Bret Stephens penned a New York Times column where he not only compares those mocking him as a “bedbug” to Nazis, he does so by deliberately misleading his readers.
Stephens’ ego kind of reminds me of a clown car.
Anyway, it has become fairly obvious that someone at the far-left New York Times is out to destroy the Never Trump columnist’s career and reputation, because there is really no other explanation for allowing him to publish this hilarious catastrophe, the latest chapter in How Bret Stephens Became a National Joke.
As you likely recall, it all started last week when news broke of actual bedbugs being discovered in the New York Times’ offices.
This news prompted an obscure academic named David Karpf to publish a tweet that said, “The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens.”
The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens. https://t.co/k4qo6QzIBW
— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 26, 2019
The tweet was a little joke between Karpf and his handful of followers. Somehow, though, Stephens found it and proceeded to freak out.
The thin-skinned columnist not only hit Karpf with what was basically an I dare you to say that to my face email, but in an obvious effort to damage Karpf’s career, Stephens cc’d Karpf’s boss!
Refusing to be big-shotted, Karpf — God bless him — made Stephens’ email public and that was all she wrote… From pillar to post, Stephens was ridiculed, and deservedly so, for being a thin-skinned tattletale.
But because an endless supply of self-regard makes it impossible to obtain wisdom, rather than apologize for being a jerk, rather than simply admit he overreacted, Stephens and his ego went on MSNBC to release another clown…
“Analogizing people to insects is always wrong,” Stephens sniffed. “Being analogized to insects goes back to a lot of totalitarian regimes in the past.”
And then, just when everyone was certain Stephens had no more clowns left to let loose, in the crybaby snit of all crybaby snits, the crybaby deleted his Twitter account.
For three days Stephens went quiet, and under the false assumption he might be a rational man, many of us assumed he was licking his wounds and pouting but would come out the other end, with the help of friends and loved ones, a man who understood just how damaging this tantrum had been to his reputation.
Silly us.
Rather than soul searching, Stephens and his inexhaustible supply of clowns had been burning up the Google Machine in search of vindication…
Get ready to LOL.
Stephens’ column is titled: “World War II and the Ingredients of Slaughter.”
The column includes a photo of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
The column includes this paragraph:
The political mind-set that turned human beings into categories, classes and races also turned them into rodents, insects and garbage. “Anti-Semitism is exactly the same as delousing,” Heinrich Himmler would claim in 1943. “Getting rid of lice is not a matter of ideology. It is a matter of cleanliness.” Watching Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto burn that year, a Polish anti-Semite was overheard saying: “The bedbugs are on fire. The Germans are doing a great job.”
Well, gasp and egads, there it is… Proof that Mr. Karpf is indeed … a Nazi.
You can almost hear Stephens when he found this:
Checkmate, bitchez!
Who has mud all over their face now, eh!?!?!?!?!
I told you I was just like the Jews killed in the Holocaust!
Toldja! Toldja! Toldja!
Except…
I’m going to ask you to do something that neither Stephens nor his editors bothered to do….
Well, to be fair, they almost certainly did do it but assumed you wouldn’t…
Click the reference link in that paragraph. It will take you right here.
You see, Stephens is lying about the context… The “bedbug” quote he cites is … literal.
What I mean is that the person Stephens’ quoted is not believed to have compared Jews to bedbugs. This man was actually talking about bedbug-bedbugs.
You see, if you dig a little further than Stephens and the New York Times would like you to, the source material explains that, “‘the bedbugs are burning’ should be taken literally: there was an infestation of bedbugs in Warsaw at the time which was generally believed to have originated in the ghetto.”
What’s more, Stephens also fabricated the idea that person quoted was “a Polish anti-Semite.” He just made that up, decided it all on his own. His own linked source merely refers to this person as “one man.”
How did @nytopinion decide it was appropriate to refer to the speaker of the specific quotation Stephens used as “a Polish anti-Semite”? In the source, he is only referred to as “one man.” pic.twitter.com/7d2TJy9ec1
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 31, 2019
So let’s recap…
A New York Times columnist, a writer at what we are told is the premier newspaper in all the world, is gently heckled as a “bedbug” by a nobody academic in a tweet that was not even sent to him, that did not even earn a single retweet, and here’s how the Paragon Of Everything Decent And Pure About America And Journalism responded:
- Sent the nobody academic a Say that to my face email.
- Cc’d the nobody academic’s boss in the hope it would get this poor guy into professional trouble.
- Went on MSNBC to tell the world that being called a “bedbug” is like being a victim of Nazi Germany.
- Deleted his entire Twitter account in a snit.
- Devoted an entire New York Times column to compare being called a “bedbug” to being a Polish Jew during the Holocaust.
- Deliberately misled his readers by taking a quote out of context and misidentifying the man quoted.
My guess is that the Times allowed Stephens to publish this because they want him gone. Even if Stephens had not tried to mislead readers with that quote, this would still be one of the funniest and most devastating acts of self-sabotage to come out of the elite media in years.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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