I mean seriously, who does this kind of thing:
Alright fine… here is the email: pic.twitter.com/A4E5I6CoB6
— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 27, 2019
What a jackass. As I noted on twitter, Bret Stephens is the archetypal DC/think thank twat who honest to god thinks it is worse to swear when yelling “stop the fucking war” than it is to bomb, maim, and kill hundreds of thousands of innocents.
This is not going well for Brett:
The 'Streisand effect' occurs when the attempt to cover something up only brings it more attention or notoriety. https://t.co/VgBJObll5g
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) August 27, 2019
Cal D
Turbo twerp.
TomatoQueen
Bret Stephens v bedbug:
annoying
hard to kill
unwelcome
eradication will take concerted, relentless effort
dmsilev
Browsing through the Twitter thread, I see the inevitable editing of his Wikipedia entry has already occurred.
RoonieRoo
Turbo bedbug.
Carolina Dave
Bret Stevens is a ghoul who impersonates a human being in the eyes of his paymasters at the FTFNYT. Now he is on the TV. Conservatism cannot be failed, can only fail upwards. So sick of the “liberal” media.
Cheryl Rofer
This is the best respite thread today. I am laughing and laughing at the tweets.
Ryan
“Bret Stephens is the archetypal DC/think thank twat who honest to god thinks it is worse to swear when yelling “stop the fucking war” than it is to bomb, maim, and kill hundreds of thousands of innocents.”
Exactly on point. And on cue… obligatory Apocalypse Now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb1lF3UKLDQ
Ryan
Twitter is a sewer, haven’t you heard?
FlipYrWhig
“Bedbug” is a new standard of amazing bad things to say about a person you haven’t met??? Holy fucking frijoles. At least bedbugs are known for being indestructible. Bret Stephens WISHES he was a bedbug.
Cheryl Rofer
Cheryl Rofer
Imma gonna go sit with the cats.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
I wonder what story is about to drop that forced him to abruptly cut and run.
dmsilev
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: He said it was because his wife was experiencing complications of some sort with her pregnancy. Take that explanation for whatever it’s worth.
Ryan
@Cheryl Rofer: I think you also have to be white and something else, I don’t know. If you called me a bedbug, I’d honestly be confused.
Ryan
@dmsilev: From a structural perspective, being able to sign off work is not a luxury that is widely distributed in society.
Marcopolo
The thing is this bedbug comment would have been a big nothingburger. Nine likes, no retweets. By responding to it Stephens has made it a story. Thus he has reinforced my belief that in addition to being a tool, he is, yes, a total idiot. And ccing the provost-yep a snowflake.
SFAW
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
No “story about to drop.” He legit wants to spend more time with his family. As well as “pursue other interests.” As well as assess what to do with the next phase of his journey. Not to mention: Splunge!
Amir Khalid
That “And I’m telling your provost” subhead makes Bret Stephens sound like a schoolyard tattletale. I suspecks his colleagues at The NYT don’t think he’s all that either.
Chetan Murthy
@Cheryl Rofer:
You beat me. I started reading, and when I got to the “I am not a bedbug” tweet, my laughter unleashed a series of farts. Like, ten. [yes, I share too much]
Doug R
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: He’s accused by someone in Wassila of all places of some sexual impropriety.
SFAW
Als Bret Stephens eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt. Auch fand er sich zu einer WATB Schneeflocke verwandelt.”
RepubAnon
Hi, I’m Bret Stephens – Sergeant- PC Police. I carry a laptop.
kindness
One more reason the NY Times gets not one thin dime. Evah!
Mary G
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: His baby in the making has a severe heart defect and will need a lot of surgeries and extra care in addition to the herd of kids he already has.
dmsilev
@Amir Khalid: I can’t say I’ve known all that many university provosts, but the few that I have known would react to an email like that by rolling their eyes, sighing, and then hitting ‘delete’. Assuming that they even saw it; generally the public-facing provost email address is screened by an assistant of some sort.
Mary G
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
Very Kafka-esque.
Jackie
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I read his unborn baby has heart complications and he chose to resign to be with his family. For once a legit reason to spend more time with his family.
