NYT Reporter Max Fisher Appears to Subtweet His Own Colleague
New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss penned a column on Tuesday about the organizers of the Woman’s March, noting in particular Linda Sarsour’s tendency to express illiberal sentiments — and it appears one of her colleagues at the Gray Lady disagrees.
After the piece was published, Max Fisher, editor of the Times‘ Interpreter column, sent out what looks like a subtweet aimed at Weiss:
The latest attempt to tear down @lsarsour appears to turn on the fact that she once made a joke about shariah and usury
— Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) August 1, 2017
Sarsour was catapulted into the national spotlight after she led the January Women’s March, a worldwide march boasting millions of attendees, held to protest Donald Trump’s new presidency.
Since, she has been the focus of much fawning media coverage — but also a heady dose of criticism, given a number of controversial comments the Palestinian-American activist has made in the past, as Weiss outlines in her column:
There are comments on her Twitter feed of the anti-Zionist sort: “Nothing is creepier than Zionism,” she wrote in 2012. And, oddly, given her status as a major feminist organizer, there are more than a few that seem to make common cause with anti-feminists, like this from 2015: “You’ll know when you’re living under Shariah law if suddenly all your loans and credit cards become interest-free. Sound nice, doesn’t it?” She has dismissed the anti-Islamist feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the most crude and cruel terms, insisting she is “not a real woman” and confessing that she wishes she could take away Ms. Ali’s vagina — this about a woman who suffered genital mutilation as a girl in Somalia.
And then there’s Sarsour’s recent spat with Jake Tapper from earlier this month: when Tapper called her out for celebrating Assata Shakur, a convicted murderer, Sarsour bizarrely accused the CNN anchor of joining “the ranks of the alt-right.”
Despite this wealth of fairly off-color comments from Sarsour, Fisher came out in defense of the activist, in an apparent subtweet aimed at Weiss. The snipe is reminiscent of a recent civil war held from within the offices of the Times, following the hiring of conservative columnist Bret Stephens — who Cairo bureau chief Declan Walsh publicly slammed.
But it’s important to note that Fisher picks out one of the least offensive comments made by Sarsour — an apparent joke about Sharia — and dismisses the argument against the activist as an attempt to tear her down. What Fisher fails to note is that Sarsour has on other occasions touted the benefits of Sharia law:
10 weeks of PAID maternity leave in Saudi Arabia. Yes PAID. And ur worrying about women driving. Puts us to shame. http://t.co/xZAwgg6HXL
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) November 16, 2014
As Weiss writes in her column, the left’s embrace of Sarsour is dangerous in a similar ways to the right’s embrace of Trump: “We just saw what happens to legitimate political parties when they fall prey to movements that are, at base, anti-American.”
“Will progressives have more spine than conservatives in policing hate in their ranks? Or will they ignore it in their fury over the Trump administration?” she writes.
Read Weiss’s column here.
[image via screengrab]
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