Writes Brian Karpf in "I Called Bret Stephens a Bedbug. Then He Tried to Squelch My Freedom of Speech. What a Day. This, after embarrassing himself on Twitter and on national television" (Esquire).
And here's the excellent response from the university's provost:
— GW University (@GWtweets) August 27, 2019
ADDED: Excellent except to the extent that the provost is still doing 2 spaces after a period. Come on! Also, there's no extra space before the new paragraph. That too much/too little combination is mildly infuriating.
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85 comments:
I read that last night.
It’s hilarious.
Come down Bret, but you need to be de-loused/fumigated first.
Free speech is a one way street for whiners, victims, democratics, progs, and assholes who call up cake shops in Denver with full intent to harass.
Stephens is the cur who famously fantasized about expelling the natives to make more room for immigrants:
Because I’m the child of immigrants and grew up abroad, I have always thought of the United States as a country that belongs first to its newcomers
"Fredo the Bedbug" is a 2019 American coming-of-age film starring Fredo Cuomo, Bret "Bedbug" Stephens and Brian Karpf as The X-Terminator.
Orkin's Law:
the theory that as an online discussion progresses, it becomes inevitable that someone or something will eventually be compared to Bedbugs, regardless of the original topic.
"He reached out believing my university would chastise me for provoking the ire of a writer at The New York Times. That’s an abuse of his social station."
Bret was right to believe that being chastised by a NYT writer would lead to chastising a professor because he's seen how the lefties react to anything from LLR Chuck's beloved NYT.....but what Bret failed to understand is that he is a controlled and trained and tamed "conservative" house pet of the left and so he specifically does not have the far left/dem/LLR-left cachet and any dem/lefty at anytime can smack him across the nose with a rolled up newspaper for any reason and nothing will happen to that dem/lefty.
Such is the life of the "accepted" not-really-conservative-but-plays-one-in-the-media cuck.
Enjoy it Bret!!
Can you already hear the snickers from the NYT staffers as Bret walks thru the newsroom (while the staffers scratch their bedbug bites)?
The Fredoflap was what, last week? He'll be Bedbug Bret forever.
I do wonder if the provost's response would have been the same if Stephens weren't the "conservative" NYT token.
And here's the excellent response from the university's provost:
It's a predictably dishonest response.
George Washington University has been given the speech code rating Yellow.
"GWU Silent And Impotent Over Free Speech Intimidation"
There's an old phrase that goes Men size each other up and either fight, flee or become friends. Women size each other up and work forever to get everyone else to hate the other person.
I mentioned it in the last post...high school girls.
It's apt here so I'll use it. What a bunch of pussies.
AA: Excellent except to the extent that the provost is still doing 2 spaces after a period. Come on! Also, there's no extra space before the new paragraph. That too much/too little combination is mildly infuriating.
I admit that I am often guilty of tapping 2 spaces after a period. Unconscious, force of habit.
Agree that having no space between paragraphs is a flogging offense, though.
Technically, he is an arrogant SOB. Come the revolution these guys are among the first against the wall.
Stephens is a lousy* journalist
*the etymology of lousy is rather obvious and the metaphor underlying its current meaning is clear. The word comes from louse and the original meaning was “infested with lice.”
Why have any space? Doesn't the period suffice?
Drago: Such is the life of the "accepted" not-really-conservative-but-plays-one-in-the-media cuck.
Enjoy it Bret!!
I'm told that the punishments in hell tend toward the ironical.
Some of us seem to get pre-Last Judgment previews.
It's a bad response because it's all virtue signalling.
The right response is a lack of sympathy; i.e. he should know better.
Two spaces after a period makes it easier to speed-read by making the end of the sentence easier to jump to.
I like 2 spaces after a period. It's like open space for paragraphs.
Two space after a period is the way one was taught to type back in the day when actual typewriters were used.
Balfegor: Stephens is the cur who famously fantasized about expelling the natives to make more room for immigrants:
I remember when people with deep-seated hostility toward the established natives used to be a lot more subtle and clever about expressing it.
Curious about the exact moment when "I'm as American as you are!" morphed into "I'm *more* American than you!"
The two spaces after a period habit is a nightmare to break. When writing long documents I often search and replace two spaces with one, just to be on the safe side. I wish editors behaved more like the one on medium.com, which simply doesn't allow you to type the second space.
What junior high do Brian and Bret attend?
