The NY Times hires woman with history of anti-white racist tweets, but…
Take a look at her tweets. They certainly seem racist, if taken at face value.
But you may accuse me of being naive, but on reading Sarah Jeong’s old tweets, it occurs to me that she was joking.
For example, what can “Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being fit to live only underground like groveling goblins” be but a joke?
Let’s hope it’s a joke. To me it certainly sounds like a joke. As do the rest of them.
The problem is that the boundaries for what people say on Twitter and elsewhere that’s considered acceptable in terms of racist comments about white people and other unprotected groups have moved so far from anything I would define as okay that it has become extremely difficult to tell when someone is joking and when a person is serious. It’s the old “this is not the Onion thing.”
I saw a couple of articles today about Sarah Jeong and no one else but me seemed to be saying, “Hey, maybe this is a joke. This seems like a joke.” An unfunny joke, but there’s so much unfunny humor these days that I come to expect that.
Then I decided to check by Googling “was Sarah Jeong joking?” and I get this statement from the Times:
We hired Sarah Jeong because of the exceptional work she has done covering the internet and technology at a range of respected publications. 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 accusers. She now sees that this approach only served to feed the vitriol that we too often see on social media. She regrets it, and the Times does not condone it. We had candid conversations with Sarah as part of our thorough vetting process, which included a review of her social media history. She understands that this type of rhetoric is not acceptable at The Times and we are confident that she will be an important voice for the editorial board moving forward.
I happen to believe that this is true (even if the Times says so; a stopped clock and all that). I believe it’s true because that was my immediate impression on reading the tweets—they were so over-the-top as to be a somewhat obvious piece of mockery of the racism of others. So I’m inclined to cut Jeong some slack.
The problem is this: in recent years the MSM and cable news and the Democratic Party and society as a whole have given more serious sentiments of anti-white racism a platform, seemingly with approval as long as the racism is expressed by a member of a non-white minority group (although Jeong, being Asian, is a member of a group that has itself been treated like a group that can be discriminated against, at least in college admissions).
Another problem is that, if someone were being “funny” in a way similar to Jeong, with over-the-top fake supposedly humorous/sarcastic racist remarks about other racial groups defined as oppressed, it would not matter that the person was joking. That person would be persona non grata at any media outlet in the MSM, and would not be given a chance to “understand that this type of rhetoric is not acceptable at The Times”; that person would be out on his or her ear, pronto.
[ADDENDUM: Please see this and my reply here. Jeong is really bad news.
I now have a new post up on the subject of Jeong.]
We’ve crossed that Rubicon a long time ago. Off with her metaphorical head and metaphorically stick it on a pike. As Alinsky noted, make them live by their own rule book.
And theirs says you get fired for such crap.
I R A Darth Aggie:
Yes, double standards galore. What is allowed one person is forbidden another.
Over the last few hours, everyone pointing out the obvious double standard on the left is being pilloried, since no anti-majoritarian sentiment can possibly be construed as impermissible or bigoted within the universe of the SJW/identity politics left.
I have always thought racist jokes were literally unfunny.
I had a neighbor who would say them and I felt like I had to force laughs when the other neighbors laughed. I tried to avoid them.
On HBO specials I tended to like jokes that centered around women vs. men but never really liked the racial ones.
And you are right Neo, it would not matter if the person was “joking” if it were directed at other groups. It only seems ok against Christians or specific so-called privileged groups. But if you were to ask my kids… they would say I never engaged in that kind of talk or humor.
You’re joking of course.
I’m doubtful that she was joking. I’m doubtful that the “harrassment” and “trolling” to which she claims to have been “jokingly” responding to was originally racial in nature. Very occasionally do I see racist comments on the right and when they do occur they’re called out by others on the right.
Her subsequent posts make me believe that she was not really joking.
“The NY Times hires woman with history of anti-white racist tweets.” (full stop)
Nope. There is no “but…”
The “I was only kidding” routine has long washed under the bridge.
