Bret Stephens penned what can be only be described as a self-serving column last night on why you shouldn't call him names on the internet, specifically "a bedbug". The internet reaction was one of disbelief, but it shouldn't have been with him, as Stephens has already shown himself to be a humourless, thin-skinned ideologue. No, the New York Times should bear the brunt of responsibility for employing this creepy bug of a man, giving him the platform where none is deserved.
Source: Fox News
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens was ridiculed on social media Friday for a column that contained a not-so-subtle reference to "bedbugs" following a spat with a college professor who jokingly called Stephens a bedbug on Twitter.
In the piece published Friday evening titled "World War II and the Ingredients of Slaughter," Stephens attempted to draw parallels between "the prewar era and the present" and compared radio — the "new technology" of the 1930s — to Twitter.
"Radio then, like Twitter today, was the technology of the id; a channel that could concentrate political fury at a time when there was plenty to go around," Stephens wrote.
However, critics drew attention to the portion of the column that invoked the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto.
"The political mind-set that turned human beings into categories, classes and races also turned them into rodents, insects and garbage," Stephens wrote. "'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.'"
Twitter users pointed out that the link that was embedded in Stephens' piece was Google search results for "Jews as bedbugs."
Twitter reacted with a mixture of astonishment and disgust that Stephen's column was even printed.
And even one United States Senator mocked Bret Stephens, rather unmercifully.
Perhaps the most astonished was Dave Karpf himself.
He's right. It's not funny.