Mnemosyne
You know, when Daffy Duck said, “I’m not like other people, pain hurts me,” it wasn’t supposed to be turned into a life philosophy for idiot columnists at the New York fucking Times. ?
H.E.Wolf
@Mary G:
In 2017, GOP Rep. Sean Duffy voted to repeal the ACA, while secure in his Congressional health-care coverage. His official website has a link to an interview in which he gloats about the success of the repeal vote in the US House.
Chetan Murthy
@H.E.Wolf: I wondered about this, as I read about his unborn child’s health problems. These GrOPers: it’s all about FYIGM. They’re never able to put themselves in the place of anybody unlike themselves. Thank you for noting/sharing this.
westyny
@FlipYrWhig: @FlipYrWhig: Obviously, Bret isn’t bedbug ENOUGH!
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
I’m intrigued that Daffy Duck said that. I guess I never really listened to him.
TS (the original)
So laughing about the fast wikipedia update. I would think Bret Stephens spends too much time googling himself – because that is the only way this tweet was found.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Of course. And the semi-interesting thing is that being ein Ungeziefer in seinem Bett is sort of apropos. Even though it should technically be Bettwanze
Mary G
Twitter was made for this::
Omnes Omnibus
@H.E.Wolf: Yeah, he’s an asshole. And, yeah, it’s his ninth kid. A child being born with severe problems still isn’t something I would wish on anyone.
Timurid
Bret Stephens went for somebody’s throat over a petty insult that was overheard by less than a dozen people. In other news, this guy is searching for every mention of his name ever made online. That’s end stage Howard Hughes levels of batshit craziness. And this guy writes a column every day about how we need to be more grown up and civil…
TS (the original)
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
(my bold)
I would think there would be benefit from spending less time with his wife.
Edit: and yes I read the child to be is very ill, but having 8 children & not thinking the family might like you to be with them all the time is typical RW male treatment of family in my book.
Mary G
chopper
i’m sure ol’ bret’s gonna get pissy over the fact that the guy published the email, in spite of the fact that he cc’ed the guys provost in an obvious attempt to get him in trouble.
Omnes Omnibus
@TS (the original):
From what I know of him, I think it is perfectly reasonable that his family might not want him around. I’m guessing that his wife could use a bit of respite from his familial attentions
chopper
honestly he seems more sea lion than bedbug but either way.
debbie
O/T, there’s a citizen drive in Ohio to overturn the bailout for two nuclear plants. Their owner, First Energy, is pleading poverty, yet is spending $1 million to counter the opposition.
“They will ask for your name, your address, your signature.”
prostratedragon
—Rudolph Giuliani
(Their sic needs a sic.)
trollhattan
@TS (the original):
Something, something, it’s not a clown car.
One of the quiverfull asshats, I presume?
Anyway, hope the kid makes it and makes him stare hard in the mirror [as if] about his political choices.
H.E.Wolf
@Omnes Omnibus:
I agree with you 100%, and I ought to have made that explicit in my comment. Thank you and @Chetan Murthy: for remembering to put the focus there. [ETA: and @trollhattan:, too.]
May the Congressman’s child have the best possible health care and health outcome, and may the Congressman be moved to change his opinions about the ACA!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this is one of those internet traditions I have to look up almost every time I it mentioned. Also, sea lion, too
I had dinner with my mother at her retirement community the other night, the couple at the next table were Democrats talking about the election (they like Warren), they had to be in their seventies and the husband said at one point, “And even if we get rid of him, you know he’s just gonna troll whoever wins for their whole term”
bluefish
Hey, I’d totally accept the invite. And get my Bed Bug costume dry cleaned for the occasion. I’d get myself a real significant other to come with. High times. Gotta hit it.
Omnes Omnibus
@H.E.Wolf: All that being said, he really is an asshole. His home in the district is near my parents’ house, and I have stories I could tell but they would out some of my family members so you will just have to trust take me at my word,
Mike in NC
Nine kids. Jesus, have Republicans never heard of Planned Parenthood?
Calouste
@TS (the original): “googling himself”? Is that what the kids call it these days?