Fernando Stein is right this time. I see autocorrect has mangled his name. Oh well.
Excellent except to the extent that the provost is still doing 2 spaces after a period. Come on!
Okay, you win. I will no longer use two spaces after a period. Go big or go home!
Buzzard
We have the same crap up here. “Canadian by choice” being the phrase used to claim higher status.
Two spaces after a period is simply the civilized way to punctuate. One space within sentences; two spaces between.
Everyone gets to use 1 space.
Trump gets 2.
Perhaps one of the best developments of the Social Media/Trump era is that so many "elite" journalists are being revealed to be vain idiots. Those who would judge us are now being judged. Those who would mock us are now being mocked. And what's really special is that they're surprised by it. "You mean... you can do that to me too?! But... I'm a jounalist! I'm a special class, immune from mockery!"
Your criticism of two spaces after a period is triggering me. I need a tummy rub.
I'll be a two-spacer until they pry the keyboard from my dead hands.
Blogger sucks! I try to make a joke by switching to three spaces after a period, and blogger edits my comment, changing it from three spaces to one.
And then it has the nerve to post that edited, humorless comment under my name.
Two spaces rock. You one space people suck!
Talking to you, GOOG. You think you can turn me into a one space person with your one space fascism? Ha! 2 spaces forever.
Too many Brets (and Brits) today!
All Stephens had to do was ignore the guy or retweet with a short and sweet, lolgf. That's my fav response these days to any lecturing and complaining. I think I stole it from Ace.
I've been a big fan of the single space following the period for a long time. Not sure where I picked it up but use it because it aids clarity and, imho, looks better. As for paragraphs, I do like a little more space between them but a whole line is too much. using word I've settled on 6pts with a standard 11 or 12 pt font. Beautiful!
Ken B: We have the same crap up here. “Canadian by choice” being the phrase used to claim higher status.
Same shite in every Western country. "There's no such thing as a real [Frenchman, Englishman, Canadian, American...], but I'm more of one than any descendant of people who came here centuries ago..."
"Immigrant narcissism syndrome" is epidemic these days. (Fortunately many new immigrants do seem to be immune.)
"mildly infuriating"
I find your reaction "mildly hilarious".
I'm with @rhhardin on this. Two spaces after a period makes complex texts, with their many clauses, easier to read.
We have the same crap up here. “Canadian by choice” being the phrase used to claim higher status.
I guess the proper reply would be, “What shithole did you come from?”
Two spaces for me also.
"mildly infuriating"
I don't catch your humor as much as I'd like to, but this one had me laughing.
Science Denier!
I'm keeping my two spaces. You can't have them. They're a pause, a breathing space, a relic of a more civilized era when discourse was more measured.
Nothing says “decrepitude” quite like two spaces following a period, except perhaps using the character for number one (1) in the place of lower-case letter L (l).
stevew has it exactly right: A 6-point space between paragraphs is perfect.
Bret the Bedbug has gone full Beta Male.
Stop whining, dude!
The provost is completely correct in defending Karpf.
However, here is the thing- if the professor had, for example, called Paul Krugman a bedbug, the provost would have disciplined him, and we all know this is true.
And, I sorry, Ms. Althouse- there should be two spaces between the period and the next sentence- always.
That is an excellent column in Esquire. I think the Professor has a very correct reading on Stephens, who really damned himself by cc'ing the Provost.
Someone in last night's thread pointed out that Stephens was playing the perfect cuck role by inviting Karpf to meet his, Stephens' wife.
Our hostess is a science denier. "One space between each sentence, they said. Science just proved them wrong." Further proof that Roman Catholic Sisters are always correct. My thanks, as always, to Sr. Marie Andrea
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/05/04/one-space-between-each-sentence-they-said-science-just-proved-them-wrong-2/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29691763?dopt=Abstract
Two spaces after the period. It improves readability.
Drago said...
Bret was right to believe that being chastised by a NYT writer would lead to chastising a professor because he's seen how the lefties react to anything from LLR Chuck's beloved NYT.....but what Bret failed to understand is that he is a controlled and trained and tamed "conservative" house pet of the left and so he specifically does not have the far left/dem/LLR-left cachet and any dem/lefty at anytime can smack him across the nose with a rolled up newspaper for any reason and nothing will happen to that dem/lefty.
