Everyone knows that thanks to world history, certain names, first or last, are no longer socially acceptable. According to one young journalism student, Carly, the third name on this list besides Adolf and Hitler is Breitbart.
Carly, a junior at the University of Florida, especially dislikes the surname because coincidentally, it’s hers. While she has no relation to the late Andrew Breitbart or the website that gained credibility and notoriety in this past election cycle, Carly took to Marie Claire to express how this unfortunate pairing of a baby to a name would damage her career.
The big story she told was on her first day of an internship, an editor asked her name before a press call she was assigned to, more specifically her last name with her first.
I was worried that the press call would be given to someone else. I scrambled to defend myself in the same way I’ve often had to over the course of the last year: No, I’m not related to Andrew Breitbart. No, I do not align with the alt-right. No, I can’t tell Milo Yiannopoulos you said hi.
And yes, I do want to go into journalism. If nothing else, my last name has given me one good thing: It’s fueled my fight against the fake news it celebrates.
I do love the subtext of the headline: “Thanks, Steve Bannon.” Frankly, the person she should be sarcastically thanking is dead. Otherwise the site would be Bannon News. If I were Carly’s father or older brother, I’d be more quick to point out to her the editor’s arrogance at laughing at a young student just for her name. That’d be like FBI Director Comey laughing at a future intelligence official whose last name happens to be Woodward, Bernstein, or Snowden. She also provided examples of the name messing with her dating life; having met a Clinton campaign staffer at a party, and being subtly rejected after she put her name in his phone.
In the end, Carly BREIT and her sister (who campaigned for Bernie Sanders) made the decision to chop off the Bart on any social media accounts. The line that’s really striking, however, is Ms. Breit’s defiant stance that “I am everything that Bannon hates: a liberal feminist half-Jewish aspiring journalist.”
The anti-semitism card against Bannon has been drawn more times than the SJW deck of Go Fish could handle. Breitbart‘s senior editor-in-chief since 2012, Joel Pollak, was born into an Orthodox Jewish home and practices his faith. Ben Shapiro worked there for years before resigning in protest over the Michelle Fields/Corey Lewandowski incident — he’s not exactly in the closet about his religion. Breitbart‘s Jerusalem bureau was built under Bannon’s direction. Both Pollak and Milo Yiannopoulos have defended Bannon against these attacks.
The most well-known claim of Bannon’s rumored anti-semitism was found in a report of his 1997 divorce proceedings, in which his ex-wife alleged he didn’t want to send his daughters to the Archer School in Los Angeles due to its high Jewish population. We all know how spot-on bitter divorce hearings can be.
It sounds like Carly, an aspiring journalist, broke a cardinal rule of journalism in her decision to change her name: not doing her research, and believing rumors and hype.
