Sept. 12, 2025 - Where There's Woke - Thomas Smith
37:59
WTW91: From the Anti-Woke Archives – The NYT Donald McNeil Firing
After the release of our PragerU videos (WTW88 & WTW89), we received a comment in the Facebook group from a listener pushing back on the characterization we made regarding a one sentence bit from Ben Shapiro's commencement speech video. This feedback emboldened Thomas to dig into the story further to see if we owed an apology to Ben. Was this a unique instance in which the anti-woke were right and there truly was a miscarriage of justice? **If you enjoy our work, please consider leaving a 5-star review! You can always email questions, comments, and leads to lydia@seriouspod.com.**
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic handstand.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Everything.
Everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green MM will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke, and holy shit.
It's the beginning of the month.
We're turning over a new leaf temporarily.
We'll see how many leaves it is.
But no, I I want to thank a commenter for giving us an early Christmas here.
A head start with a Where There's Woke episode.
Anyway, I'm Thomas.
That over there is Lydia.
How are you doing?
Hello, doing pretty well.
I feel like we were just on mic.
Yeah, it's weird.
It's a weird feeling.
It's very strange.
It's a weird feeling to be podcasting this early in the month.
But no, it's good.
This is I love this because this just happened to fall into my lap as exactly like the kind of thing I want this show to be anyway, which is it's a nice concise debunk.
And it also arrives out of something that I think is really interesting.
So I'm excited to get through it.
So here's what just happened.
And I want to emphasize one eleven billion percent that I do not want to pick on this listener in any way, shape, or form.
I'm really glad they commented because I think it's an awesome opportunity to kind of look into something.
Yeah.
Someone posted in the Facebook group, and they said not to defend Ben Shapiro, he's most certainly a propagandist, but the reference Lydia made about his speech was about Donald McNeil at the New York Times.
And in my opinion, it was a gross miscarriage of justice.
I still believe in the use versus mention distinction.
And McNeil didn't use the N-word to a student.
He asked a clarifying question when a student relate a story about a classmate who was suspended after a video surfaced of the classmate using the N-word in a comedic bit with a black student.
McNeil was asked if he thought this was just, and for accuracy, he asked the student, did your classmate say N-word, or was the classmate actually calling the person a N-word?
Yeah.
When students and parents complained, the New York Times, in all its corporate panic, launched an investigation and disciplined him.
Then notes from the disciplinary hearing were leaked two years later, and public pressure grew.
I suppose you could say Shapiro was lying because McNeil wasn't fired.
Technically, that's true.
He resigned.
He was resignered.
I think is fired, sure.
Yeah.
There's obviously more to this than I can fit in a post, but the story of McNeil's departure from the New York Times is pretty gross and unfair, especially from a labor union standpoint.
So because we record in a flurry at the end of the month, I had absolutely no idea what this was about.
I was like, I have no memory of whatever this is.
Yeah, you work out during all of it.
Yeah, it was a pretty quick statement by you, I think.
And it was also like, who knows if I was trying to cue up another thing or do anything, you know, who knows who knows if I was temporarily distracted in that moment.
But I couldn't remember.
And I was like, okay, and here's my comment.
And this is I I want to read this because this is important.
Here's what I said.
I said, I have not at all looked into this, which I hadn't.
I mean, that I remember at all.
But without doing so, my biggest red flag in your explanation would be that someone asking, wait, did he actually call the person the full word versus like the n-word kind of thing?
Merely to clarify use of the actual word versus use of n-word.
I know this is confusing to say, but yeah.
And I, but I essentially my point is if that was what he was doing, that's not something any rational person would fire anyone for.
And I said, now I'm always open to the explanation of someone acting irrationally.
And I am, because you know, that does happen.
Human beings.
Then I said, however, every single other time I've ever looked into anything like this ever, that has not been the explanation.
And someone was lying.
So will this be the first time ever time?
Totally possible.
And then I followed up, having done 12 minutes of research, look forward to a where there's woke on this.
So genuinely, I didn't remember what this was about.
No idea.
And I've done the research, and now I we get to see.
Is this the first time ever that it was truly just that?
And this was a gross miscarriage of justice?
Or not?
Hmm.
After the break, We'll have to find out.
All right, hun.
