Newly minted New York Times columnist Bret Stephenshas already prompted criticism inside the newsroom, even though he hasnt written anything for the paper.Declan Walsh, the TimesCairo bureau chief, on Saturday took issue with Stephens having once described anti-Semitism as the disease of the Arab mind.Not cool, Walsh tweeted in reference to a line Stephens wrote in anAugust columnfor the Wall Street Journal.In that column, Stephens argued that an Egyptian athlete refusing to shake hands with his Israeli counterpart at the Olympics was indicative of the long-abiding and all-consuming hatred of Israel in the Arab world.Stephens probably wouldnt have caused much controversy, then or now, if he had gone on to argue that anti-Semitism is prevalent, even pervasive, in the Arab world. But he wrote that the Olympics incident demonstrated the disease of the Arab mind.Stephens responded to criticism at the time by saying he used the wordmind as a figure of speech, not biology. But the conservative columnists Arab mind characterization has been given a second life since he landed the high-profile position at the Times on Wednesday. And Stephens defended that eight-month-old column on Saturday in tweets to Walsh.Yes, @declanwalsh. The column is about the tragic ubiquity of anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Which, I'm sure you'll agree, isn't cool. https://t.co/7g7b6gfbZq Bret Stephens (@BretStephensNYT) April 15, 2017 Thats a fair point, Walsh responded. Ascribing a pathological condition to an entire race of people is not.Which the column doesnt do, except in a tendentious reading of it, Stephens tweeted, adding that readers can judge for themselves.But the Times Interpreter columnist Max Fisher also expressed concern with the line.@declanwalsh @BretStephensNYT I initially assumed it was just a sloppy rhetorical flourish, but the digging in suggests the line was intended to mean exactly what it said Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) April 16, 2017 @declanwalsh @BretStephensNYT I guess we just all have to agree to disagree as to whether it is acceptable or correct to call racial groups pathologically "diseased." Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) April 16, 2017 Opinion writers are never going to please everyone. But its unusual for Times staffers on the news side to publicly challenge the work of a new hire in the opinion section. And specifically, the two Times stafferscriticism with Stephens writing stemmed not from a political viewpoint, but from whether the language he used to make it was acceptable.Meanwhile, the most persistent criticism of Stephens outside the Times has been that his views on climate change are outside the realm of responsible discourse.At the Wall Street Journal, Stephens called global warming a mass neurosis anddeclaredit dead two years later. He has mocked liberals concernsover climate change, which he has dubbed an imaginary enemy. On television, he has dismissed thethe so-called consensus science of global warming.The Times editorial board, by comparison, argued last month that the rock-solid scientific consensus on climate change demands swift action.Times editorial page editor James Bennet toldThe Huffington Post on Friday that Stephens is not a climate denialist, as hes been describedby some critics.In a statement to HuffPost, Stephens identified himself as a climate agnostic.To pretend like the views of a thinker like Bret, and the millions of people who agree with him on a range of issues, should simply be ignored, that theyre outside the bounds of reasonable debate, is a really dangerous form of delusion, Bennet said.But Joe Romm, the editor of ThinkProgresss Climate Progress vertical,respondedSaturday by saying that certain views should be dismissed, even if theyre shared by millions.With that logic, the Times could hire as a columnist former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke ' 'or a flat earther or someone who thinks vaccines pose a health hazard, Romm wrote.After all, millions agree with them. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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