Baytya Ungar-Sargon, the opinion editor at Forward, writes:
I missed the @NRO piece that let someone call Jews locusts, and then claimed hassidic men don’t work & rely on welfare. Now they’ve allowed Kevin Williamson to call the Jews getting beaten and killed “stupid” for objecting to the piece. Truly abominable.
This is a lie and a slander. There is no reasonable reading of the piece in question—which is, ironically enough, about the willful misrepresentation of a news report—that bears that interpretation.
Bethany Mandel, leaning on the shift key, writes:
This is absolute bullshit. I’m sorry. This is infuriating. A LOT of people who defend NR and Kevin from cancel culture bullshit criticized the piece. IT ALLOWED AN ANONYMOUS BIGOT TO CALL JEWS WHO WERE THE TARGET OF A MASSACRE LOCUSTS.
I’ve written probably 50 times about Al Sharpton calling Jews “bloodsuckers” and worse. At no point did I insert a parenthetical reading (“And I very strongly object to this characterization!”). I don’t write for morons.
Some people have ugly and stupid views about things; sometimes, those views are of public interest and are written about in news stories. This is not “allowing” someone to say something but reporting that it has been said.
Mandel is being ridiculous and dishonest. Which, ironically enough, is precisely the sort of thing I was writing about.