Well, remind us, I mean, just quickly, like what did I get?
Yeah, how did how did what was this in reference to?
Yeah.
So I was just talking about Prager U and some of the presenters that they had and sort of the way that they work the YouTube algorithm.
And I had mentioned a marathon that they had put together, which is basically like stitching together videos of a related theme and then upload it as a new YouTube video.
Um so this was the commencement speeches one that I was watching a little bit of, and it kicks off with a Ben Shapiro video.
And I had mentioned that while I was listening to it about you thought you were done with the woke left taking over your lives um now that you're graduating university, but unfortunately it's part of the corporate culture too.
And he gives an example that I said on the episode, just kind of rang some alarm bells for me where I was like, I don't buy it off the bat.
So let's listen to it.
Did we play it or did you just mention it?
Okay, so now we're gonna play it.
Donald McNeil of the New York Times lost his job because he used the N-word in describing why not to use the N-word.
150 woke staffers at the Times complained to the editors and got them canned.
But there are 1,200 employees at the time.
What if even 200 of those employees?
Beat the shit out of the other one.
You can lead the pushback.
In fact, you should.
That is so funny.
Yeah.
So it's just this little offhand story he shared where I was like, that feels not right.
That doesn't seem reasonable to me.
And I looked it up for like five seconds just to kind of get an idea.
Didn't go down that rabbit hole too much.
But now I guess we have the opportunity to go down the rabbit hole.
I think I remember you saying like you didn't really look it up, but not much.
I I saw like a very high level.
So sort of here's how I instantly, and again, especially if this is a listener of ours commenting.
Like I was fully ready to be like, oh, okay, maybe, yeah, maybe that sucks.
But like here's why alarm bells went off in my mind and why I called this shot.
I just think what happens and what has happened, the entire purpose of the anti-woke project, the entire, I guess that not the purpose, the tactics, it's all in service of this.
It's all in service of so when you hear something like this, it sounds plausible to you.
But I have cleansed my brain of those ideas.
And so when I hear, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
So someone just said, hey, uh this person used the N-word.
And then a New York Times journalist said, Well, wait, did they use the N-word or did they use and then says the word?
I just don't think someone would get fired for that.
I I like I just I'll flat out do not think someone would get fired for that.
Now, I wasn't 100%, but I'm like, I'm skeptical.
Then I see this thing.
It wasn't in this person's comment, but when I hear, because that 150 thing, that is actually real.
So when I see just looking at the Wikipedia, which is obviously the first place to start.
Sure.
When I saw that sentence, just reading some of it, which led to 150 times employees signing an internal letter on February 3rd, demanding an apology from McNeil.
When I saw that, I was like, there's no fucking way that a hundred and fifty at your workplace just when they hear, wait a minute, he was trying to clarify whether someone said the N-word or the actual word.
Or Ben Shapiro's version where he was trying to say why you shouldn't use the N-word.
Oh, that's what he said.
Oh, I just pretty positive that's what Ben Shapiro.
Yeah, where he's where he's saying why you shouldn't use.
Oh, yeah, that is why he said it.
Yeah.
Why you shouldn't use it, which is also not it.
Do you really think that there are a hundred and fifty employees of the New York fucking Times, the anti-trans extremely not woke newspaper?
Like they're they are not woke.
Like they just are not.
They're not even left.
They're kind of, but like they're just not that woke.
There's no fucking way.
If it had been, which led to a colleague or two, you know, then I'd be like, okay, maybe it's a grudge, maybe it's a whatever, you know, like maybe, but a hundred and fifty?
That's insane.
Imagine if at your workplace, and then he says out of 1200, which was even funnier to me.
I didn't even know that.
But Ben Shapiro's like, there's 1200 employees.
You mean almost 10% of that entire organization wrote a letter being like, I demand an apology from this guy.
That tells me that there's gotta be something fucking there.
Well, it's like the whole, like we saw with folks like Scott Gerber, right?
Where they're like, out of nowhere, out of nowhere, and it's never out of nowhere.
So here's what is so funny.
Looking actually into this, and this shouldn't be a long episode because I don't think it took long.
Famous last words, but let's look at our commenter, who again, I I fully hope this commenter understands this is not at all going after them.
I just think this was so interesting.
Yeah, but we're treating it as a lead, basically.