Insert ANYONE else but “white people” in those tweets & her house is burned down. The only other “socially-acceptable” slur would be against Christians.
Someone please tell Jim Acosta this is why the press IS…absolutely IS…”the enemy of the people.” And don’t forget to mention that we will act accordingly.
All the NYT and Jeong have to do to back up the trolling story is show the twitter campaign of racist tweets directed at Jeong. I don’t tweet and have no intention of finding such tweets, but I am certain NYT can dig them up if it wants to prove the story is accurate. Given that this is the NYT, I need proof.
And… liberalism really is a mental disease. Richard Spencer …. is…. a liberal.
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1025117288645750785
How much will this get reported or even touched by the NYT.
“For a period of time she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her accusers. ”
Oh, puhlease.
No slack for this new “Jane,” this new ignorant slut.
Insta: “The ‘period of time’ is about two years, apparently, and many of her tweets aren’t in response to anything.”
Ace: “How we arrived at such self-hatred is a discussion for another day, but when the supposed American “paper of record” elevates an idiot bigot to its editorial board (ignoring her glaring lack of any skills other than snark and racism), it sends a clear signal that disparaging Whites is perfectly okay.
But don’t be surprised! This is a tradition at the Old gray Lady, where anything not subversive, third-worldish, anti-Western, unabashedly socialist, or pro-sexual-deviance is mocked and marginalized and framed in the absolute worst light. If one were to read only the NY Times, the world would look vastly different than it actually is. Well, there are little corners that are faithfully described: The Upper West Side of Manhattan, Madison, Austin, Berkeley, Park Slope Brooklyn….you get the idea.
I am curious how the NYT will spin this. Obviously she is an affirmative-action hire who checks the appropriate boxes: vagina, leftist, America-hater, wetback, out-and-proud racist, etc. Oh…she edited the “Harvard Journal of Law & Gender” which surprises me not at all. What will be interesting is the problem of her clear and unabashed racist comments. There is no parsing available to the whores of 43rd St. It’s unequivocal.”
American Greatness has a solid point with: “Conservatives are not upset about what James Gunn, Samantha Bee, or Sarah Jeong actually said or wrote; most view these comments as pathetic attempts at humor or otherwise carelessly made remarks that do not deserve severe repercussions. But they are upset at the leniency that the liberal media gives these figures while simultaneously attempting to destroy their right-leaning counterparts.”
https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/02/fire-sarah-jeong-to-end-the-double-standard/
It’s the lack of context. Also, it’s in the NYT. I count that as 9 strikes.
More still. “Actually, the rule is that she needs to be fired, today. We don’t have a caste system where rules apply only to conservatives, and the Left can say or do anything.”
Gerard Vanderleun:
“Wetback”??? She’s Asian. Or Asian-American. Or whatever the proper nomenclature is lately.
Asian wetbacks…hmmm….looong swim… but maybe Gerard was joking….
Gerard vanderleun on August 2, 2018 at 6:38 pm at 6:38 pm said:
American Greatness has a solid point with: “Conservatives are not upset about what James Gunn, Samantha Bee, or Sarah Jeong actually said or wrote; most view these comments as pathetic attempts at humor or otherwise carelessly made remarks that do not deserve severe repercussions. But they are upset at the leniency that the liberal media gives these figures while simultaneously attempting to destroy their right-leaning counterparts.”
* * *
I am using this as a convenient hook on which to hang this somewhat topical story about how the Left mobs conservatives and tries to suppress them and get them fired even when they haven’t done anything “vile racist hatey hate hatey” except in the eyes of the Left — and the (alleged) supporters of free speech etcetcetc let them do it, because they are afraid.
It’s very long, and some people shy away from Milo Y now, but it’s a very well written piece, and I was following Fulton Brown’s story tangentially back in the day and he makes some excellent points about mobocracy, leftocracy, and idiocracy.
https://www.dangerous.com/45111/middle-rages/
Fulton Brown also faced a tirade from an attacker claiming to be “responding” to FB’s alleged hatey remarks on social media, but never produced any evidence.