Chetan Murthy
@Mike in NC: Clap. Clap.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus: my old fartitude still can’t quite process that somebody from the freakin’ real world show is in Congress, much less that he’s a far-right winger and more Catholic than my 90 year old aunts
what’s next? a gameshow host in the White House?
Adam L Silverman
Someone please tweet “du bist vantz” at Stephens for me.
Thanks!
Adam L Silverman
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: @dmsilev: And leaving makes sense. His wife works for Fox News, so has an excellent health care package.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: I’m waiting for Bari Weiss to explain why this is a terrible case of anti-Semitism from a leftist academic.
Dan B
@dmsilev: I dated a prof who weny on to become provost of a big and prestigious university. Head over heels for him but he knew he would be moving and I wasn’t going to leave Seattle. I don’t know how he would react to an offended by a bad word but it’s fun to speculate.
Another Scott
@Timurid: I was going to comment about the tiny number of likes (9) and so forth, but the number of likes probably has little proportionality to the number of people who saw it. I don’t have a T account so I can’t like anything but I could probably see it on the web if I were interested.
I assume that someone on T who follows Karpf, and maybe even works for the FTFNYT, saw it and forwarded it to Bret. Maybe even as part of their job description. But it’s just an assumption.
I think Cole should apologize to nerds, myself. Nerds don’t do this. This is bedbug-level behavior.
Cheers,
Scott.
Quinerly
This piece on Melania’s clothes at the G7 made me laugh. Am I shallow for reading it?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/melania-gazed-at-justin-trudeau-in-the-perfect-red-dress-the-rest-of-her-g7-fashion-was-pure-one-per-cent
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@debbie:
I want to sign that. I’m pissed about that bailout. I’m opposed to nuclear energy on the grounds of waste disposal (seriously, it’ll be a problem for tens of thousands of years)
laura
The inadvertent self-pwn and impending ratio is shadenfreudalicious! The sheer “Hey everybody, STOP LOOKING AT ME” while presuming himself the subject, taking umbrage at an imagined slight, offering a family style beer summit to accept an apology is unmitigated gall. To cc the provost to tattle-tale this fantasy elevates it from the typical WATB to performance art.
If conservative voices weren’t so stifled in the halls of academe, we’d surely hear more thoughts from Brett and his ilk.
What a tool.
dww44
@Mike in NC: A very nice family, by all appearances, moved into the house across the cul-de-sac from ours in late May. They’ve 10 kids, ages 19 down to toddler size. The father teaches music and bible at a small religious school nearby. The mother, of course, stays at home. They’ve one of those big transit vans for transporting that huge family. The specialty license plate is appropriate: “Choose Life”.
On the day after the Memorial weekend move-in, the father went off on a 2 week military reserve training stint in Utah. My teacher daughter says that’s how this type of family manages to somehow feed that many mouths. Supplement teaching income with military reservist income. My SO says that there has to be some other sort of financial aid coming in. Teachers in small religious schools are not paid very much money. A couple of the older kids seem to have jobs outside of school. According to a fellow teacher (she’s on the board of an arts organization with me) the father has now been “fixed”.
The family just acquired a young, but growing black lab. The Mom walks him during the day;older kids at other times. Apparently he stays inside, but, for the life of me, I don’t know where as the house really isn’t huge, about 2400 square feet.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike in NC:
Yes, and they want to shut it down. Planned Parenthood makes baby Jesus cry.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
However, I am a little concerned about this:
Jay
Andy Ngo and Phrenology Weekly Quillette have ghosted each other.
Yarrow
Brett Sephens was on the Chuck Toddler Galore! show on Sunday morning. I had the misfortune of seeing him for about 20 seconds. TV was muted so I didn’t have to hear him talk but even just looking at him all I could think was, “Who’s that d-bag?” Then they popped up his name on the screen and I just thought, “Ohhhh…”
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: This is the report:
https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/08/26/27039560/undercover-in-patriot-prayer-insights-from-a-vancouver-democrat-whos-been-working-against-the-far-right-group-from-the-inside
Wapiti
Karph’s provost really needs to send a letter to someone up the chain in the NYT, asking if there’s any truth to the suggestion that Bret Stephens is a bedbug.