Well, it's also this is a story of how pervasive this is, that even people on the left fall victim to this because it's just so powerful.
Like this is why the anti-woke project is so powerful, because people are always going to be more prone to believe the stories that are about like, you know, an out group, you know, woke or non-white people got too upset at a poor white person who is just like a sympathetic character.
Like, and I'm not saying the listeners that I'm saying broadly speaking on society, right?
That's why it's so easy.
That's why our we're ruled by fascists right now, because it's so easy for our country to think that, to think like, oh my God, they did that.
And there's this poor sympathetic white person who is a victim of whatever, and multiply that by a billion.
Like it's just been for 20 years, like just a non-stop, well, more than that, but like in the modern kind of era of this, like the internet era of this exact culture were anti-woke stuff, propaganda.
Yeah.
Just 20 years of stories roughly of the campus craziness, the college kids did this.
Can you believe the cat boxes?
Blah, blah, blah.
Just all that shit.
And the purpose is to create so much of it that if you debunk any one of it, people are like, oh, okay.
Well, well, maybe that one didn't turn out, but like there's so much more.
What if they're all that?
Yeah.
What if every single fucking one of them is that?
To the point where I we've yet to come across one that was true.
I mean, there's there have been some where it's like, okay, you know, it's a little bit like the person was maybe telling kind of, but like, there's never been one that's been fully how the anti-woke presented.
Not even close.
And most of the time, it's laughably different.
But setting that all aside, I want to look at how our listener described it.
And again, this is not critical of them.
I just want to, it's just important.
They said he asked a clarifying question when a student relayed a story about a classmate who was suspended after a video surfaced of the classmate using the N-word in a comedic bit with a black student.
McNeil was asked if he thought this was just.
And for accuracy, he asked the student, did your classmate say n-word, or was the classmate actually calling the person a full word?
Okay.
Here's another tip off.
The next sentence from our listener is when students and parents complained.
Really?
Do you think if that was the real story, this is why this happens?
Because when I see that, I'm like, I just don't think a student would complain about that.
Like I really don't.
Like I think maybe, maybe a student, let's say a black student or somebody for just to go with their worldview or something, you know, the anti-woke worldview, maybe a black student was too sensitive or something.
And maybe that, like I don't see that turning into students and parents complaining.
If it's just someone saying, oh no, I I'm so sorry, just wanted to clarify, did they use the N-word or did they use the actual word?
I just don't see that happening.
Like I like students, and by the way, this was on like a trip abroad.
I'll tell you more about in a second.
But like people just have lives, you know.
Like I just for lack of a better thing.
It's like that's such a if you've fallen prey to the propaganda that there's a bunch of woke, sensitive people running around looking for excuses for this to happen, then you might believe that.
Then you might be like, oh, okay, yeah, they found oh, they pounced.
That's just not how humans work.
Like if you go out into the real world, it's so much less woke than the internet that we're on.
Yeah, very true.
I'm actually surprised from time to time, that even in California, I'm like, oh boy, that's some.
I mean, this is the society we're in, you know.
And it's like, that's just not how people interact, especially when it comes to a coworker, like 150 of your fucking co-workers for a totally sympathetic thing.
Like, I do think if that were the real story that you could have still just said, like, do you mean the actual full word?
And that would be a good one.
Right, instead of actually saying it.
Yeah, especially around kids like the fuck.
I know.
You know, so but like that would still be within if he was like, oh man, brain fart, you're right.
I just wanted to clarify.
Apology.
I just do not, I do not think that anyone would give a shit.
I I really don't, because people are not actually as sensitive as the propaganda would have you believe.
Students and parents, after they come back from a trip abroad, take the time to like complain.
I don't buy that.
Now I I want to give our listener credit.
He didn't say what you said, Ben said, which was that he was rescuing an orphan and then you know the password to disarm the bomb that was gonna blow up the World Trade Center was the N-word, and so he had to say it or whatever.
It wasn't that.
So I so credit that that person wasn't relaying that bullshit.
But now if we just go to the Wikipedia, back to the Wikipedia, pretty quickly, we get a slightly different version of events.
In 2019, McNeil accompanied a group of high school students on a New York Times sponsored trip to Peru.
Interesting.
The purpose of the trip was for the students to learn about community-based health care in Peru.
