I've read Thomas Friedman articles that were so stupefying I was dumb founded as to why the New York Times would hire him. The only reason you have Thomas Friedman as a writer is to have a mouthpiece for corporations, capitalism, and military intervention. And watch, if it becomes clear that the United States is going to invade Iran, Friedman will leave his mansion to put his face on the airwaves, and will write an article about how it will bring freedom and democracy the region.
There is a writer at the New York Times who wants to overthrow Friedman as the one with the dumbest articles for the company, and his name is Bret Stephens.
Stephens just wrote a total shit of a hit-piece on Rep. Ilhan Omar in which he totally misquotes her, and this is how it began:
Spot the problem with the quoted remarks:
1) The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 was “something some people did.”
(2) Last month’s attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, was “something someone did.”
(3) The 2015 massacre at a black church in Charleston, S.C., was “something someone did.”
Now imagine that a public figure with a history of making racially inflammatory remarks — someone like Representative Steve King of Iowa or, better yet, President Trump — had said any of this. (Neither of them did.) Would you not be appalled?
Of course you would. You’d be insulted by the evasiveness of the somethingand someone. You’d be revolted that a right-wing politician would fail to speak forcefully against the bigotries too often found among his followers and fellow travelers. You’d be disgusted by the deliberate attempt to conceal the scale of the horror, the identity of the perpetrators, and the racist ideology that motivated them.
Just one problem with the quote Bret Stephens gave Ilhan Omar-it wasn't what she said.
Tom Scocca pointed out and explains why Stephens misquoted Omar:
What Omar actually had said was that the Council on American-Islamic Relations had “recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”
But to have used her accurate quote there, with her words in the correct order, would have ruined the whole conceit. Even cut down to four words—”some people did something”—her quote wouldn’t have really worked with Stephens’ thought experiment.
Omar's comments were about the loss of civil liberties for Muslim Americans after 9/11, but Stephens does not want to give her that because his past remarks about Muslims make that clear.
When the New York Times hired Stephens, Hamilton Nolan laid out a few quotes made by Bret Stephens.
Stephens on Torture:
I am not sorry Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times... I am sorry KSM remains alive nearly 12 years after his capture. He has been let off far too lightly. As for his waterboarding, it never would have happened if he had been truthful with his captors. It stopped as soon as he became cooperative. As far as I’m concerned, he waterboarded himself.
His position on Palestine are no different from what you would hear from an everyday Islamaphobic conservative or liberal who doesn't want to actually discuss any of the power dynamics in the region, and all other historical contexts regarding the Israel/Palestine situation, but feel the need to have an opinion about it.
Here is Stephens on Palestine:
In 2005 Israel vacated the Gaza Strip. It became an enclave of terror. On Sunday, four young Israelis were run over in yet another terror attack. The ideal of a Jewish and faultlessly democratic state is a noble one. Not at the risk of the existence of the state itself... Meanwhile, anyone genuinely concerned with the future of the Palestinians might urge them to elect better leaders, improve their institutions, and stop giving out sweets to celebrate the murder of their neighbors.
And I'm sure Israel would be thrilled for Palestine to have a competent leader who could unite all Palestinians.
Stephens on Palestinians "blood thirst":
Other Palestinian attacks include the stabbing of two elderly Israeli men and an assault with a vegetable peeler on a 14-year-old. On Sunday, an Arab-Israeli man ran over a 19-year-old female soldier at a bus stop, then got out of his car, stabbed her, and attacked two men and a 14-year-old girl. Several attacks have been carried out by women, including a failed suicide bombing.
Regarding the causes of this Palestinian blood fetish...
The significant question is why so many Palestinians have been seized by their present blood lust—by a communal psychosis in which plunging knives into the necks of Jewish women, children, soldiers and civilians is seen as a religious and patriotic duty, a moral fulfillment.
No one knows more about how Arabs think than an Islamaphobe:
The Arab world’s problems are a problem of the Arab mind, and the name for that problem is anti-Semitism... So long as an Arab athlete can’t pay his Israeli opposite the courtesy of a handshake, the disease of the Arab mind and the misfortunes of its world will continue.
Stephens on Muslims in general:
And then there is the tantrum of Islam, another eruption of rage that feeds off our astonishing willingness to indulge it... The Muslim fanatic who last year opened fire on the Jewish museum in Brussels, killing four, also once lived in Molenbeek, as had the man who tried to open fire on a high-speed train in August. “I notice that each time [there is a jihadist attack] there is a link with Molenbeek,” Charles Michel, Belgium’s prime minister, admitted Sunday. Nice of him to connect the dots.
I lived near Molenbeek for two years when I worked for this newspaper’s European edition and used to jog along the canal that cuts through the neighborhood. It took no special insight to see what was likely to come out of the place.
As Paul Best notes, Stephens isn't really enraged or concerned about what Omar said at a CAIR press conference. Stephens is mad that an opinionated Muslim woman of color is willing to question organizations like AIPAC. Her comments make Stephens mad so much so that he misquotes her.
"Yes, an Ilhan Omar quote which Bret Stephens was so pissed off by that he couldn’t even get it right is exactly like Trump’s direct outreach to nativists and white supremacists that has been the backbone of his political career," writes Best.
The Intercept's Mehdi Hasan pointed out the hypocrisy of Bret Stephens.
"The New York Times editors and copyeditors allow Bret Stephens to falsely claim Omar 'then slurred Jews again'-and when you click on his hyperlink it takes you to an article which contains no quote from Omar 'slurring' Jews," tweeted Hasan. "But facts don't matter when you're 'slurring' her."
Although Bret Stephens writes articles as dumb as Thomas Friedman, I don't think he will be able to dethrone Friedman. Sure, both write dumb articles using dumb analogies with disingenuous and uninformed positions regarding the global Muslim community, but at least for Friedman, his articles are far more entertaining than Stephens.
I'm sure though that Stephens article will soon see him get a reappearance as a panelist of Real Time with Bill Maher, in which Bill Maher will call him one of the good conservatives.
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