Chetan Murthy
@Adam L Silverman:
Wow. If I could buy this man I beer, I sure would. Bravery. Real bravery.
different-church-lady
@Kay: Daffy is many ducks to many people.
Yarrow
@Quinerly: I almost always think Melania’s fashion choices are awful. They just don’t work and they don’t flatter her. Maybe the aforementioned red dress worked. I only saw the top of it in the picture where she looked longingly at Trudeau. In general, though, I find her clothes just look terrible on her. Odd colors, strange styles, unfortunate distractions (like the no-bra see-through white top on the 4th of July in the rain). It seems like she could benefit from a new stylist.
Duane
@Mike in NC: They’ve heard of it. Icky women go there and do icky women things then they sell baby parts. That’s all they do and it must be destroyed.
Sloegin
Wagons will circle tomorrow, no doubt.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: At least she seems to have worn a bra this weekend. Though I suppose she’s just really proud of her kidney treatment.
Jay
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: You’ve got a Chinese language newspaper out of New York as the primary article linked to. A source that isn’t particularly mainstream. It links to a tweet from a woman claiming to be both a currently unemployed journalist and formerly of, among other places, MSNBC, asserting without evidence that someone up the chain at NBC killed a story she worked on that cited medics in Charlottesville who were prevented from treating Heather Heyer by Virginia State Police officers. It also links to coverage of this at Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire as tweeted by Shapiro.
There were no medics responding in Charlottesville. There were either EMTs or paramedics. Medics is, of itself, a technical term used in the US when reporting on military personnel who perform duties similar to EMTs or paramedics. The unemployed reporter offers no evidence, nor does she identify who this medic was. Nor who the person at NBC who killed it was.
I have questions. Not least of which is, even if this is true, whether this is a failure to understand the standard operating procedures for EMTs and paramedics at active crime scenes. The EMTs and paramedics are not allowed to go in and work until the police clear the scene and signal it is safe. If this did happen, this is likely the actual context.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay: @Adam L Silverman: That story looks super hinky to me. The implicit spin seems to me to be that the state troopers wanted Heyer to die so that it could be blamed on the racist protesters. It smacks of “Hillary gave a stand-down order at Benghazi.” I have no knowledge of anything and don’t know the players but there’s something pinging my spidey-sense in the write-up. YMMV.
Amir Khalid
@Yarrow:
As style icons go, Melania is no Michelle Obama. Someone should say that where Melania’s husband will hear it.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
He’s going to be “outed” in a week or so.
Portland anti-facist and community activists will be setting up a GoFundMe when he is to help him out, as his life will be in danger.
Chetan Murthy
Oh my goodness. This is lovely: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/26/working-off-the-past-from-atlanta-to-berlin/
Redshift
@TS (the original):
It wouldn’t surprise me if the NYT or his agent subscribed to some sort of service that searched for mentions automatically. You’d still have to be pretty obsessive to want it at the level of random Twitter mentions, though.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: I’ll look for it. More than one way to buy him a beer.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/itsgoingdown.org/state-trooper-try-stop-medics-performing-cpr-heather-heyer/amp/
Protests have “medics”. It’s part of community organizing. We are the people with the First Aid backpack and all the bottles of water.
Jay
Another account:
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.desmoinesregister.com/amp/574631001
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: And that article is from an anonymous contributor. This is RUMINT, there’s no corroboration here from anyone making the allegation. Would it surprise me that this happened? Not in the least. Is there enough her to actually say this is the case? No there isn’t.
Redshift
Also, if I recall correctly this isn’t the first time Stephens have pulled the “why would you say something about me when you don’t even know me?” (I think it was when people were pointing out that one of his columns was racist.)
He’s enough of a jackass to write about people he’s never met on a weekly basis, and still whine about any criticism with “but you don’t even know me!”
TS (the original)
@Another Scott:
100% more likely that he was looking for information about himself on the internet & found it. RW pundits think the world loves them.
Chetan Murthy
@TS (the original):
Not that this exculpates the self-centered GrOPer ass, but I’d be shocked if FTFNYT didn’t subscribe to the Internet equivalent of a “clipping service” — that would dump a whole pile of mentions in his inbox every morning. I mean, it’s the obvious thing to do.