What is that?
That's a weird trip, but kind of cool, I guess, if you got to go on that.
On January 28th, 2021, the Daily Beast reported that multiple participants accused McNeil of repeatedly making racist and sexist remarks.
Wow.
Including having used the word full word in the context of discussing racist language, as well as using stereotypes about black teenagers.
Oh, geez.
So right away, we're already like without even doing anything else.
It instantly snaps into focus.
Oh, that makes more sense with the earth, with the planet of earth that we live on.
It would take a lot more than one person asking a clarifying question and saying the full word to make students and parents take the time to fucking do this.
If instead the students come home or whatever, maybe I don't know if the parents were on the trip, I'm not sure.
And they're like, hey, this reporter kept saying this weird stuff, you know, about like it's kind of honestly was kind of like sexist, and they used they they used a stereotype of it, you know, maybe they he maybe who knows, maybe said thugs or something.
I don't know what it was.
But like if I imagine that in my brain reality machine, then I'm like, yeah, no, that makes sense.
That makes much more sense.
Now, I don't know, like exactly what happened.
And there's still room for like maybe the the students were being too sensitive, or maybe they who knows?
Like, there's still room for that.
But at the very least, the fact that people complained, you have to at least include what they complained about.
Yeah.
Otherwise, you make you already step one of the story, make them out to be the insane wokists.
Yeah.
Crazy people.
Yeah.
Honestly, it would be kind of crazy to make that big of a deal about the good version of the story, we'll say, for lack of a better term.
Like, I could see complaining, maybe, but like it's not, I mean, whatever.
Like it would be, I think most humans would grant some grace there and be like, a little awkward, but like, yeah, okay.
I guess if they're really trying to clarify the full word, like rather than playing who's on first or whatever, you know, like yeah, I think if it were like a one-off thing, most young people would probably like wave that off as like, oh, freaking boomer.
Like, you know, just an age thing or something like that.
The other way that people are susceptible to these stories is they also have a worldview that what we love more than anything in our society is people who report harassment or racism or sexism.
Like they have this worldview that's like, yeah, women, they go and say, he harassed me, and then we make them emperor of Earth, and we give them a billion dollars and we put them on a big throne, and we're like, you're the best.
You're the when the reality is the exact fucking opposite.
Like it's always a pain in the ass.
This would be like the best case scenario in terms of complaints, because it's a student about an adult, you know.
Like, I'm sure that they were probably they could go and complain.
I hope they had a receptive audience, but like most other things too, when it's these woke stories, it's like a woman complaining about a man.
You know how much it takes.
Yeah, everyone, I'm not saying you, you obviously know, but like what it takes for a woman to feel like that's fucking worth it, because it's not.
The truth is it's not almost never worth it.
Like what happens is they get much more shit for reporting someone than honestly it sometimes it is to just take their harassment.
Like, that's a calculation so many women make every single fucking day.
And men, plenty of people make every day about different stuff.
It's just so interesting to me to think about all the ways that the concept of our country and reality and how human interaction works that our country is running with has been so fucking warped.
It's been so warped.
And and it pervades the left too.
Like it's the right, is like not even close.
They're just gone.
But it even gets the center and the center left now, especially with Trump's second victory, and now people are doing a bunch of revisions to all like, oh yeah, that yeah, remember when we all went crazy with the wokeness and what with the I can't tell you how many things I've seen that have been like, yeah, well, we all went a little crazy after George Floyd, and we all, you know, we all want to like everyone trying to just move on and like create this history where that was all a mistake kind of thing.
The real world is just not really like that.
So anyway, now we've already got much more to work with.
Like I could could have just stopped there, but there's some interesting things going on here.
So the fact that a hundred and fifty reporters complain, now that tells me, like, maybe this guy is the fucking asshole racist of the office or something, or the sexist of the office, and a hundred and fifty Times employees are like, God, finally, something we can say, you know, like reacting to like, Jesus, this is enough, you know.
There could be that.
But as I try to track down sources, first I found the Daily Beast article that is that primary source in terms of the Wikipedia article.
So it is true that it's two years later, and that that is interesting, but there's a reason for that that we'll kind of get to.
That's also one of the things I want to talk about with this, because it's even more infuriating.
