New York Times has double standards & serves woke mob? Bari Weiss’ shocking resignation letter only states the obvious

Resigning from the New York Times, writer Bari Weiss lamented the degradation of language in service of ideology. Yet for three years, she was all too happy to be the paper’s token centrist and demonize anyone to her right.

In the resignation letter she made public on Tuesday, Weiss calls out the US paper of record for being more committed to the political narrative than the truth. Any piece that “does not explicitly promote progressive causes” gets published “only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated,” she writes.  Language itself is “degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes,” while some of her colleagues nod along, hoping that would protect them.

The letter was quickly praised by some on the right. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called it“eloquent, profound, incisive—and true,” while the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. said it exposes the paper’s tendency to attack “anyone who breaks from the far-left narrative.”

The irony is that Weiss herself has been a prominent NeverTrump conservative-basher over her three-year tenure with the Times. In one memorable instance, in a November 2018 rant on Bill Maher’s show, she claimed that under Trump American Jews were losing their – and American – values such as “welcoming the stranger, dignity for all human beings, equality under the law, respect for dissent, love of truth.” 

While that may seem quaint by the standards of the Times’s invective against Trump today, two years ago it was par for the course. The paper has since undergone a Great Leap Leftward – as exemplified by the notorious 1619 Project – leaving her behind. 

It is notable that Weiss doesn’t cite that particular abomination of journalism among the examples of the paper’s double standards – unless that’s what the part about “history itself [being] one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative” actually means. But then why not just say so, if she’s so stunning and brave? 

Instead, she brings up the fact there is no editorial note to the interview with Alice Walker, an African-American novelist whom Weiss describes as “a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.” For an “ardent Zionist” as Weiss describes herself, that’s obviously a cardinal sin. Trouble is, while she considers Israeli nationalism beyond criticism, she seems to hold any other nationalism – American, for example – beyond the pale.

Indeed, much of the chatter about Weiss’ self-deplatforming among the more jaded former liberals and conservatives has amounted to a shrug. So the Times is a far-left, America-hating paper that doesn’t tolerate even token conservative-bashing centrists anymore – what else is new?

At a time when America faces a full-on cultural revolution in service of extremist politics, is that really the most important story of the day?

Writing “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor,” as Weiss did on Tuesday, would have carried far more weight before the paper’s opinion editors bent the knee to the online mob over the op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton last month. Or in April, when its news editors were bullied into deleting a truthful observation from a puff piece about Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden because his campaign demanded it. 

Where was Weiss in June 2019, when the Times decided to ditch all political cartoons due to the outrage generated by the one showing a blind Trump being led by a seeing-eye dog with the face of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu? After all, isn’t that exactly what she argued in the Maher rant herself? She was apparently too busy writing her book ‘How to fight Anti-Semitism’ to comment on the silencing of cartoonists. Priorities, you know.

Let’s face it, the Times stopped being a serious newspaper a long time ago, and Weiss had kept her peace about it. Her letter doesn’t tell us anything about the Gray Lady’s editorial policies, politics and practices that wasn’t already obvious to even a casual observer.

Weiss wrote her perhaps most famous piece in May 2018, about the “intellectual dark web” of people who sought refuge on social media after being purged from “institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought.” Now that she’s decided to self-cancel rather than give the woke inquisition the pleasure of burning her at the metaphorical stake, the people she listed can rightly tell her “We told you so.”

If only she’d had the intellectual courage to listen sooner.

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