TS (the original)
@Chetan Murthy: You may well be correct – but he would thus be reading every last trivial mention. I also think the days of clipping services on/off line are near dead given any search engine can do the same thing.
I’m also certain that no friend “found” it & told him.
TS (the original)
deleted
Chetan Murthy
@TS (the original): What a “clipping service” would do, is de-dupe, e.g. remove retweets, copypastas, etc. And I know that big companies -do- use such services, e.g. Ye Old Gynormous Enterprise IT Company sure did when I worked there in 2013. Given that BS is a FTFNYT “property”, I wouldn’t be surprised if corporate communications had an office that did all the work of monitoring for negative menitons and passing along the relevant bits to corporate legal, and the various people involved.
Also, the reason I doubt he was just searching himself, is that repeated searches aren’t guaranteed to show you new material first. And it’d be a lot of work to search down N pages looking for new material, each time you searched. Remembering whether you’ve seen something or not. Esp. when confronted with all the bland retweets/copypastas of your work that you’d want to skip over.
But whatevs. He’s a bedbug.
JustRuss
I know he’s just a simple NYT op-ed writer, but has Stephens ever heard of Donald Trump?
Chetan Murthy
@JustRuss: One doesn’t need to meet BS to know he’s a stone racist. Compared to that, calling him a bedbug is high praise.
J R in WV
Bedbug would be a blood-sucking parasite, right? So an accurate description of this RWNJ bastard! Racists are all over purity of blood also.
Mel
@debbie: They’re spending a good bit of that money on ridiculous, Red Scare style tv ads with images of worried looking elderly white people, ominous background sound and a narrator doing what reminds me a bit of a bad 1940s movie newsreel voice, warning all that “China is taking over…our energy” and essentially implying that only the mindless plebes can stop the evil Chinese from sneaking in and taking total control of all of America’s “energy”. Of course, the evil foreign menace can only be “stopped” by making sure that one’s vote bails out First Energy and throws even more money into their coffers. Amerikuh!!
thalarctosMaritimus
@SFAW: Marry me.
SFAW
@thalarctosMaritimus:
First you gotta get Mrs. SFAW’s OK on that, since we’re not Mormons. But she’d probably say “Thank FSM!”
debbie
@Mel:
Which is exactly what the ad was that I linked to. It felt like I was being force-transported back to McCarthy’s 1950s. I woke up angrier than I was last night seeing it the first time — reinforced by seeing it a second time this morning, right before the weather report.
SFAW
@TS (the original):
Libtard! I’m sure it was one of those baristas at a hipster coffee bar (or wherever it is that Jacob Wohl “hears” things).
different-church-lady
@JustRuss: Saying awful things about strangers is the only goddamned reason Twitter has left to still exist.
And that’s why it needs to die.
J R in WV
@different-church-lady:
OMG, if I had only known!! I shoulda been there the past 12 years instead of here!!!!
Mel
@debbie: I know exactly what you mean. The ad I saw made me sick to my stomach. I have managed to mute it since, but still have to leave the room because I know what’s being said.
Jingoism, paranoia, racism, xenophobia, and lies- they have crammed an astonishing amount of toxic verbal and psychological feces into that garbage fire of an ad.
The manipulation is so blatant, and yet, sadly, they do know their target crowd and how to push their reactive buttons.
Sister Golden Bear
Might I also point out the peak wealthy white male privilege of inviting some internet rando into your home and not pausing at all to think about the potential for bad outcomes — and not just being called a bedbug again.
A Ghost To Most
I’d rather compare Bleat Stephens and the FTFNYT to yersinia pestis.
Another Scott
For completeness, Wonkette’s excellent takedown.
Cheers,
Scott.
Quaker in a Basement
What are the odds?! I have the same post for two completely different stories today:
“Send this S!O!B! the ‘bedbug letter.’”
Look it up.
Another Scott
@Quaker in a Basement: Excellent. Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
DicerosBicornis
Is this why it’s so much fun to say Bed Bug Brett?
(links to a BBC Culture post on some of the hidden rules of the English language…an oldie but goodie)
Maybe a dead thread but Bed Bug Brett is gonna live on.