There is an interesting component of this where this reporter, Donald McNeil, he had been doing reporting on COVID.
And it could be that like he might have caught some fire because of that, because like, you know, the right was freaking out about COVID, and if someone was covering COVID in a scientifically accurate way, there could have been like really shitty people trying to get him fired, you know, like that could have been a possibility.
And that might have been some part of why two years later this popped up, which we can talk about the justice of that.
I think it is is a little weird that it's like, well, this happened two years ago.
Why is it coming up now?
However, there's a little more to that.
So this Daily Beast article, it says every year, and this I'm just so interested by this trip.
It's like, man, I don't know if stuff like this exists, but it'd be really interesting.
Every summer of the past several years, the Times has selected some of its top reporters to serve as subject guides for high school students on trips to various locations around the world, operated in some instances by Vermont-based company Putney student travel.
The goal, according to the paper, is to give travelers a foreign vacation with educational value.
That's must be nice.
So in 2019, obviously McNeil is one of the chaperones kind of thing.
Now, let's go from I almost want to hear Ben's version again, but oh wait, is there the transcript?
May I may I'll just look at the transcript so I can read it.
So Donald McCoy's so stupid.
Lost his job because he used the N-word in describing why not to use the N-word.
Okay, so that's that's one version of the story.
Yeah.
After the excursion ended, according to multiple parents of students on the trip who spoke with the Daily Beast, along with documents shared with the Times and reviewed by the Beast.
Many participants relayed a series of troubling accusations to the paper.
McNeil repeatedly made racist and sexist remarks throughout the trip, including, according to two complaints, using the N-word.
A photo from the trip showed that at least 26 students participated of that group, at least six students or their parents told the tour company that partnered with the New York Times that McNeil used racially insensitive or outright racist language while accompanying the participants on the trip.
Now, I I still don't think we have all the information, but we get a little more here.
Two students specifically alleged that the science reporter used the N-word and suggested he did not believe in the concept of white privilege.
Three other participants alleged that McNeil made racist comments and used stereotypes about black teenagers.
Here's a quote from one participant.
I expect immediate action on the actions taken by Donald.
I'm deeply disappointed about the New York Times because of the comments he made during our trip.
I think firing him would even be appropriate.
Oh wow.
Here's another one in their review.
Not only did Donald say various racist comments on numerous occasions, but he was also disrespectful to many students during mealtime and in other settings.
Another comment, again, this this sounds like it's during like the feedback portion of the thing.
You know, I would change the journalist.
He was a racist.
He used the N-word and said horrible things about black teenagers and said white supremacy doesn't exist.
Well, okay, in fairness here, though, white supremacy, the other one was that he said white privilege doesn't exist, right?
Yeah.
So maybe conflating two things there.
Maybe, but which one is right?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, white privilege is like, I guess the less bad one to say doesn't exist.
But like the fact that those two things are kind of similar, but not lends more credence to the realism of students reporting this, in my opinion.
But also, like what you have to believe we live in a world where students would just be like, you know what?
Let's fuck this person's whole life up.
You know, it's just so random.
Yeah.
And at the very least, it warrants an investigation, right?
By your employer.
The final one was that I see on here anyway.
He wasn't respectful during some of the traditional ceremonies we attended with indigenous healers slash shamans.
So these were serious enough that the New York Times did, you know, quote, conducted a thorough investigation and disciplined him, apparently, whatever that means.
Interestingly, the Times spokesperson in this Daily Beast article.
So they're they're talking in again, 2021 about what happened in 2019.
We conducted a thorough investigation and disciplined Donald for statements and language that had been inappropriate and inconsistent with our values.
We found he had used bad judgment by repeating a racist slur in the context of a conversation about racist language.
In addition, we apologize to the students who had participated in the trip.
Weird that now that's become just kind of like that version of it a little bit.
Here's what I don't know in this game of telephone.
Can we trust what seems to be the original statements made by the students because maybe they still had the you know the emails or the what I don't know, but those were quotes and this and they talked to them.
And they seem very specific in wording.
So it seems like they had access to these actual complaints.
Or a time spokesperson whose job is to defend the times, saying, Well, we did find he used bad judgment about this one thing, essentially.
And or did they just feel like that was the only thing they had enough proof for or something?
I don't know.
