Mediaboss Marketing

What the hell is The New York Times doing employing a climate-denying goon?

Last week, The New York Times ran the debut of columnist Bret Stephens, whose skepticism of Donald Trump was apparently enough for him to qualify as One of the Good Conservatives that the Times loves to showcase on their op-ed page. Anyway, Stephens is also a skeptic of global warming, and his opening salvo was filled with the kind of junk science and No one can really predict the future! claptrap that climate deniers love to deploy when smoothing out a worldview that is undeniably wrong. He even used Hillary Clintons election loss as an example of the fallacy of relying on science because well, because no right-wing argument is complete without sticking a shiv into Hillarys corpse.

This column was met with a great deal of negativity, and for good reason. Here we have august New York Times, positing themselves as defenders of truth in a post-truth political era, but deciding to give prominent space to a fancy imbecile. The blowback was so strong that the Timess public editor, Liz Spayd, weighed in today. Now, the obvious lesson that Spayd should have taken from this whole episode was DONT HIRE A FUCKING CLIMATE DENIER. But no. Spayds takeaway was that perhaps liberals were too harsh on Stephens. Maybe we were all too harsh on each other, guys!

Readers, on the other hand, face the serious test of whether they can show tolerance for views they dont like, even those they fear are dangerous.

Read that again and tell me it makes a lick of sense. Im supposed to be tolerant of dangerous views? Is that really as big of a problem as the dangerous view itself? Readers, on the other hand, face a SERIOUS TEST of whether or not they can be open to the idea of destroying the moon. This whole episode is a perfect example of The New York Timess steadfast dedication to the Some people say X, while others say Y! form of analysis, and its a grim reminder that the Times exists not to make readers smarter, but to make readers FEEL like theyre smarter, and that goes for liberal and conservative readers alike.

This is how they end up trotting out a prudish bozo like Ross Douthat to be like, Hey, the French lady who wants to ban yarmulkes might have some good ideas, maybe? And its how they trot out another bozo like Stephens presenting a view on climate change that isnt a view at all, but rather a categorical untruth, and then allow him to buff and shine that view until it satisfies whatever niche audience wants their awful worldview to be legitimized by the paper of record. The Times wants to report the news, but they also want to be polite, and fair, which means indulging those who do not deserve to be indulged. This is especially true of Stephens.

Did all this negative criticism teach Stephens that he was, you know, wrong? Of course not. No, what Stephens learned was that liberals can begasp!nasty!

And, true to any standard Professional Right Wing Yakker, he displays a perverse pride in upsetting readers who have ample reason to be upset. Every feather ruffled is a prize to be treasured:

The idea that liberals are intolerant of dissenting opinion has been a hobbyhorse of the right for decades. Every time conservatives are faced with rational blowback, they go, OH WOW, LOOK HOW HYSTERICAL THESE LIBERALS ARE! YOU GUYS ARE COMING OFF A LITTLE HOSTILE HERE! Rush Limbaugh brings up liberal anger on the hour every hour, and its a funny complaint coming from the kind of people who just won an election riding on the back of Nazi Frog Twitter, and who tend to react with outrage at, for example, the sight of two black people hosting SportsCenter together. I really dont need their criticism of liberal manners validated by the Times when its so old and tired.

More important, I have every right to be a complete dick about all this. I have every right to lay into Stephens for being a preening asshat and promoting ideasand I hate even calling his bullshit an ideathat will literally destroy the planet. I have every right to be intolerant and strident toward people who are wrong, and toward people like Spayd who coddle the Bret Stephens of the world and think they can politely stammer their way through American democracy committing suicide. Her whole response to this fiasco is Lets all just agree to disagree and go have ice cream! and its disgraceful coming from that papers public editor.

How has being nice helped liberals thus far, anyway? Conservatives just took over every branch of government with one of the most hateful men on Earth as their standard-bearer. Republicans have already legalized river pollution, allowed Internet companies to violate your privacy, and are hell-bent on taking your grandmas penicillin away from her. And yet, over and over again, its liberals who are the intolerant ones, and its liberals who are supposed to play nice and reach out to the white voters who will HAPPILY reject them so long as Republicans are offering a platform of guilt-free racism as an alternative.

Fuck all that. I want you to watch something that youve probably seen already: Its the video of Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings going off on Oregon Rep. Greg Walden:

I dont have to be nice for nobody when youre being nasty to poor people. See now, theres a man who gets it. Theres a man who understands that the proper and logical response to the Republican agendawith all its climate denial and repression and open corruptionis FUCCCCCKKKKK YOUUUUUUUU. It is not, Hey, lets hear out this fella who wants to rob us blind! Did we not just come out of an election season that highlighted the dangers of softening the edges of dangerous people? Did it not take the Times AGES to finally point out that the presidentwho is a liaris a liar? The Stephens episode shows that they still havent really learned their lesson. Above all, it shows that meekness is not a boon to liberalism, especially when shitbags like Stephens are demanding it.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS ONE

More here:
Bret Stephens Is Why Liberals Have Every Right to Be Dicks - GQ Magazine