My former colleague Kevin Williamson probably initiated my tenure at NR by writing a cover story that began “Michael Brendan Dougherty is bitter.” It wasn’t true. Not then, at least.
Today, he takes up a flip little tweet I wrote. Tucker Carlson had now infamously said Russian cities are better than American cities. This was inspiring some jokey commentary on X, formerly Twitter. My contribution was only to note that Russian girls that work the watch boutiques in New York used to complain to me that New York was dirty compared to their hometowns. I only mentioned it because it was a thing that happened. I’ve never been to Moscow save for a connecting flight in the airport. My arrival was late, so I had the joy of hearing my long name pronounced amidst a whirlwind of Russian language announcements as I ran through the terminal. Now that we’ve brought it up, I remember another of those shopgirls complaining that American saunas weren’t the real thing, either. In any case, Kevin spins this little nothing of a tweet into the accusation that I admire Vladimir Putin and his gulag state. Odd, since it didn’t express or report on my views at all. Strangely, he does this in a column in which he has far harsher things to say about American cities than I ever have. And strangest of all is his assertion that those girls are — or should be — conditioned by terror into relating their opinion to me. Does Kevin imagine I have a direct line to the Kremlin to report on these things?
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