NY Times’ Bret Stephens Knocks ‘Gawker Spawn and HuffPo Twerps’ in Column on Millennials
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens has a new column going off on easily-offended millennials that takes a very, very specific swipe at “Gawker spawn and HuffPo twerps.”
Stephens noticed the reaction to a recently-unearthed clip of Biden saying he has “no empathy” when “the younger generation now tells me how tough things are.” He quotes a tweet from user @Anarchopriapism before saying that the Democrats need a Sister Souljah moment to denounce this element of the left:
In this election cycle, no faction on the Democratic side more richly deserves rebuking than the one Biden singled out — which is not, of course, anywhere close to the entire millennial generation (roughly 80 million strong), or their younger siblings in Gen Z. But it is that part of these younger generations that specializes in histrionic self-pity and moral self-righteousness, usually communicated via social media with maximum snark.
Gawker spawn and HuffPo twerps: This especially means you.
He cites a number of incidents on college campuses, like the recent uproar over a dean who was on Harvey Weinstein‘s defense team, to argue “we have professional destruction for emotional upset.”
Stephens concludes that the center in America wants Trump to lose, “but not if it means empowering the junior totalitarians of the left.”
He received criticism and mockery for the column, including from some of the “spawn” and “twerps”:
@ me bitch https://t.co/BSu5pbOsZU pic.twitter.com/9qUuUpI2re
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) May 18, 2019
Dear Sir,
It is "HuffPost," not "HuffPo."
Please correct at your earliest convenience.
Many thanks,
Senior WH Twerphttps://t.co/ae4Ia9CaPX pic.twitter.com/EJ8jBoBVxh
— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) May 18, 2019
But the civility.
— Gawker spawn (@Choire) May 18, 2019
Some of Bret's colleagues on the news side come from these publications. They are not allowed to publicly call him a "twerp." https://t.co/4tObeOd4eL
— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) May 18, 2019
I'm not sure that Bret Stephens has any spawn/fanboys, but yeah it's pretty ridiculous that in a @nytimes column, he's citing an anonymous Twitter account from Northern Ireland with 159 followers as a stand-in for the opinion of American millennials. https://t.co/ysp65KMcsn
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 18, 2019
— chris hooks (@cd_hooks) May 18, 2019
For the sake of his columns, Bret Stephens should probably read something other than twitter. https://t.co/WPDZ2L6ybe
— Matt Pearce ? (@mattdpearce) May 18, 2019
We rightly hold up the New York Times as the pinnacle of our journalistic profession. Then their Pulitzer-winning columnist opens his scolding take with a quote from a Twitter rando. https://t.co/05nEA9NLBw
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) May 18, 2019
[image via screengrab]
