New York Times newspaper guild strikes back at Bret Stephens, showing us its spelling skills

A much expected staff revolt from the snowflakes of the New York Times, in response to columnist Bret Stephens's gentle criticism of the Times' 1619 Project, sure enough, has materialized.

It came from the New York Times Guild, the union representing the reporters at the Times.

My, what spelling skills they have.

Bad spelling skills in the wake of teachers' union rule over American education is pretty widespread across much of society these days.

But the one place you don't expect to find this is from the newspaper of record, the Gray Lady, the standard-bearer, where impeccable spelling skills are pretty much the job description, given that journalists don't do much else.

Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept notes the disgusting state of affairs:

BUT HIS COLLEAGUES in the New York Times Guild evidently do not believe that he had any right to express his views on these debates. Indeed, they are indignant that he did so. In a barely-literate tweet that not once but twice misspelled the word "its" as "it's" — not a trivial level of ignorance for writers with the world's most influential newspaper — the union denounced Stephens and the paper itself on these grounds[.]

What followed was the tweet, which, with its subliterate spelling skills, has since been deleted. 

Yelling and screaming about a colleague's work and demanding its censorship seems to be the way things are done at the New York Times these days, where the Katzenjammer Kidz from wokester hell seem to rule the roost.  They managed to get the op-ed editor to resign earlier, for the dreaded crime of running an opinion piece, clearly labeled as such, by Sen. Tom Cotton.  They raised an outcry when racist tweets by newly hired op-ed writer Sara Jeong came to light, demanding she be allowed to stay.  Power Line's Steven Hayward has a brilliant piece on what he calls Bret Stephens's suicide note.

Now that Bret Stephens, a conservative, sometime NeverTrump, once-neocon columnist, has brought out some gentle criticism of the junk-history, leftist-propaganda "1619 Project," well, they've come out again.  This time, though, they revealed just a little too much about themselves — as stupid, subliterate, unable to think idiots who wouldn't have been able to get a job in the New York Times' secretarial pool sixty years ago.

It's the height of embarrassment for journalists at this elite level to be caught with their pants down on the elementary school–level skill of spelling.  And doubly so since they look down their noses at conservatives, Middle Americans, non–Ivy League–educated people, and what Hillary Clinton called "deplorables."  Who's the stupid one again? 

Having proctored a lot of journalism-school entrance exams for Columbia University over the years, the country's premier journalism school, and a place that hires a lot of Timesmen, and Timeswomen, I know for a fact that spelling skills of applicants are checked.  When I'd administer an exam for those hopefuls attempting to get in, my job was to make sure spell-check was turned off on the Word program they'd use, and I'd need to brief applicants about the importance of taking the test without it.  Anyone with really bad spelling skills got rejected.  Not having them was a sign of not spending a lot of time around printed media, or writing much.  If you read a lot and write a lot, your spelling skills automatically improve.  Not having them also pointed to carelessness and a lack of discipline, a sign of someone who would be hard to teach if, at this late date in his academic career, he still needed the crutch of spell-check.  Not everyone with good spelling skills was a great analytical thinker, but I knew of only one sad case where the applicant had standout thinking skills and atrocious spelling skills.  The bad spellers were virtually always the bad thinkers; it was a pretty obvious earmark that most editors, even here, well know.

Well, now they're out.  The wokesters yelling loudest for censorship and repressing ideas can't even express themselves in standard English.  At the paper of record, one wonders how deep the stupidity flows.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Image credit: Screen shot of Z-1's World of Wonders on YouTube, scene from Deliverance.

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