On Friday, Andrew Sullivan joined a band of conservative writers denigrating the tweets of Sarah Jeong, a tech journalist recently hired by the New York Times editorial board.
Just a day earlier, the announcement of Jeong's hiring was met with open hostility. Right-wing social media users culled her past tweets, revealing a dozen or so comments that targeted "white men" and white people in general. This launched an online campaign to get Jeong fired, and sparked a debate over racism towards white people.
Prominent commentators on the right, from Ben Shapiro and David French to Jonah Goldberg and the entire Federalist staff, accused Jeong of blatant racism. They also pooh-poohed her statement on the matter, which tried to explain that the tweets were "counter-trolling" and "intended as satire."
Sullivan's column on New York magazine's website took it a step further. He entirely rebuked Jeong's "satire" excuse and was apoplectic that the Times "buys this argument."
"Let me explain why I think this is the purest of bullshit," he wrote of Jeong's statement. "If you want to respond to trolls by trolling them, you respond to them directly."
As he was typing those sentences, Sullivan failed to realize that one of Jeong's tweets he highlighted in his column was a direct response to his own, racially-charged writing.
The tweet from December, 2014 — that would, four years later, succeed in provoking Sullivan — was a rather banal comment about white people and sunburns.
Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins
— sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) December 24, 2014
Sullivan shared this tweet in his column on Friday, declaring it an opinion that "describe[s] an entire race as subhuman."
One could forgive Sullivan for finding the tweet hurtful. Being compared to a goblin isn't exactly appropriate in civilized discourse. But a wider view of this tweet, first discovered by historian Angus Johnston, shows that Jeong was undeniably doing a parody of Sullivan's scientific racism.
A day before Jeong sent the "goblin" tweet, Sullivan wrote a blog post defending his decision as editor of The New Republic to publish a 1994 issue on race and IQ. The traditionally-liberal magazine shocked the country when it pushed excerpts from "The Bell Curve," a highly-contested book that posits racial disparities in the U.S. are due to, in part, differences in racial IQs.
For decades, Sullivan has congratulated himself for the risky decision to normalize the subject of race and IQ. Writing in a 2005 blog post, Sullivan said one of his "proudest moments in journalism" was publishing the chapters from 'The Bell Curve.'" In December, 2014, Sullivan explained on his blog how "comfortable" he was "airing taboo stuff." He said that he came from the tradition that "anything can be examined and debated."
"So I responded to the race and IQ controversy exactly as I would any other: put it all on the table and let the facts and arguments take us where they may," he expounded. "In fact, I couldn't understand why those who loathed the book didn't leap at the chance to debunk it. If it were so transparently dreck, why not go in for the kill?"
In essence, Sullivan was suggesting that America needed to hear both sides of the debate. Jeong heard that message loud in clear. The day after Sullivan posted his blog, Jeong tweeted:
G O T T A H E A R B O T H S i d e s
— Andrew Sullivan
— sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) December 24, 2014
Ten minutes later, Jeong followed up with a tweet that would be weaponized in a campaign against her.
let's hear both sides
— sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) December 24, 2014
Jeong's statement from Thursday that expressed remorse for her tweets acknowledged how they could be hurtful, especially when taken out of context.
"I can understand how hurtful these posts are out of context, and would not do it again," she said.
Sullivan's column granted her zero charity. The same political commentator that has embraced President Donald Trump's xenophobic agenda and rhetoric would not allow for even a second that Jeong's statements about white people were being taken out of context.
Instead, Sullivan made Jeong an avatar of the "neo-Marxist" society America's left has supposedly adopted. He wrote on Friday that the "loathing of and contempt for 'white people' is now background noise on the left. What many don’t seem to understand is that their view of racism isn’t shared by the public at large, and that the defense of it by institutions like the New York Times will only serve to deepen the kind of resentment that gave us Trump."
When it comes to racism targeted at people of color, Sullivan insists both sides need to be heard. When it comes to "racism" targeted at white people, you better damn expect a 1,200 word screed attacking the speaker.
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