New York Times Sorry About Bret Stephens White Supremacist Oopsie, Definitely Won't Let It Happen Again*

*They will definitely let it happen again.

OOPS, the New York Times did it again. They just never imagined that when Bret Stephens, whose most notable act of 2019 was losing his everlovingfucking marbles and quitting Twitter because somebody called him a "bedbug," wrote a column on the history of how Ashkenazi Jews are just really smart, he might have accidentally cited a white supremacist eugenicist researcher in order to back up his arguments.

Oops.

There is now an editor's note on the column, the original version of which Twitter spent the weekend screaming at. Here it is in full:

An earlier version of this Bret Stephens column quoted statistics from a 2005 paper that advanced a genetic hypothesis for the basis of intelligence among Ashkenazi Jews. After publication Mr. Stephens and his editors learned that one of the paper's authors, who died in 2016, promoted racist views. Mr. Stephens was not endorsing the study or its authors' views, but it was a mistake to cite it uncritically. The effect was to leave an impression with many readers that Mr. Stephens was arguing that Jews are genetically superior. That was not his intent. He went on instead to argue that culture and history are crucial factors in Jewish achievements and that, as he put it, "At its best, the West can honor the principle of racial, religious and ethnic pluralism not as a grudging accommodation to strangers but as an affirmation of its own diverse identity. In that sense, what makes Jews special is that they aren't. They are representational." We have removed reference to the study from the column.

Oh golly, Bret Stephens just found out that guy was a big old racist. Darnit!

And since the Times apparently doesn't have editors or factcheckers, there was simply no conceivable way for them to catch that little issue before they hit "publish." How could they possibly know one of the study's co-authors, Henry Harpending, who died in 2016, is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist? It's not like they could Google him or find information about him in their own newspaper or anything, oh wait just kidding.

Bret Stephens cites a Henry Harpending paper in his "Jewish genius" column https: //t.co/LQpug2ouKx Here's an… https://t.co/GmbasnAEYE

— Joshua Benton (@Joshua Benton) 1577539016.0 

And it's certainly not like the Times has ever written about the specific paper Bret Stephens cited, including a quote from an expert saying the paper's authors "make pretty much all of the classic mistakes in interpreting heritability," because it would be crazy if the Times had literally published that in 2005 and then 14 years later, fucking Dunning-Kruger-ass dickweed Bret Stephens cited that same paper in order to bolster a completely racist argument that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically superior to those Jews who are not Ashkenazi.

Oh, and by the way, all Stephens's very specific references to the smarts of Ashkenazi Jews -- very generally speaking, "Ashkenazi" can be interchanged with "northern and eastern European"? The Times stealth-edited those right out of the column. So now Stephens's column doesn't imply many times that "northern and eastern European Jews" are superior to Jews who are not that. And it doesn't cite a known shitball racist's "study." It just lives on for the purpose of complimenting Jews on their otherness and difference, and what could be wrong with that.

Here is what the Times could have found on the SPLC's website about Henry Harpending, if they had used their Google:

[Harpending is] a eugenicist who believes that medieval Europeans intuitively adopted eugenic policies, and that we should recognize the importance of eugenics in our own society. Harpending has given talks on these ideas at white supremacist conferences, and is widely celebrated among white supremacists on forums like Stormfront and the Vanguard News Network, who see a champion for their cause behind his academic rhetoric.

Sounds like he was a nice guy. He also   said of homosexuality that it is "surely a disease." So much they could have learned, from the Google!

Anything else the New York Times would like to fuck up before we say goodbye to 2019?

wtf is this headline? https: //t.co/gm05n4wYWk

— Tim Dickinson (@Tim Dickinson) 1577643041.0 

Heckuva job as always, guys. Just awesome. Really earning that "paper of record" title each and every day.

Yep.

[ New York Times ]

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