The perpetually offended snowflakes on the left that claim they are all about "diversity," have now been triggered because the New York Times' editorial page editor, James Bennet, decided to hire anti-Trump conservative writers to offer "diversity," of opinion about political issues in their op-ed pages, to balance out the liberal lean of the paper itself.
NYT READERS WANT THEIR SAFE SPACE BACK!
We have been watching a cultural war play out over the last months at the New York Times, where the liberal writers and readers are bitterly complaining about Bennet's decision to offer viewpoints that do not conform to their liberal ideology. Offended employees have leaked recordings of internal discussions to Huffington Post, while far left websites are whining about being yanked out of their safe spaces by seeing news about the "intolerant left," on college campuses attacking free speech, and how "collective victimhood" has become the norm for social justice warriors, just to name a couple op-ed NYT articles that have liberal website Slate declaring "Our bubbles have been popped. Now can we move on?"
We'll get to the articles that Slate is whining about in a minute, but first, in order to see the what liberals are finding the most offensive, we lok at Bennet's reasoning for wanting to offer "diversity" of opinion in the editorial pages.
Most of our readers [inaudible] are liberal. I think if we show we take conservatives seriously and we take ideas seriously there, we get a lot more moderates paying attention to what The New York Times has to say. I think we lose the moderates completely if we just show that we think the conservatives are just, that there’s no point in even engaging their ideas or to debate with them.
If ANP readers think that is a reasonable assertion and goal, well, liberals vehemently disagree as that one quote is actually being called one of "The Worst Parts of New York Times Opinion Editor James Bennet's Leaked Q&A With Staffers," as headlined, and quoted by the leftist website Splinter.
While the leaked transcript of the December 2017 meeting between Bennet and staffers, gives an overview first by Bennet on his vision of what he wants from the editorial pages, then a Q&A session after, the small portion of the from the beginning of his statement, is obviously the root of the issue with the subsequent complaints by progressives about the articles themselves stemming from the result of Bennet's vision.
James Bennet: So the op-ed page was created to do a bunch of different things. But it was partly because this other paper was going out of business, and the feeling — in this very New York-centric moment, The New York Times obviously was an entirely print-centric world — was, there’s nobody to keep us honest anymore. You know, we’ll take our positions and there’s nobody arguing the other side. And so the Times very deliberately went out to create a space in our own universe where there would be people taking the other side and where we would, again, be able to cover — and you can see this in the initial statement for the op-ed page — we engage with the culture, engage with a wide range of subjects. And that’s remained the goal of the page and the ecology of the opinion report over time. But what you’ve seen is the kind of regression to the mean, I think, that takes place. And in many ways we became more and more homogenous as the years went by. I mean, all the work was excellent. But I think a degree of sameness set in and to the point where it now — to grievously overstate the case, the idea of debate is, you have one guy for the Brookings Institution and one guy from the Council of Foreign Relations arguing in the page.
That ladies and gentlemen is why liberals hate Bennet. He created a virtual "free speech zone" on the NYT campus (the paper) where opinions that were not part of the liberal "bubble" could be represented.
David Brooks published a column in the New York Times on Friday complaining about the manner in which '[s]tudents across the country,' having become obsessed with 'group identity,' are engaged in 'tribalism' and the oppression of dissenting viewpoints on campus.
The irony of the Slate writer complaining about the NYT offering "dissenting viewpoints," by whining about an article detailing the oppression of "dissenting viewpoints" as his first example, seems to escape the writer.
In fact multiple examples used by Slate are articles highlighting the attack against free speech on college campuses and elsewhere, due to identity politics and the "victimhood" of social justices warriors, without understanding that those articles describe the exact mindset Slate is using by complaining about the NYT "free speech zone," meaning their editorial pages and op-eds.
Here is a list of articles that offends the Slate writer, along with his descriptions: (Note- Links to the NYT pieces will be Archive.is links, since NYT offers limited free articles before going behind a paywall)
• “We’re All Fascists Now,” Bari Weiss, March 7—a complaint that “leftists,” particularly “on campuses,” are attacking the ideals of “free speech.”
• “Free Speech and the Necessity of Discomfort,” Bret Stephens, Feb. 22—a complaint, delivered originally as a speech at the University of Michigan, about intolerant behavior by the “progressive left.”
• “On Venezuela, Where Are Liberals?”, Bret Stephens, Feb. 15*—a complaint that “campus activists” on “the left” are too forgiving of political repression abroad.
• “The Rise of the Amphibians,” David Brooks, Feb. 15—a complaint, in part, about society’s tendency toward conceptions of “tribal identity” that cultivate “mistrust, division and emotional frozenness.”
• “The Retreat to Tribalism,” David Brooks, Jan. 1—a complaint that “identity politics” fomented on campus are “tear[ing] a diverse nation apart.”
• “What’s Wrong With Radicalism,” David Brooks, Dec. 11—a complaint, in part, about “woke activists” on “the left” who are fixated on “identity.”
