Dave Weigel, a reporter for The Washington Post, has found himself in hot water over the last week after he dared to retweet a mild, moderately amusing joke about women. The tweet in question quipped that “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out whether it’s polar or sexual.”
Is that offensive? Sure, it’s offensive, but that’s usually what jokes are, and as Robby Soave points out, is it really any more offensive than the viral joke about men being unwilling to go to therapy?
What is the difference between the joke that got Weigel suspended from The Washington Post, “all girls are bisexual or bipolar,” and the extremely popular “men would literally do X instead of going to therapy” joke? Should all the women who retweeted the latter lose their jobs?
— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) June 7, 2022
Still, as RedState’s Brad Slager chronicled, the outrage flowed from one Post reporter named Felicia Sonmez. She ruthlessly sent a mob after Weigel, continually demanding the Post take action. Even after he quickly deleted his retweet and gave a pointed apology, she still targeted him for several more days.
Now, he’s been suspended by the Post. But what makes that even more noteworthy is that Weigel, being a man of the left, had previously mocked the existence of cancel culture.
Shot, chaser
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) June 7, 2022
(This is why I don’t feel bad for him) pic.twitter.com/jXwJ7RUnXo
Those new rules kind of stink don’t they? And there’s something poetic about someone who has promoted them being forced to play by them. I have nothing personal against Weigel, and as far as leftwingers go, he’s fairly mild. Yet, it’s probably necessary for the alligator to eat some of its handlers in order to get this stuff under control. Further, it’s necessary for conservatives to let it happen so some lessons can be learned.
https://twitter.com/bonchieredstate/status/1534166611300687877?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1534166611300687877%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fbonchie%2F2022%2F06%2F07%2Fjournalist-who-mocked-cancel-culture-gets-canceled-n575659
As I noted in my initial write-up on the situation, Weigel’s downfall is why you don’t bend the knee to the mob. It will never be enough, and no one is ever intersectional enough (well, almost no one) to escape the mob’s wrath. The tenets of woke-ism are so conflicting and overlapping that no matter how much penance you pay, you’ll always run afoul of some new rule. Weigel’s mistake was apologizing in the first place, not because there’s anything wrong with apologizing, but because there is a moral imperative not to feed into bad-faith actors seeking to destroy others.
Sure enough, Sonmez, not happy with the scalp she just took, is already moving on to her next target. Another Post writer who stepped in to defend Weigel is about to find out just how far management is willing to go to appease the far-left figures in the newsroom.
It's hard for me to understand why the Washington Post hasn't done anything about these tweets, in which one of its employees mischaracterizes his own actions and accuses a colleague of "clout chasing and bullying" for publicly objecting to sexism.
— Felicia Sonmez (@feliciasonmez) June 7, 2022
Is this who we are? https://t.co/GT95VUlSWr
Did you get that? The woman who viciously bullied a guy over an innocent joke, eventually getting him suspended and putting his career in jeopardy, now wants an apology from another guy who dared to question her attacks. Worse, she now wants to Post to discipline Jose A. Del Real just as they disciplined Weigel.
People like Sonmez are drunk on the unearned power handed to them by cowardly editors. If this is the road the Post wants to go down, they are welcome to, but it’s going to eventually destroy them. Come to think of it, they should go right ahead with what they are doing.