But I find the students' complaints to be way more plausible because they're contemporaneous, they're totally a disinterested party.
There's nothing in it for the students.
Yeah, exactly.
Or the parents.
There is everything in it for someone whose job is time spokesperson.
I mean, also think about any time that you have to like review a class or you know, a training or something like that.
I usually skip over anything after write.
You're just like, yeah, I'm not sure.
Yeah, it's not worth it, right?
Like, I'll do the check boxes, I'll fill in the, you know, circles or whatever, but not gonna write.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, totally.
Now it looks like the Daily Beast got access to some emails at that time.
And uh it does say former corporate comms director Linda Zebian said, This is outrageous in my view.
I do think his manager needs to be made aware as a first step, depending on their response, we can prepare a statement on any action that's being put into place.
So, you know, that's someone in an email not for public consumption, who works at the time who's reviewed it, saying, This is outrageous in my view.
Yeah.
And they reached out to the parents and students and apologized.
So there was another source that had more detail about the actual exchange with the N-word.
And interestingly, the more context is actually from McNeil himself, which is really funny to me because it actually explains the real version.
And now that I am realizing it's from him, I don't know how truthful it is, but even his version is bad.
Even his version is worse than what we already thought.
In an emailed apology, the 67-year-old McNeil explained, and this is from 2021, on a 2019 New York Times trip to Peru for high school students, I was asked at dinner.
Okay, let's listen to these facts.
Listen to how this differs from all five of the stories we've heard now.
I was asked at dinner by a student whether I thought a classmate of hers should have been suspended for a video she made as a 12-year-old in which she used a racial slur to understand what was in the video.
I asked if she had called someone else the slur, or whether she was rapping or quoting a book title.
In asking the question, I used the slur itself.
Do you hear anywhere in his own fucking explanation that there was any ambiguity about n-word versus the full slur?
No.
All this was was, oh, well, do you I had a friend, and maybe they were already discussing, and who knows why they were having this discussion, by the way, from context, who knows if this was a student being like, so you don't believe there's any racism?
You know, yeah, yeah, it could be.
And saying, like, well, what about my classmate?
Or or it could have been about cancel culture.
I don't know.
Who knows?
But the student, and this is a student asking a fucking adult something, said, Do you think my classmate should have been suspended for a video she had made as a 12-year-old?
So presumably anywhere from, I don't know, two to six years ago or something, in which she used a racial slur.
And I would have just said, no.
That's how I would answer that.
Why?
When they were 12.
I mean, do you mean at The time, I guess I would ask that.
Do you mean then or like now, if it was uncovered now?
Like that's unclear to me.
That's what I would ask.
If it was then, I'd be like, I mean, maybe.
But also, I think it's I think it is a fair question to say, well, were they actually calling someone the word or were they quoting a rap lyric?
Fair, you know, it's kids, whatever.
I would ask that.
Why would he need to say the full word?
No, I know.
It wasn't.
Well, did they say N-word or they say full word?
That is completely invented by I don't know who.
This is McNeil's own explanation.
Why would you ever use the word in that context?
Yeah, yeah.
When a kid has asked you this question.
Oh, really?
So did she call someone a or was she quoting a book title?
Why was it to a kid?
Why would you say that?
Yeah, exactly.
To a kid, like that's I think an important piece of this too.
It's not, these aren't college students.
These are high school students.
And yeah, even if they work, I don't know.
I know, I know, but like, but they're they're minors.
Like you, I think you need to be a little more careful about like the kinds of topics you engage with them in.
And I still think, I actually still think if that was all that happened, I actually don't even think it would have come up.
Like, I I mean, maybe I I can't say for sure, but my suspicion is there would have been a complaint that's like, uh, I mean, we're just having a discussion and he kind of used the full word, uh, and it felt like a little unnecessary.
But I think the key was that he also did a bunch of other shit and said a bunch of other weird shit.
And that's always what happens.
Every time we investigate something like this, it's like, yeah, this person's probably a fucking racist.
And like what happens is racists know they live in a society and they don't try to show their racism often, like, especially if it's somebody in this context where they're professional, you know, they work in a pro place.
So they're usually trying to keep it chill, but then people hear some comments and people hear some things, and they're like, oh, what the fuck?
And then when you give an example, you gotta give the best example you have.
Right.