8/28/19, 9:46 AM
I'm surprised LLRs don't defend Bret Stephens, even here. Perhaps it's down to realizing how disgracefully inept and malevolent Stephens was to try and get this guy fired. Perhaps it's because LLRs don't want to point to their vanishing cultural influence that will threaten their cushy jobs in the name of "diversity." Perhaps it's because they see that the NYT is going out of its way to punish Jewish columnists and editors who do not have Leftism as their primary religion, as opposed to Judaism?
Anyways, who cares. This is the beginning of Bret Stephens' humiliation. Long may it continue.
madAsHell is correct- you put two spaces between sentences because it makes text easier to read, which is the same reason you put line spaces betwee paragraphs. In fact, I find the modern kerning of periods a bit of a pain because what I type doesn't look like what I write in most formats.
you put two spaces between sentences because it makes text easier to read, which is the same reason you put line spaces betwee paragraphs. In fact, I find the modern kerning of periods a bit of a pain because what I type doesn't look like what I write in most formats.
Can you tell the difference between the two blocks of text in my last comment? I can't see once the comment is published, but I put two spaces vs one in the two blocks before "In fact".
I think you folks are barking up the wrong tree, but what do I know?
Stephens is a columnist with a “global view”, which was the title of his old WSJ column. There’s nothing wrong with that, but obviously it is unpopular in some places.
His mistake was to cc the GW provost, but Stephens thinks that the great company of educated men and women (including professors at universities like GW) should do their bit to maintain a higher level of political discourse. More fool he, but Goofus Karpf did call Stephens, famously the editor of the Jerusalem Post at age 29, a vermin infesting the NYT newsroom, apparently because Stephens doesn’t buy the global warming story. Well, OK, but Karpf would be out on his ear if he had called Krugman a termite destroying the foundations of our country or said Baquet was dancing to tunes called by Carlos Slim and the current idiot put forward by the Sulzburger family.
In other words, this whole thing smells to heaven, and I am surprised at how gleeful many here and at other sites that should know better are in their rush to join the Bret Stephens lynch mob.
It ain’t pretty.
Helpful list of journo Bedbugs/Beta-Males/Snowflakes:
Bret Stephens
Bill Kristol
Paul Krugman
Thomas Friedman
Chris Cuomo
Don "smell my crotch" Lemon
There are more.
Karpf called Stephens a bedbug, because Karpf thinks that Stephens downplays concerns about climate change.
That is why Karpf was defended by the provost.
BAG— you are on a tear today. Watch out for the crash when you leave the “manic” phase.
Kind of interesting, Amadeus. You either know or should know that Karpf would be fired for offending leftist orthodoxy, not for the extremely accurate depiction of Krugman. I can point to at least two CNN employees who have been fired immediately after exposing their controversial viewpoints- Rick Sanchez and Marc Lamont Hill- and it definitely wasn't for offending Mexican billionaires. Bret Stephens tried to play his NYT journalist card, only to find out it was the cuckservative "kiddy" credit card, with limited funds.
Why do you insist conservatives stick up for Bret Stephens? The vast majority do not care if he was a precocious Jewish journalist, and they certainly don't regard him as an ally for backbiting our President.
I'm actually happy Stephens flipped out like he did because, although a journalist, he's right-of-center and therefore not immune to criticism. It's good to see people saying that Stephens isn't entitled to special treatment or protection as a journalist. After the recent NYT pearl-clutching over people doing, uh, journalism they don't like about their employees, this Stephens thing is good. Journalists in the institutional press really need to get over themselves.
It takes someone like Stephens lashing out stupidly to make the rest of the media wake up, if only a little bit. They really think the First Amendment's guarantee of a "free press" means that they and the media corporations that employ them are entitled to constitutional protections greater than the rest of us.
I don't care who Bret Stephens is; it's a dick move to try to get anybody fired for their beliefs, no matter how toxic.
Unfortunately, that's not how the game is played today, and the only way to get them to stop is to enforce their own rules against them. Tit for tat is the only game-winning strategy.
I started a huge dispute on my screenwriting site about one or two spaces after a period.
I don’t insist on anything. I am just saying I am surprised at the attitudes of most of the regulars here.
docrev—I don’t quite get your point—nobody has been fired or reprimanded yet. Goofus Karpf got an email or message from Stephens after Karpf had published a tweet saying the Stephens was the vermin (bedbug) in the NYT newsroom. Stephens thought that was an inappropriate insult from a professor at a major university to a Jewish columnist (insert your own feelings about Der Sturmer rhetoric here). Stephens had copied the GW provost on his email. Karpf cried about it, and Stephens explained his thinking. The GW provost put out a statement approved by Althouse that I doubt he would have made if Karpf had similarly insulted Krugman or Baquet.
