Posted on July 16, 2020

New York Times Denizens Respond to Bari Weiss Resignation Over Bullying — with More Bullying

Monica Showalter, American Thinker, July 16, 2020

It ought to have been embarrassing for the New York Times to have a top op-ed editor resign with fiery criticism of the paper’s stultifying leftism. In the news industry, it’s pretty rare for anyone to resign, let alone say what the problem was.

That’s what happened a couple days ago when Bari Weiss submitted her resignation to the paper, denouncing the far-left atmosphere of cancel-culture bullying, the signs of which have been pretty obvious for years. After all, not too long ago, this bunch forced the Times’ op-ed boss out merely for running an opinion piece by an elected Republican senator because the snowflake staffers said it made them feel ‘unsafe.’ Weiss had had enough and threw in the towel. Thomas Lifson noted that the letter was likely ‘historic‘ in its significance.

Embarrassed? Not in the least. Not at the Times. In fact, plenty of them bit back and got catty. All because what she she wrote.

Ms. Weiss writes that she herself faced “constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views.” She writes that they “have called me a Nazi and a racist.” She adds that she has learned to “brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again.’” She has too much grace to mention that her writing about Jews included covering the murders at her hometown’s Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Ms. Weiss’s tenure at the Times became an ordeal. Friendly colleagues were “badgered by coworkers,” she told Mr. Sulzberger. “My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly ‘inclusive’ one, while others post ax emojis next to my name.”

First mean girl out the gate was Hannah Jones, creator of the phony 1619 Project, who had a couple of retweets about Weiss, and now has up this counter-claim to victimhood:

She also had this screen grab inexplicably up:

Jones Versus Jilani

Then there were the deniers {snip}

In other words, nothing to see here, Bari Weiss is a liar, no such thing as wokesters taking over, we’re all just objective journalists trying to get at the truth

Then there was the dragon lady, Cruella de Vil, the former top editor Jill Abramson, weighing in on a Fox News interview with Harris Faulkner, with venom and contempt:

“I think that the departure of one junior-level opinion editor at The New York Times is really a molehill, compared to the mountains of news developments that you have just been talking about on your show. Her — Bari Weiss’ letter was a strong letter, certainly. And it was bound to get some reaction, but, in the scheme of things, it does not spell crisis for the New York Times.”

Abramson went on to argue that the NYT was not controlled by “a cabal of left-wing journalists,” saying that most of the opinion writers were center-left. She also said that there was no place in the newsroom for bullying, adding, “So, I’m sorry. I’m sorry if she had a rough time … But, you know, Bari Weiss is someone, you know, she was — she has, like, thousands of Twitter followers herself. She has been in there on Twitter throwing some — some punches herself at people she disagrees with.”

Denial, contempt, blasts, and pointing the bony finger at Weiss for all her Twitter followers. Such an impressive reaction from an embittered old editor with a few grievances of her own.

What it all shows is that Weiss’s letter went right over the heads of the staffers at the Times. Soul searching, as Weiss’s letter ought to have called for? There’s not going to be any stinkin’ soul-searching  The Times remains full of itself, everyone else can see there’s a problem, and the catty denizens of the Times have every intention of beclowning themselves

Original Article