And that's what it is.
And sometimes it's not super clear, but every time what happens is either the anti-woke lie about what that is, or they just hyper focus on one part and just present that as the whole story.
We've talked about that a bunch of times.
Where they take one part off and out out of context, he said a word, then was fired.
You know, it's like, yeah, no, that's not what happened by his own admission.
Now, here's to make you even more possibly frustrated by this.
Okay.
So what happened was he got like a letter in his file then, you know, and it was all pretty internal.
Yeah.
And then I don't I don't know entirely why it resurfaced.
And who knows, maybe that again, maybe that was like bad faith.
Maybe that was the right trying to get him fired because he was covering COVID in a real way.
Could have been.
And for that, I would feel a little bad.
But also what was happening was the right was just, and everyone, but mainly the right was just going after the times at this time.
Because if you remember, it was right around the caliphate podcast.
Do you remember that?
Oh, kind of, yeah.
Yeah.
So that's where Rukmini Kalamaki found out.
I didn't actually listen to this, but apparently the Caliphate podcast, this whole series they did was just like it's fraud.
Had a bullshit.
Yeah, like somebody was just lying.
Yeah.
And that person, they kind of shuffled them to a different assignment kind of thing.
So keep that in mind.
Keep what happened with this racist and with Rukmini Kalamaki.
And then remind you of another story that I had completely forgotten about, which was right around this time, the New York Times fired Lauren Wolf for a tweet.
Now I'll tell I'm gonna do the full story here.
Okay.
She had a tweet where she said she had chills after Biden landed in DC ahead of the inauguration.
Okay.
And they fired her.
What?
So now we can do the thing where it's like, well, this is the other side of it.
We can look at this.
Now, is this this does the same thing happen?
Where it's like, oh, it turns out actually she, you know, called someone then, I don't know, whatever the equivalent of the left would be, you know, like she were an Antifa thing and said down with a whatever.
I don't know what I don't know what the leftist equivalent of being a fucking racist is.
It's kind of interesting case study to look at like, oh, are we dealing with an inverse situation here?
But like, no, the best the Times did was to say, hey, we didn't fire her for just one tweet.
That's all they said.
That's all we got.
Wow.
And from what we can tell, they said, like, well, we've told her in the past that she need to be more careful with her tweets being political.
Okay.
I guess.
And so somebody who, and and in full fairness, this was not a full-time employee.
This was a contract like editor, I guess.
Like it was like a over when they have too much work or something, they would give her editing things.
So keep in mind how fucking insanely anti left that is.
Yeah.
And by the way, her story, uh, she also had another tweet in which she said she couldn't believe Trump didn't send Biden a plane.
She then found out that that was false information, that actually Biden had used the plane that he wanted to.
And so she deleted the tweet and she retracted it.
Yeah.
So admitted she was wrong there.
Her explanation for the Biden chills tweet or whatever, which I find pretty plausible because I just don't think anyone possibly gives a shit about Biden that much.
Like nobody they always think we have the same, like, you know, Biden love that they have of Trump.
Like we just don't.
I mean, but isn't it just that it's like, okay, thank God Trump's gone now.
It is, but it's also keep in mind, this was 11 days after January 6th.
Oh, yeah.
So her explanation was like, yeah, after what we saw on January 6th, the riot and the near insurrection, all that.
I like had chills that we had a peaceful transition of power after all that.
Yeah.
Now, I find that pretty plausible, because honestly, like no one gives a shit about fucking by no one gets chills from Joe Biden's plane landing.
Like it's just like, I don't think anyone gives a shit.
Now, I your explanation makes sense too.
Like, yeah, this guy's getting the fuck out of here.
But I actually think specifically saying you have chills at a thing, like that, I just don't think people would do that if it was just some some unabashed Joe Biden love.
Like, I don't really find that plausible.
I find her explanation of, well, we just had January 6th, 11 fucking days ago, and now we get to see Biden be inaugurated.
You know, like that makes sense to me.
Yeah, I agree.
Far more plausible.
But she was fired.
And she was not rehired.
There's people made a big deal about it.
So that's crazy.
Yeah.
And and again, she wasn't full-time.
So I guess you could argue that I don't know, a flexible editing desk, I guess is her position that it was called.
And they just didn't rehire her.
