A New York Times op-ed highlighting counterculture Internet personalities drew mockery and criticism from journalists and liberals on social media who said the column allows conservatives to claim status as victims.
Bari Weiss, a right-leaning opinion writer for the paper, wrote in the column published Tuesday about several Web-based culture commentators and philosophers who feel shunned by academia and more mainstream media outlets. Included among them were Jordan Peterson, the psychologist and best-selling author, and Joe Rogan, who hosts a popular podcast.
“Today, people like them who dare venture into this ‘There Be Dragons’ territory on the intellectual map have met with outrage and derision — even, or perhaps especially, from people who pride themselves on openness,” wrote Weiss. “It’s a pattern that has become common in our new era of That Which Cannot Be Said.”
Until now, I didn’t realize how oppressed I am. I mean, sure, I get to write for the Times, am very well paid, and am invited to speak to audiences all over the world. But sometimes people criticize me and my ideas. Why, it’s positively Stalinist! https://t.co/zj9yBuZ0WI
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) May 8, 2018
Peterson, Rogan and the others in the story often differ in opinion but they all share the overarching idea that free speech and thought are under threat by a politically correct and hypersensitive culture.
Rogan is quoted saying of his popularity that, “People are starved for controversial opinions” and that “they are starved for an actual conversation.”
But the column was dismissed by critics who said its premise was faulty by nature of the subjects being highlighted in an op-ed in a national paper.
“Until now, I didn’t realize how oppressed I am,” wrote Weiss’ Times colleague Paul Krugman, a liberal columnist, in a sarcastic tweet. “I mean, sure, I get to write for the Times, am very well paid, and am invited to speak to audiences all over the world. But sometimes people criticize me and my ideas. Why, it’s positively Stalinist!”
That tweet was re-shared by Farhad Manjoo, who also writes for the Times on business and technology.
Ashley Feinberg, a liberal writer for the Huffington Post, tweeted that Weiss’s “big oppression piece is also just a cascade of photos of highly prominent and well-off white people.”
“Genuine question,” tweeted Laurence Dodds of the British Telegraph. “[H]ow can it be that, simultaneously: A) there is a widespread opinion that people like Jordan Peterson are being suppressed and driven out of public life B) I keeping [sic] reading about them in the mainstream press INCESSANTLY?”
Some of the people mentioned in Weiss’s column have found financial success by soliciting donations from their vast fan bases online, but most of them are not household names and none of them is employed by a national newspaper or TV network.
