Bret Stephens is triggered easily, and has retreated to his safe space
By 
There’s a Seinfeld episode in which Elaine gets all sorts of confidence from Kramer’s revelation that he’s “dominating the dojo” at his karate classes, and then it turns out he’s been fighting small children. That’s a good metaphor for the “intellectual warfare” in which our leading right wing intellectuals manfully engage. (In this metaphor, Bari Weiss is Elaine).
Bret Stephens is leaving the Twitter arena (h/t Teddy Roosevelt):
“Twitter is a sewer. It brings out the worst in humanity,” Stephens posted. “I sincerely apologize for any part I’ve played in making it worse, and to anyone I’ve ever hurt. Thanks to all of my followers, but I’m deactivating this account.”
What brought this on?
Observations:
(1) This was a lame joke, even by Twitter’s non-existent standards. But Stephens’s response is bizarrely over the top. I mean Stephens has gotten much nastier — though fully deserved — treatment right here at LGM. Where’s OUR Streisand effect? I almost feel like suing him for something. Maybe negligent infliction of emotional distress. That’s still a cause of action right? (Help me out, Torts was 32 years ago now).
(2) The detail about cc’ing this guy’s provost is just too perfect. I mean that literally. There’s a passage in I forget which Philip Roth novel in which a bus door closes in front of a character with a definitive thump, and the narrator comments that it was “the kind of thing you leave out of good fiction,” because the symbolism was too apt. That’s this.
Stephens has spent years whining about campus PC, and fragile special snowflake students who don’t want to be subjected to any criticism, and the censorship of dissent, and blah blah blah.
(3) The Times actually smacked another of their stars pretty hard the other day after Twitter misbehavior that was actually not as bad as Stephens’s pathetic attempt to get this guy in trouble with his employer. So I can understand why now, when danger reared its ugly head, Brave Sir Stephens bravely turned his tail and fled.
Brave brave brave brave Sir Stephens.
Oh was not afraid to be ratioed
In many nasty ways
(Singing continues offstage).
. . . Unfortunately for our hero, Twitter is like the Hotel California (h/t Gocart Mozart).
. . . OK just fire him. What a worthless weasel:
This just keeps getting better. Interview with The Man Who Killed Bret Stephens.
It also sounds like Karpf won’t take Stephens up on his invitation to come to his house and call him a bedbug in front of his loved ones. “I have an actual job that keeps me busy. I don’t get to spend all day Google-searching my name or accepting passive-aggressive dinner invitations,” he told Splinter.
Do note that Stephens is now aware that the entire Internet thinks he’s a bedbug. “He wrote a followup email to me after seeing this go viral, which just said, ‘Dear Dr. Karpf, you’re a real piece of work,’” Karpf said. But not as much work as bedbugs, which take multiple visits from a pest control operator and a small lifetime of laundering to eradicate for good.