• “Mugabe and Other Leftist Heroes,” Bret Stephens, Nov. 17—a complaint that academics and others on “the left” are too forgiving of political repression abroad.
• “The Siege Mentality Problem,” David Brooks, Nov. 13—a complaint about the politics of “collective victimhood” espoused by, among others, “campus social justice warriors.”
• “America’s Best University President,” Bret Stephens, Oct. 20—a complaint that “the left” is assaulting “free speech” and creating an atmosphere of “Orwellian double-think” on too many campuses.
• “When Progressives Embrace Hate,” Bari Weiss, Aug. 1—a complaint that the organizers of the January 2017 Women’s March are too forgiving of, among other things, political repression abroad.
All issues Independent Media has been documenting consistently for years, finally being brought to the attention of NYT readers without the liberal spin and justifications for those behaviors, and the "progressive" left are NOT happy about it.
The Slate writer ends his piece with a little stomp of his foot and a demand that the paper "move on" and go back to being a safe space where he doesn't have to see or read about issues Conservatives find important:
When James Bennet and his defenders are asked why he keeps pumping this one type of take so relentlessly into the Discourse, they respond with answers in the vein of “It’s important to challenge readers with beliefs from ‘outside the bubble.’ ” So I’d like to say this, formally, on behalf of Times readers: Thank you for introducing the invigorating diversity of opinions about left/campus speech held by affluent Pennsylvania native and Columbia graduate Bari Weiss, affluent Pennsylvania native/University of Chicago graduate/Yale fellow David Brooks, Yale graduate James Bennet, and University of Chicago graduate Bret Stephens into our bubbles. Our bubbles have been popped. Now can we move on?
Slate is not alone, as other liberal sites are even more blunt and crude in their bitterness that their bastion of bubbled group-think has been invaded with *GASP* other points of view, as evidenced by liberal commentator Atrios over at Eschaton.
One reason they all keep writing these things is as a show of solidarity for each other. One (usually Bari or Bret) does something especially stupid and offensive, gets criticized, and then someone else writes a "I'll troll the libs too just to show them!" column, and then on and on and on and on.. As in, f*ck you, we write for the New York Times, you don't, and we'll never be fired and we can say what we want no matter how irrelevant or stupid.
Again with the irony.... displaying the exact hubris and intolerance that Bennet was addressing in hiring conservative writers to offer viewpoints from the "other side," by asserting any opinion that does not match their far left liberal ideology is therefore automatically "irrelevant or stupid."
NYT STAFFERS BECOME SNOWFLAKES
Liberal readers and websites are not the only ones whining about Bennet's push for more ideological balance, as NYT employees and liberal writers for the paper are also anonymously offering quotes and assessments about how they feel about allowing diverse opinions in the editorial pages, with Vanity Fair dramatically quoting one person as saying "The newsroom feels embarrassed," and Huffington Post quoting one employee saying Bennet's answers during that December meeting were "equivocal bullshit that didn’t really address that the opinion section abuses fact and elevates white male conservative voices under the guise of 'diversity of thought'."
The Federalist offers a suggestion to Bennet about holding just one, final meeting with the NYT employees, and some advice about what he should say:
“I thought I would stand here like this so you could see if I was really as big a sonuvabitch as you think I am.
Seriously, I have noticed that your internal criticism of me and a transcript from one of these meetings has been leaked to the HuffPost. Moreover, it appears that my efforts to communicate with you about what the Opinion section is and does have been judged to be ‘equivocal bulls–t.’ So I’ll stop equivocating.
I have a question for you: Do you hear laughter? Because I can hear it echoing down from a few blocks away at Fox News HQ.
It’s the laughter of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and yes, even Tomi Lahren. The monologues practically write themselves. The once hard-boiled journalists at The New York Times have outed themselves as a bunch of whining snowflakes, demanding that the newspaper of record become a safe space, free of any micro-aggressions that might trigger their precious, precious feelings.
It’s the laughter of all of those benighted rubes in flyover country watching Fox News and listening to their talk shows on their crappy AM stations. The laughter stings, because they’re absolutely right.
The battle between the liberal snowflakes and the editorial page editor has made it to the pages of multiple other outlets. The criticisms and demands from the liberal snowflakes demanding the NYT once again be a place where conservative thought and opinion be banished so that readers and staffers can have their whole "campus" be a safe space free of any opinion that doesn't conform to theirs, is the perfect example of why Bennet's decision to offer ideological balance, even if just in the editorial pages for now, was exactly what needed to be done.
The fact that liberals and the NYT newsroom writers are complaining about conservative writers documenting the attempts of the intolerant left to suppress free speech they do not agree with, by displaying the exact same behavior and demanding the NYT suppress the free speech of those conservative writers, is the definition of insanity.
Even more disturbing is they don't even understand that they are proving the conservative NYT op-ed writers right.
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