As a side note, I am not clear if you are aware that Carlos Slim bailed out the NYT and is the largest single investor in the NYT Company with over 17% of the stock. That is why I included him in my wisecrack about Baquet.
"I am surprised at how gleeful many here and at other sites that should know better are in their rush to join the Bret Stephens lynch mob."
The glee would be just as savage if this were Thomas Friedman complaining about being called a bedbug. I think the utter display of weakness and lack of awareness in Stephens' reply is what it being targeted by the ridicule. Most men by the age of 13 or 14 have figured out how to appropriately handle pretty much all personal insults. Stephens' reply is on the level of what a 7 year old would do.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/af/d4/93/afd49304815f161e5c8c5f123ad0efe6.jpg
"Space Nazi"
Please explain the immature nature of Stephens reply to Goofus Karpf. I’ll stipulate that Stephens should not have cc: ed the provost. What else is wrong with what Stephens did? He was addressing a learned person. He clearly thought that insect politics was not the game to be playing. He invited Karpf to meet him, his wife, and family, and then repeat the insult to Stephens’s face. What is immature about that? It hits me as rather gentlemanly.
Sorry— in my comment at 11:43 it should be “doctrev”.
You obviously want to defend Bret Stephens, Amadeus, but as I see it Professor Karpf hasn't had to do much crying. Why would he? Bret Stephens decided to tattle, only for the provost to firmly remind him that he's not a real NYT luminary and Stephens certainly doesn't own him. Just a fake conservative token put in for affirmative action, and nothing else. Go ahead, call Karpf a goofus, but at least he wasn't left out to dry by his employers like Stephens was. A man with dignity would resign and crawl back to the WSJ. It's not a lot of dignity, obviously, but it's better than being Carlos' catamite.
You can assume that when I reference Mexican billionaires in charge of the media, I'm talking about Carlos Slim: yet some people like Ann Coulter can (for now) freely talk about him without being fired. I don't know why a certain flavor of conservative insists on narrating obvious facts like "Carlos Slim owns the NYT" in between desperate attempts to smear all opposition coming from the left or right, but again: no one cares. Bret Stephens has zero play with Trump supporters, and the left will call him a climate denier/ Iraq war shill. His support in America is rapidly decreasing. It's already too late for the poor fool to jump aboard the Trump train. He should find sunnier climes while that is still an option: heard there's a lot of Jew-punching in NYC. Be a real pity if Stephens got squashed like a bedbug.
Amadeus wrote:
"What is immature about that? It hits me as rather gentlemanly."
If Stephens' reply truly had been mature and gentlemanly, almost no one would be mocking him, Amadeus, which you seem to concede. You can't separate the two things Stephen's did and judge them on their own merits. Had he just replied to Karpf, probably no one would have even paid attention to this- even if Karpf publicized the reply. It was the ccing of the provost that stepped over the line to immaturity. It is exactly like running to the teacher or mommy to tattle on someone who called you a dirty name.
Doctrev—a hard rain is gonna fall. Let’s hope no one any of us cares about gets washed away.
“He’s not a real NYT luminary”
Where does the provost say that?
“Stephens does not own him”
Where does he say that?
“It’s better than being Carlos’s catamite”
How did that come into the picture? I made a wisecrack reference as to how an imaginary Goofus Karpf might insult others in the NYT hit parade by insulting other NYT luminaries. No Carlos around Stephens.
Civilized people use an en-space between words and after a comma; they use an em-space after a sentence-ending period. What? Y'all don't use TeX?
Look: I don't mind you being on the Spectrum. Born this way, I respect that. You and Bret are trying to pretend that "no I didn't run to teacher, and they didn't call me a little snitch!" But it's not working, on the left or right. Even Althouse calls the provost putting Stephens in his place excellent. There's zero apology or concession to Stephens, which is the reverse of what would happen if the provost took "he called a Jew a bedbug, like Hitler did" seriously. Things are not looking great for Bret Stephens, or his lackeys.
