Bari Weiss wrote bad essays.

Inaccurate. Incomplete. Poorly researched.

I don't know what she was like as an editor. That's mostly invisible from the outside. But her published work was not good.

Her career began by attempts to squelch pro-palestinian speech, and while people change, there's no evidence that she ever confronted the hypocrisy at the core of her public persona. I wish she would.

The australia essay was laughable (but hey, made a vacation tax deductible). Other columns were worse. https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1283054180127707139

I did not read her book.

but @JHWeissmann did https://slate.com/culture/2019/09/bari-weiss-how-to-fight-antisemitism-review.html

and @chick_in_kiev did https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/bari-weiss-how-to-fight-antisemitism-book-review/

and, oh dear, Judith Butler did https://jewishcurrents.org/bari-weisss-unasked-questions/

Here's the thing that I haven't recovered from as regards Weiss: After the massacre of Jews in Pittsburgh by a consumer of anti-semitic conspiracy theories propagated by elected Republicans and right-wing media, she wrote a book about how the left was as bad, maybe worse!

Left wing anti-semitism ain't great and is real, but I kind of think the Tree of Life massacre should at least have put the kibosh on that false equivalency for a few years, but she couldn't untrack from her Middlebury Students Run Amok brand, I guess.

She's being praised for her ability to generate discourse. It's true that when you take incendiary ideas, execute them poorly, then elevate them into one of the great platforms of the world, people will notice.

But it would be better to do good work.

I hope never to discuss Bari Weiss again. As an American Jewish op-ed writer who believes in Palestinian rights ... I do not expect to be so lucky.