{"id":177529,"date":"2019-08-27T18:51:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T23:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/08\/27\/bret-bedbug-stephens\/"},"modified":"2019-08-27T18:51:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-27T23:51:00","slug":"bret-bedbug-stephens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/08\/27\/bret-bedbug-stephens\/","title":{"rendered":"Bret “Bedbug” Stephens"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens. https:\/\/t.co\/k4qo6QzIBW<\/a><\/div>\n

\u2014 davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 26, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfair to Bedbugs<\/i><\/div>\n

The latest Twitter sh%$-storm comes courtesy of Brett Stevens.<\/p>\n

There was a news report of (not kidding here) of a bedbug infestation at the New York Times<\/i> offices, and GWU professorr David Karpf made what he himself admits was a throw away tweet that this was a metaphor for Times<\/i> columnist Brett Stevens.<\/p>\n

Until this all blew up, it had 9 likes and no retweets.<\/p>\n

Then Stevens sent him an email, which was cc:ed to the university Provost, subject line, “From Bret Stephens, New York Times”, demanding that he show up and say it to his face<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This was clearly an attempt to use his position at the NYT<\/i> to intimidate and threaten what he thought (incorrectly) was an non-tenured professor.<\/p>\n

As a so-called journalist who has made the condemnation of safe spaces and hyper-sensitivity, (spoiler, it’s really about him justifying bigotry and lying) the hypocrisy is stunning:<\/p>\n

David Karpf is a professor of media and public affairs<\/a> at George Washington University in D.C. On Monday night, he became a subject of great media interest himself after reading reports about the bedbug infestation<\/a> at the New York Times and writing in a tweet<\/a> that the bedbugs were perhaps a metaphor for the continuing presence, at the paper, of conservative columnist Bret Stephens. (Stephens has developed a reputation in certain circles for writing provocative but intellectually flimsy columns about climate change and the alleged threat of political intolerance on college campuses; Karpf, in addition to being an academic, is a former member of the Sierra Club board of directors.) <\/p>\n

While the tweet might have seemed like an innocuous remark, Stephens apparently didn\u2019t think so: He emailed Karpf\u2014in a message with the subject line \u201cFrom Bret Stephens, New York Times\u201d on which George Washington provost Forrest Maltzman was CC\u2019d\u2014to accuse him of setting a \u201cnew standard\u201d for online incivility and to challenge Karpf to \u201ccome to my home,\u201d \u201cmeet my wife and kids,\u201d and \u201ccall me a \u2018bedbug\u2019 to my face.\u201d (Stephens wasn\u2019t tagged in Karpf\u2019s original post, so it wouldn\u2019t have shown up in his Twitter notifications; he wrote in his email to Karpf that someone had \u201cpointed out\u201d the tweet to him.) <\/p>\n

Karpf described Stephens\u2019 email in a tweet<\/a> without specifically naming the columnist, then, about an hour later, uploaded a screenshot<\/a> of it that included Stephens\u2019 name. The posts together created a frenzy of disbelief and derision that led Stephens to delete his own Twitter account, then, during a Tuesday morning appearance<\/a> on MSNBC, to deny that he\u2019d been trying to get Karpf in trouble with the university (Karpf, in any case, is tenured) and to claim that the \u201cbedbug\u201d remark resembled the kind of dehumanizing language that \u201ctotalitarian regimes\u201d use toward ethnic outgroups. On Tuesday morning, I spoke to Karpf about the experience of being a viral figure and the state of bedbug discourse in the digital age. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Slate<\/i> interviewed Karpf, who added some necessary perspective:<\/p>\n

The two things that stand out are that it\u2019s entertaining, and distracting. It does keep occurring to me the reason why this is actually pretty fun for me is that I\u2019m a white guy with tenure, which means that\u2014if he had sent this to me before I had a tenured job, that would have been a powerful and terrifying message, and I\u2019m 100 percent sure that that\u2019s what he expected it to do. When he writes a message where it says, \u201cFrom Bret Stephens, New York Times,\u201d from his New York Times account, it means that he\u2019s trying to indicate that he\u2019s above me in the social hierarchy. But I\u2019m a professor of strategic political communication, and I have tenure, and I really didn\u2019t do anything wrong. That makes the entire thing bizarre and fun. If I was pre-tenure or I was a woman and had to deal with harassment on Twitter all the time, then I imagine this would be a lot less fun.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

If he hadn\u2019t CC\u2019d the provost, then I would think, \u201cWow, he took this far more personally than he should have.\u201d But also that would mean that an op-ed writer from the New York Times was reaching out to me and wanted to discuss civility in the digital age. And I would have tried to reply to it and said, \u201cFirst of all, is this a bit? I\u2019m surprised you found this and were upset by it. But second of all, here\u2019s the thinking behind it. Here\u2019s why I thought it was a decent joke. And also here\u2019s why I think it\u2019s entirely appropriate because, being a public intellectual as you are, people get to make silly jokes about you on the internet like I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the fact that he was CCing the provost, and I assume that he doesn\u2019t know I have tenure when he writes that message, means that he\u2019s not actually asking, \u201cWhere is the civility?\u201d He\u2019s certainly not inviting me to come to his house and have this little conversation. What he\u2019s trying to impress upon me is that he\u2019s more powerful than me and I should feel fearful and ashamed.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Conservatives are such delicate snowflakes.<\/p>\n

Also, Brett Stevens should be fired for abusing his position as a Times<\/i> columnist.<\/p>\n

This is about as flagrant abuse of his position, and journalistic ethics as I’ve seen since \u2026\u2026\u2026 checks notes \u2026\u2026\u2026 The entire career of Judith Miller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens. https:\/\/t.co\/k4qo6QzIBW \u2014 davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 26, 2019 Unfair to Bedbugs The latest Twitter sh%$-storm comes courtesy of Brett Stevens. There was a news report of (not kidding here) of a bedbug infestation at the New York Times offices, and GWU professorr David Karpf made what …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,364,490,367,406,403],"class_list":["post-177529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-hack-journalism","tag-internet","tag-stupid","tag-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}