I'd be a bit more intimidated by the prospect of war, except it's already happening. Antifa goons beating Patriot Prayer in the street, cops arresting only conservatives after the brawl, Big Tech silencing anyone to the right of Ben Shapiro, the CoC standing against the slightest advancement in rights of the American worker as the illegals flood in. The rain's already falling. I've made my peace with that. How about you? How much of your comfortable life are you ready to see wash into the gutter?
Also, the “are” should be an “is”.
Technically, he is an arrogant SOB. Come the revolution these guys are among the first against the wall.
Careful, Roy. Inga will report you to the FBI for making threats.
Another liberal fighting PC culture
Blogger Earnest Prole said...
Nothing says “decrepitude” quite like two spaces following a period, except perhaps using the character for number one (1) in the place of lower-case letter L (l).
We almost nuked Chicago once because a programmer typed x=y+l instead of x=y+1.
By the late 1960s minicomputers became cheap enough that they cost less than the line printers (drum, band) needed to make them useful. The Centronix 101 dot matrix printer (1/10 the cost) was introduced in 1970 and the industry took off. But there was a huge problem. The numeral zero (0) was printed with a slash, just as it appears on your screen (maybe, depends on an obscure setting in your browser). The problem is that commercial users often read it as an eight (8). It took a year or two for the computer makers to modify their operating systems to print it as an upper case letter O.
In the preceding comment I mentioned the slashed zero (0). In the published comment it appears without the slash, but there is a slash when you are typing in the comment box. Try it.
I don't think we should conclude the Maltzman is a two spacer. It looks more like a center text problem...
It means something that half the time I have no idea who people are referring to on this thread...and then there are the spacing issues.
It’s a good thing that no one here is trying to run anything.
If these are Trump’s troops, there is a messaging problem.
Bret will not replace us.
Actually, I think his email would've been fine ... IF HE HADN'T CC'D THE PROVOST. If he kept it between him and the professor and he'd have come off as a fairly decent chap.
Who the hell thinks THEY can simply decree the one-space rule, after people have been taught to use two spaces for over a hundred years?
It's got to be someone like the Emperor Joseph II in "Amadeus", who sniffily writes off Mozart's music as having "too many notes."
Is Stephens really a "child of immigrants"? He was born in NYC. His family lived in Mexico. His father may have been born there, but Bret's grandfather was apparently an American.
I suspect the "child of immigrants" thing is so much hooey. Bret is a globalist and an elitist. "Post-nationalist" might describe him in many situations. Stephens despised the Mexicans he grew up with and I don't think he wants many more Mexicans or Central Americans coming here.
But he does want what US elites want and that obligates him to take a soft line on immigration. It's hard to talk about this because of the whole antisemitic "rootless cosmopolitan" stereotype, but it's also hard to avoid the idea that he wishes that borders wouldn't inconvenience well-off people like himself (or poorly-off people he can employ as servants).
@Timotheus for the win. This whole thing started because some little tyrant on Slate or Salon was all, “but a real typesetter uses only one space after a period!!1!” Yes, but a real typesetter chooses which size space, and in particular chooses the wide em-space so that the space following sentence-ending punctuation will consistently be visually wider than the space between words, improving readability. That’s why the typewriting convention, designed to visually imitate typesetting as closely as possible with a standard character width, is two spaces between sentences. Most word processing programs and web formats do not offer the user a choice between en-space and em-space, and where the choice is not offered the typing convention should be followed so that the space between sentences is consistently wider than the space between words. I can believe that it doesn’t make much difference for journalism or other kinds of writing in which long sentences are uncommon. I can believe it doesn’t make much difference if the type size is large enough. But my experience with legal and technical writing, in which long sentences and small type are common, is that comprehension per unit time is much enhanced when sentence endings are visually signaled by wider spaces.
Althouse's 1st Rule: Never attack down.
I like 2 spaces after a period. It's like open space for paragraphs.
No worries, when I am elected Dictator For Life that will be my first policy issue.
And all the single-spacers will be rounded up and forced to watch Footloose Fanfics.
"it's also hard to avoid the idea that [Bret Stephens] wishes that borders wouldn't inconvenience well-off people like himself (or poorly-off people he can employ as servants)."
Exactly. "Who are you proles to be complaining about 'borders' and 'laws'?"
It's a pity that Brian Karpf didn't write: "I Called Bret Stephens a Bedbug. Then He Tried to Squash My Freedom of Speech."
But maybe it was his editor's fault. They like to write the headlines.
Another media douche exposed, but there will be no consequences for the perp.
@ PJ:
Word
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