The “wetback” remark comes out of Ace’s comment and Ace, as we know, is at times inclined to the less-than-precision word slanging that is rife here. So I give him some slack over that. LOTS of slack.
I am very weary of parsing and parsing and parsing down to the nub…. gets a bit tedious what?
Gerard Vanderleun:
As I believe I’ve said before, I don’t find accuracy tedious. I’m aware you were quoting Ace, by the way. The reason I pointed it out is that (a) it was said in the context of talking about racist words and racist sentiments in print—as well as what is a joke and what isn’t in terms of racist words or statements—so it caught my attention; and (b) Jeong is Asian, not Hispanic, and Asian isn’t much of a favored ethnicity these days in hiring and academia, whereas “Hispanic” still is.
So it’s interesting that the word “wetback” was used—interesting at least, to me, because it raises an interesting question (interesting at least, to me), which is: was Ace joking—that is, “imitating HER rhetoric”? He’s a very funny guy, so maybe.
As long as we’re on the subject of journalists and some of their more egregious exhibitions of double standards, perhaps we might visit the latest round of the ongoing Sanders v. Acosta debate. There are lots of stories out there about Poor Jim tangling with the Sassy One, but I think Andrew Klavan nailed the underlying roots of the contention.
https://pjmedia.com/andrewklavan/hey-media-you-started-it/
“Jim Acosta has the sadz. The untalented little man who rudely shouts unimportant questions at important people while in the employ of the ninth most trusted name in news out of ten, got heckled at a Trump rally in Tampa, Florida. Sad panda. The hecklers chanted “CNN sucks,” which, okay, is true, but they were none too polite about it.
Acosta didn’t like it. He reported, “Honestly, it felt like we weren’t in America anymore.”
But, like virtually everything Acosta reports, this is just a reflection of his small-minded biases. The fact is, having a group of people scream at you and denigrate you is exactly what it feels like to be in America — if you don’t happen to be a coastal elite. It has felt this way for the last twenty years at least. Every television show you watch, every movie, every woman’s magazine, every comedian, and, yes, every news program tells you you suck. Your country sucks. Your culture sucks. Your religion and your morals suck. And you personally are one of those dumb-ass racists who clings to his Bible and talks funny.
..
Every day. From every outlet. All the time. And now people are angry. Wonder why.”
While Asian is certainly not a favored ethnicity in university admissions departments, I’d be curious as to the facts on hiring. I’d guess that committed leftist Asians are a highly desired commodity in many HR departments.
I can’t tell from this distance whether she might have been joking or not. None of the tweets I saw struck me as funny, but she wasn’t talking to me. She says now that she was joking when such an assertion serves to excuse her, so she’s not automatically credible here.
I don’t dismiss the possibility she was joking and deep-down she feels that way.
Reading that many racist tweets over a span of a few years — not a lark for a few weeks — it’s hard for me to believe those sentiments don’t emerge from a core part of her being.
Besides, to spout vicious crap repeatedly then retreat to “I’m joking, I’m joking” is one of the oldest and lamest excuses around.
I read her as a stone-cold bigot who is probably not honest enough to realize how deeply filled with hate she is.
None of the tweets I saw struck me as funny, but she wasn’t talking to me.
miklos000rosza: From what I can tell with those tweets she wasn’t responding to anybody, not even a white troll.
Those remarks apparently were pearls of wit and wisdom apropos nothing in particular, she felt happy to share with the world.
I thought the goblin tweet was funny, and clever — but I also thought she was being genuinely hateful. I don’t think she likes white people. I mean, I think she has a lot of anger and real hatred toward white people and some of these tweets were NOT funny. Like the one about white people not reproducing and being wiped out. That seemed like a serious comment and — a race war kind of comment. I understand many of the people who were baiting her were also vicious racists but being the bigger person is no longer the way to go. I would not have tweeted something like that ever. But I don’t hate any group of people.
