A funny thing happened to Bret Stephens on his way to free speech nirvana; he tripped over himself. He used to be the philosopher king occupying the castle of foreign punditry at the Wall Street Journal. When Donald Trump got elected President of the United States, and Stephens attacked him, he got kicked out of the Journal.
Bret Stephens went to occupy a
smaller castle of punditry at the New York Times, and now seems to be in
trouble there too. Will he stay? Will he go? If he does, where to? The coming
days will tell. Meanwhile, here is what happened to Stephens at the New York
Times. He wrote a column that the publisher refused to publish. The editors of
the New York Post obtained a copy of the column and published it in full.
The column appeared in the New
York Post on February 11, 2021 under the title: “Read the column the New York
Times did not want you to read,” and was signed by Bret Stephens. Below the
title, the editors of the Post explained how it happened that they got a hold
of the column, but did not say if they paid Bret Stephens for publishing it.
Stephens started the dissed
column by telling of the incident at the NY Times that prompted him to write
it. He said that a veteran writer at the Times “suddenly departed” when it was
revealed that during a correspondence with someone, he mentioned the racial
slur that was used by that person. He wrote to ask how and why she used that
racial slur. Upon the revelation of this correspondence, the editor-in-chief
investigated the incident, decided that the writer was not being malicious and
that he would not be fired.
That decision displeased other
staffers at the New York Times, so much so that more than 150 of them signed a
protest letter. This caused the same editor-in-chief, together this time with
the managing editor, to reverse the earlier decision. And they explained their
new decision as follows: “We do not tolerate racist language regardless of
intent”.
This is what irritated Bret
Stephens, and he explained why it did. But first, he made clear that his
argument had nothing to do with any part of the story except for the three
words: “Regardless of intent,” that appeared in the explanation of the two
editors. And so, Stephens asked: “Do any of us want to live in a world, or work
in a field, where intent is categorically ruled out as a mitigating factor? I
hope not.” He went on to give an explanation that unfolded as follows:
“Journalists try to perceive
intent, examine motive, furnish context, explore nuance, explain varying shades
of meaning, forgive fallibility, make allowances for irony and humor, slow the
rush to judgment and preserve vital intellectual distinctions. Journalism does
these things in order to teach both its practitioners and consumers to be
thoughtful”.
This sounds good in the
abstract, but let's consider a place –– a real place in the real world –– such
as an office, a school, a shop floor, a store, a mine, a wheat field or what
have you. It is a place where many people interact with each other, and
something goes wrong the way they sometimes do. Most of the time those in
charge calm the situation and bring it back to normal. But once in a while,
what goes wrong, gets beyond the ability of those in charge to calm the
situation. To prevent the problem from spinning out of control, they take
drastic measures, one of them being, “no ifs or buts; three strikes and you're
out,” or even, “one strike and you’re out”.
This is what happened at the
New York Times. First, the editor-in-chief applied the Stephens reasoning, and
has allowed for intent, motive, context, nuance, shades of meaning,
fallibility, irony, humor, slowing down of judgment and the preservation of
vital intellectual distinctions. He concluded that the offending writer had no
intention to offend, and exonerated him. But then, more than 150 lower staffers
said something that must have gone like this: “Hey, wait a minute, you guys in
the ivory tower; you may not feel the heat as we do here in the trenches, but
get it into your heads that we're sitting on a powder keg. As much as we try to
avoid it, this thing is about to explode unless you immediately implement a one
strike and you are out kind of policy.” The Times editors heard the message
loud and clear, and acted on it.
Yes, this is not the ideal
solution because it can be abused. But to find a better solution, we need to
get to the bottom of the illness and start working on a permanent cure. So, we
ask: Does the Stephens article provide any clue as to how we may proceed? The
answer is maybe. Here is how he views the situation:
“A journalism that turns words
into totems, and totems into fears, is an impediment to clear thinking and
proper understanding. So too is a journalism that attempts to proscribe entire
fields of expression. There are people––including myself––who think that
anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. It's official policy at the State
Department and the British Labour Party. If anti-Semitism is a form of racism,
and racist language is intolerable at The Times, might we someday forbid
advocacy of anti-Zionist ideas, and refuse to allow them to be discussed? The
idea is absurd. But that's the terrain we now risk entering”.
No, Bret Stephens, that's not
the terrain we now risk entering; it's the terrain we entered half a century
ago. It did not happen by accident that the State Department and the British
Labour Party have adopted that absurdity as official policy. It happened
because hundreds of thousands like yourself –– operating as a worldwide
syndicate of Jewish horror, for a period of 438,000 hours stretched over 18,250
days –– labored fanatically to make it happen.
Like you say, we are now
living in a culture of cancellations (boy do I believe it is true,) firings,
public humiliations and unforgiving judgments … but all of this happened thanks
to the effort that you and those of your ilk have exerted both in Israel and
America.
If you want to lead us out of this dark defile –– like you seem to indicate you want to do –– there is only one way to do it. Embrace intellectual honesty and adopt it as a firm belief never to be violated. When ready, tell it like it is, and let the chips fall where they may, even if they come down like a ton of bricks on your head and those of your ilk.