And the best they said was, well, for privacy reasons, we don't get into the details, but we can say that we didn't end someone's employment over a single tweet.
But once again, that's the Times defending themselves.
Right.
And I think that could tell you, okay, was it two fucking tweets?
You know, like if that's your defense of yourself.
And from every article I looked at every article I could find, no one has any other explanation other than it's that tweet.
Plus, she had, you know, said the plain one.
And I guess they had discomfort with certain tweets bordering on being political.
Interesting.
So that's the fucking sensitivity they have to anyone being on the left.
You know, like any anyone in their sacred editing desk that's, you know, they have to produce this fucking God's omniscient word that they think they're doing.
Well, if we have someone who in their off time on their personal account tweeted something that's vaguely political, we can't have that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, engaging in their right to free speech, too.
Yeah.
And I don't want to say no one complained about this, because the left did.
Like a bunch of people complained.
Yeah.
What did it do?
Nothing.
So the left complained, but the people who are free speech warriors don't give a shit.
Right.
And of course not.
That story goes down in our history as pretty accurate.
You know, like we all say, well, she was deleted over that tweet.
Yeah, pretty much.
Like there might, I mean, you could allege there's something we don't know about, but I nobody has any information on that.
Like, you know, it's just not there.
And she she also, by the way, she said after the thing, she was like, hey, uh, thanks for the support, but don't cancel your subscription to the Times.
I still believe in this paper.
Like she was pretty gracious about it.
So we see the difference in how the left and the right handle these things.
So we don't know, but just look at the difference in how those things were treated.
And and also look at when someone does a fully made-up fucking podcast series, they're like, well, shuffle them over to this other place.
Versus, my God, you got chills at a plane landing, you're fucking fired.
Yeah.
The truth of this institution is that it's not goddamn woke.
It isn't.
Everyone in this country is deathly afraid of pissing off conservatives.
And they're incredibly responsive to conservative outrage.
I mean, cracker barrel even.
And yeah.
And there's just not the same care about outrage on the left.
There the outreach is there.
I'm not saying that the left doesn't get outraged about stuff.
Sure.
But it's the the distinction.
Just ignored in reality is yet, yes, it's ignored, and it's not as prevalent as you think.
And it's not about things that are dumb.
Yeah.
It isn't.
Like you can find dumb people anywhere, but like it's usually about stuff that's actually kind of concerning.
And if you want to cherry pick and pick someone that's just like a bad example, you can.
But fundamentally, one shit storm was about, you know, well, you seem to have fired someone over a very, very nothing tweet.
That seems like shitty.
The other was someone said sexist and racist things, and a bunch of students and their parents complained about it.
And the Times kind of thrust it under the rug and was like, eh, whatever.
Uh, we'll give him a bad letter in his file.
And then it was unearthed two years later, and people were like, what the fuck?
Especially after this firing.
Yeah.
So this was part of the reason I think that they were like, what are you?
That is a huge double state.
What is happening here?
Racism is a slap on the wrist, but I got chills at a plane is fucking firing.
Yeah.
And so that's part of it.
But also, I will give our listener credit.
Ben Shapiro said he lost his job, which actually I guess you could say that's accurate.
Is they they talked and just didn't rehire him.
They didn't like renew his contract.
But that seems entirely reasonable to me.
That seems like a good they should have done that in 2019 when they learned he was a racist around fucking students.
So there you go.
Interesting.
There's some more stuff here and there, but that I I forgot about that whole chills as the plane landing thing.
And her and like it's just that's so um such a clear indication of what the actual reality is in our society, and it just drives me nuts.
So thank you, listener, for that comment.
But I hope you change your understanding of what happened here, because I think it was entirely well.
First off, the way you remember it is objectively wrong.
And there's no argument, that's even by McNeil's own words.
And for all we know, the version is worse than McNeil said.
Likely, I mean, yeah.
Yeah.
So even by McNeil's own words in his apology, your version is not correct.
So you've made a version that's more sympathetic.
Now, why did that happen?
I don't know.
It's something to think about.
That happens.
People get stuff wrong all the time.
I get stuff wrong all the time, but I would just be interested in why that happened for this particular story, you know.
And I think that shows that this anti-woke brigade, this anti-woke propaganda campaign has been incredibly extraordinarily effective.
