? My children? My cat?
It is said that Hitler really loved dogs. All that Holocaust business and the 1939-45 kerfuffle shouldn’t be allowed to smear his otherwise excellent reputation.
AoS: He also banned Fox hunting. Which makes anyone who wants to bring it back quite literally Worse Than Hitler.