A nasty subgenre of "woke" journalism consists of trying to get journalists who aren't fully on board with their radical program fired. A top target of this campaign has been Bari Weiss.
The campaign largely relies on the usual petty defamations, smears and misrepresentations. And the sources are the mainstream media.
Take this Joe Pompeo piece at Vanity Fair's Hive which purports to report on internal affairs in the New York Times. Like many similar "Mean Girls" journalism pieces it claims to report on internal dissatisfaction at the New York Times by its more radical staffers.
And here's a casual and calculated smear by Pompeo. "The most fractious convulsion along these lines has been the recent uproar over the Times’s op-ed section, specifically as it relates to a pair of new additions—conservative pundits Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss—who each possess certain contentious views."
Bari Weiss is not a conservative. She is pro-free speech and pro-Israel. She's called out racism by Women's March organizers. That makes her decent. It doesn't make her a conservative. And Pompeo knows it.
In the week leading up to the presidential election, like hockey players who refuse to shave during the playoffs, the women of the Weiss family lived in their “Pussy Grabs Back” T-shirts. For months, our family texts had buzzed day and night with emoji-laden reactions to the latest Trump outrage, while my mother waged a very personal campaign against the Republican candidate.
But calling her one is convenient because it allows leftists to sideline her as an enemy. And her critiques of political correctness and the left's tolerance for anti-Semitism make too much sense.
The echo chamber that has been by certain media figures to smear her is impressive. It's also a sign that her critiques have hit a nerve.