Sarah Jeong Normalizes Bigotry

Don’t go all Schadenfreude on me, but the New York Times has gotten itself stuck in a mound of stinking manure. The name of said mound: Sarah Jeong.

As you know by now, the Times hired Jeong as a member of its editorial board. She will be tasked with writing about technology and such. But then, before you could say “bigot” the world found its way to her Twitter feed. There it discovered a pile of racist anti-white tweets. And not just anti-white people. Jeong took out after the police-- not all of whom, dare I tell you, are white. And she even attacked the New York Times. Can’t say that the Gray Lady is not forgiving.

So, the Times faced a difficult public relations problem. Either it did not know what Jeong had been tweeting before hiring her or it did not care. Either it's incompetent or it's bigoted against most of its readers… dare I suggest that Times readers are largely white?

The larger question is whether white Times readers will take offense at this journalistic dereliction. Do they care about whether the editorial board is harboring haters? Apparently, the paper does not believe that its readership will rise up in outrage and cancel subscriptions. In our analysis, we should never forget the bottom line.

Andrew Sullivan opined about the matter in New York Magazine. Since Sullivan does not belong to the vast right wing conspiracy, and since he is, whatever you think, a good writer, he will stand as judge of the Jeong tweets.

He quotes a few salient tweets:

“White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.

This establishes that Jeong is a moron. She lives in a black and white world, a world lacking shades of gray, a world that corresponds perfectly to the theoretical swill offered by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Hmmm.

As for the segment of the white race called Anglo-Saxon, one feels compelled to admit, beyond Shakespeare and Dickinson, that Anglo-Saxons gave the world: parliamentary democracy, the common law, human rights, free enterprise, the Industrial Revolution and much of modern science. Let’s not forget that the giant tech enterprises that are increasingly defining our world were produced by white and Asian males. Failing to recognize what Anglo-Saxons contributed to world civilization bespeaks a deeply ingrained bigotry.

To fail to understand these points should be cause for firing.

Sullivan continues to note that Jeong does not stop at hatred. She entertains fantasies about exterminating white people. Apparently, the Times has no problem with such thoughts:

A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.” One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals. Jeong apparently has no problem doing so. Speaking of animals, here’s another gem: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” Or you could describe an entire race as subhuman: “Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” And then there’s this simple expression of the pleasure that comes with hatred: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” I love that completely meretricious “old” to demean them still further. And that actual feeling: joy at cruelty!

So, racism is fine when directed against white people. Directed against anyone else, it’s a hanging offense. Evidently, in the divided world of Times readers, two sets of standards apply. If you are white, one standard. If you are non-white, another standard. You cannot have a culture where one set of rules pertains to one group while another set of rules pertains to another group.

And, dare we mention, that Asian-Americans are not only not an underprivileged, oppressed minority. They are world beaters. Korean-Americans are wealthier than other Americans. And, keep in mind, Asian-American students are wiping the floor with their competitors in the academy. Is that it means to be oppressed?

I suspect that Jeong is manifesting her superior capacity for empathy by empathizing with all members of all oppressed minority groups.

Since Jeong and the Times considers the tweets to be satirical comments directed to people who have harassed her on Twitter, Sullivan is obliged to address the issue:

... Jeong hasn’t apologized to the white people she denigrated or conceded that her tweets were racist. Nor has she taken responsibility for them. Her statement actually blames her ugly tweets on trolls whose online harassment of her prompted her to respond in turn. She was merely “counter-trolling.” She says her tweets, which were not responses to any individual, were also “not aimed at a general audience,” and now understands that these tweets were “hurtful” and won’t do them again. The New York Times also buys this argument: “her journalism and the fact that she is a young Asian woman have made her a subject of frequent online harassment. For a period of time, she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers.”

Sullivan is quite right here. If these tweets were satire, thus, not intended to offend, Jeong should, upon learning that the world entire took them to mean what they said, have apologized. She did not. Both she and the Times seem to believe that the tweets were parodies of hostile tweets she received.

As one like to remind everyone, intention does not determine the meaning of your words and gestures. You cannot just walk away from your eliminationist hateful rhetoric on the grounds of: Just kidding.

Sullivan does not buy it:

Let me explain why I think this is the purest of bullshit. If you want to respond to trolls by trolling them, you respond to them directly. You don’t post slurs about an entire race of people (the overwhelming majority of whom are not trolls) on an open-forum website like Twitter. And these racist tweets were not just a function of one sudden exasperated vent at a harasser; they continued for two years. Another tweet from 2016 has her exclaiming: “fuck white women lol.”

Sullivan joins Kevin Williamson and many others in saying that the Times should not fire Jeong. This does not preclude her resigning… which would surely be best for all involved. After all, her bigotry might not be bigotry, but when it has been ongoing for two years, it cannot possibly be written off as satire, or as a way to respond to trolls.

If trolling is so bad, what virtue lies in becoming a troll. And in stating positions that are vile, vulgar and vitriolic. How exactly does that elevate the national conversation? As Sullivan said, you should not respond to individual trolls by tarring groups of people for no other reason than their race.

Apparently, the Times has returned to the law of the talion. It has now accepted the discarded and discredited view that we should return an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Moses rejected it. Jesus Christ rejected it. They knew that engaging in a cycle of retaliatory revenge is not going to do anyone any good.

Sullivan concludes:

The neo-Marxist analysis of society, in which we are all mere appendages of various groups of oppressors and oppressed, and in which the oppressed definitionally cannot be at fault, is now the governing philosophy of almost all liberal media. That’s how the Washington Post can provide a platform for raw misandry, and the New York Times can hire and defend someone who expresses racial hatred. The great thing about being in the social justice movement is how liberating it can feel to give voice to incendiary, satisfying bigotry — and know that you’re still on the right side of history.