She has the right to hate white people of course, or anyone she wants to hate, but frankly– it will mean I see her writing in a different way. But she’s writing on tech so… maybe it won’t matter that much.
It is disturbing however, that Roseanne can have her hit show cancelled, be killed in the new show that will be created without her, and have all of her old shows not shown on television. Because of ONE, just ONE, far less insulting tweet — particularly when she put it in context and explained it and yes — apologized. This NYT Asian lady has gone way over the line and she’s fine. But there is a double standard and that’s how it goes. No other way to say it.
I don’t think this is a good thing. I am not saying she should be canned. It is probably better to let people be obnoxious as long as it doesn’t impact their professional work. But this tweeting does mean she is not particularly sympathetic to white people and sees the west and European culture as suspect and from a hostile vantage point. So that’s par for the course for the NYT. That is not a perspective I am happy about. But there she will be, on the editorial board. Really just one of the crowd I think. White bashing is in, though usually it is white people I see online doing it. To appear virtuous. But a Korean American woman doing it is less like virtue signaling and more like real bitter hatred.
Some years back I was in an online Stanford writing course. One student was an Asian Stanford grad working in Stanford administration. Her husband was a top national swimmer who came close to making the Olympic team.
He was from Louisiana. The Asian woman’s longest piece was about a trip they took to visit her husband’s family. Oh, how she loved describing her in-laws as slack-jawed yokels with missing teeth! She thought it was hilarious. She didn’t think she was being mean. How could she be? She was an enlightened Stanford person with a double intersectionality as a woman and Asian.
To me, a white guy who once lived in Louisiana, it was about as funny as Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
Thing is, I was prepared to believe she was serious. In fact, before I saw the tweets and had just read about the story, I just assumed she was serious because that’s what everyone seemed to be indicating. But the minute I actually read the tweets, I had a strong feeling they were jokes. The “tells” for me was language like “groveling goblins.” IMHO that’s an attempt at humor.
Could be wrong, but that’s the way I reacted to the tweets of hers that I saw. Every single one. Go to Wikipedia, and it’s hard to find something white people can take credit for? That reads like satire to me.
Her language and her examples seemed like attempts (poor attempts, but attempts nonetheless) to be humorous. Battlestar Galactica as an example of “white people being miserable”? That seems like a joke to me, of a type of humor that’s more common among young people—very arch and very ironic (what’s more, the cast had a number of people in it who aren’t white).
It’s a separate issue what should have happened to her. If the left has zero tolerance for jokes of a racial nature when they come from people on the right, it should have zero tolerance for jokes of a racial nature when they come from people on the left. Of course, there is a double standard applied.
Liberty Wolf:
Yes, joking often contains elements of very real anger, sometimes not even very well-veiled. I know so little about this woman other than these tweets that I could not say, but it’s certainly possible.
However, you write that her tweet about white people not reproducing and being wiped out. “seemed like a serious comment and — a race war kind of comment.” Yes, except for the last line. The entire tweet went like this [emphasis mine]:
It’s that last sentence that’s the “tell” that it’s meant to be over-the-top humor. Doesn’t work for me at all as humor (very unfunny), but I really really think it was meant as a joke. There’s no other reason she would write that. (And also, what’s the little purple-cat-smiley-face afterwards?) A lot of modern humor doesn’t work for me, it really seems to have a harsher tone entirely.
Read the stuff on the lower left here. It’s all bad jokes (I can’t read every single one, but I can read many of them).
neo: I agree she was attempting humor — emphasis on the attempt — but “Many a true word is spoken in jest.”
I didn’t think she was trying to be funny. She didn’t claim to be trying to be humorous, as far as I know. She said she was responding to hateful tweets, but only came up with two examples that post dated her tweets, so she was lying.
Would someone please show me where the Constitution or law says that people have a Right to not be offended…
Secondly, now that everything we have ever uttered on the internet is now public domain forever, does that mean that everyone will be held to account for every bit of casual nonsense they ever wrote or said?
This is ridiculous! If we eliminate everyone who ever offended someone, who is left?
Neo makes a reasonable point. The tweets are indeed sufficiently over-the-top to make the “just kidding” excuse plausible.
Having said that – she is now part of the public face of the New York Times. It is now up to her to prove that she is not racist; we owe her no benefit-of-the-doubt.
Will she? Will she overcompensate slightly, to make a point? Possibly, but I doubt it. We’ll see.
By the way: congrats on the new digs, Neo!
I have a different view. People have all sorts of unacceptable feelings among which racial feelings are just now so taboo that people make fools of themselves – even on the inside – to deny them. It is another matter to stifle oneself and not express them publicly in the interest of social tranquillity. As to Jeong’s tweets I like the one where she ends with “It was my plan all along”. That says to me it really was a joke too, but I also remember GBS’s bon mot: “Every jest is in earnest in the womb of time”. And that is not to say that Jeong is deep down a racist, but rather to say that the delicious ambiguity of jokes is that they often – perhaps always – express more than one feeling at once. So if I were sitting at the bar in whatever watering hole the “enemies of the people” slurp up their booze these days and she walked in, I would, as a 75 year old white man, buy her a drink. God Bless her.
James Gunn was fired by Disney because of his very large number of weird and creepy tweets about pedophilia. Disney did the right thing, because they have to protect their brand. Another director can easily be found, and that guy would damage them.
As for Sarah Jeong, I take her at her word, and assume that she blames white people for the world’s ills, and that she believes that America is not that great of a country. She has made a LOT of tweets over the years, and last night, many people on the alt-right were re-posting her actual words, as well as new photoshop images and obviously false comments to make fun of her.
Here she is making a 40-minute speech about fake news and the Internet that is interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApNobPvbqa4
And here is Sarah Jeong in a 30-second clip on “how white men see the world is why so many things suck” (needs more context, but reveals a very liberal mindset):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2ql6H7NpiM
Let the NY Times keep her around, and have her do her thing. It’s better to be able to engage a person like that, and to ask someone like Sarah Jeong what she really wants.
She may have been joking, in response to what she says were lots of ugly tweets directed at her. I doubt that the tweets were sufficiently awful to warrant her responses, many of which weren’t funny. Twitter is a wild place. If you draw some attention there, some of it is going to be ugly. People who tweet need to have thick skins, or get out of the medium for someplace less abrasive.
A good result from this would be the end of people being fired for expressing private opinions, period. That won’t happen, though. Liberal ugliness will be excused and conservatives will be punished, even if what they said wasn’t really ugly.
She is anti-cop as well.
But what liberal isn’t? She just put it badly.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/08/nyt-new-hire-sarah-jeong-called-for-killing-cops-i-would-fight-the-cops-with-my-guns-cops-could-die/
Recently it was revealed that Harvard admissions standards rank Asians lowest in a “personal” category covering such traits as likability and “attractive to be with.” Seems kind of over the top to say that about all Asians, maybe Harvard was only joking?
One thing is obvious, Harvard can’t use humor as a selection criteria because everyone is a comedian.
It’s very long, and some people shy away from Milo Y now, but it’s a very well written piece,
I do not shy away nor do I kiss the ring of Alt Right spokesman, leaders, and political kings.
Society can say all it wants, does not affect my decision and judgment. The world is wrong because it always was. Ever since time started, right and wrong, light and darkness, branched off from the One origin, the Wu, and began to adapt to its own personal road via free will. The world was wrong ever since it was created because only then could free will produce the wrong choice.
It is disturbing however, that Roseanne can have her hit show cancelled, be killed in the new show that will be created without her, and have all of her old shows not shown on television. Because of ONE, just ONE, far less insulting tweet — particularly when she put it in context and explained it and yes — apologized. This NYT Asian lady has gone way over the line and she’s fine. But there is a double standard and that’s how it goes. No other way to say it.
Justice and law is only for the powerful and the mighty, not for the weak American slave peons that think themselves free.
Americans agreed to this and tolerated it ever since they refused to kill the Leftist alliance.
Hollywood can rape and eat children, but Republicans cannot. It’s a “rule” thing, a consumption thing having to do with old feudal consumption laws.
More has been revealed of Jeong’s Twitter history, demolishing her credibility as a joking counter-troller. Often enough she has dispensed with jokes — or her attempts at humor — leaving her hatred pure:
Ms. Jeong has routinely expressed her total contempt for males. In August 2014, she tweeted, “Men are too f–king emotional to be let out in public. Jesus Christ,” and followed that with, “Yo. Men. Just get off Twitter. Every man. All of you. You can’t handle this sh—.” She has repeatedly said “all men are garbage.” In July 2014, she tweeted a question: “hey what’s worse, a man who calls himself a feminist, or a man who refuses to call himself a feminist”? To which she answered: “it’s a trick question all men are equally garbage in my eyes.” She has declared “men are innately, unintentionally garbage” (Feb. 24, 2015) and “men are fountains of meaningless garbage and they see every woman as an open landfill for their thoughts” (April 22, 2015).
https://spectator.org/it-wasnt-just-a-few-tweets/
There’s much more. Sarah Jeong is a hater by her own words. The New York Times is welcome to keep her.
huxley:
Yes, I saw some new info on her other tweets, although not the ones you mention. I still think her “white people” tweets were a joke attempt (for the aforementioned reasons). But it is now clear that she is a hating hater who hates. She also is a SJW who was very into mobbing (see this).
She’s quite a piece of work all around.
neo: At this point I’m wondering if the NY Times’ “modified, limited hang-out” on Jeong as a jokester will hold in the face of these tweets and mobbings.
I now think it’s only 50-50 the Times will keep her. I’m kinda hoping they do, as it will be comedy gold for Trump.
Either way, it will be interesting.
huxley:
How could they not have seen that other stuff in the first place? It’s really toxic.
It doesn’t appear that she erased it, either. It’s really extreme stuff.
Do they not do any research on their hires? Or did they see it and not care? Or do they approve?
neo: Beats me.
In a similar vein … I may be cynical about our Ivied elites, but it takes some brains to get into Harvard Law and I would have thought Jeong would have been smarter than to leave a digital trail like that.
I guess after Obama was elected, all these people, from Jeong to the Times to the FBI and DOJ, figured they had won the war and they didn’t have to pretend anymore.
Andrew Sullivan chimes in (and all his previous leftistlovers now hate him for this)
“And I don’t think the New York Times should fire her — in part because they largely share her views on race, gender, and oppression. Their entire hiring and editorial process is based on them. In their mind, Jeong was merely caught defending herself. As Vox writer Zack Beauchamp put it: “A lot of people on the internet today [are] confusing the expressive way antiracists and minorities talk about ‘white people’ with actual race-based hatred, for some unfathomable reason.” I have to say that word “expressive” made me chuckle out loud. (But would Beauchamp, I wonder, feel the same way if anti-racists talked about Jews in the same manner Jeong talks about whites? Aren’t Jews included in the category of whites?)”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/sarah-jeong-new-york-times-anti-white-racism.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s3&utm_campaign=sharebutton-t
Gerard Vanderleun:
“Jews” are a fluid category. They are white if a person is engaged in hating whites, they are “brownish” if a person is engaged in hating brown people.
By the way, I have a new post up on Jeong.
Of course the NYT hired her because they agree with her and because her hate filled comments and future rants will advance what it’s permissable to say about we on the right.
They need to justify their ideological extremism and “calling out” what they claim to be the right’s hate is the way to do it. After all, is anything verbotten when fighting Nazis?
“Man Arrested for Violent Threats Against… Steve Scalise’s Children
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2018/08/03/yikes-man-arrested-for-violent-threats-againststeve-scalise-n2506354