Bret Stephens Has No Choice But to Create Imaginary Friends
A fictional conversation with Bret Stephens of the New York Times.
Earlier this week, NYT op-ed columnist Bret Stephens wrote a piece called “Israel Has No Choice But to Fight On.” Incredibly, the entire piece is an imaginary conversation with a make believe critic who disagreed with him. In my opinion, NYT readers might be better served by reading an actual debate between Stephens and a real life, flesh-and-blood critic of Stephens’ view. But I suppose this would have required a pundit to do something besides make up a guy to get mad at. In the spirit of Stephens’ piece, here is my own totally imaginary conversation with Bret Stephens about his column. This conversation did not happen. I’ve never talked to Bret Stephens and probably never will.
TYLER: Thanks for taking time to talk to me, Fake Bret Stephens.
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: It’s literally no problem. Tyler.
TYLER: I wanted to talk to you about your piece for the New York Times. You believe Netanyahu has “no choice” but to continue his military campaign against Palestinian people, which has now killed many multiples the number of civilians who were killed in the October 7 terrorist attacks and has no clear endgame. My question is, why did you make up an imaginary person to debate this view with instead of reaching out to a real person — perhaps even one of your colleagues at the Times?
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: Well, being an op-ed writer is extremely time consuming. In between coming up with things to write about and then writing them down, there simply wasn’t time for me to find a real person. I would have had to call them, have a conversation, transcribe that conversation…
TYLER: Do you not know any real people or…
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: We haven’t even gotten to formatting that transcribed conversation for print! You have to italicize one person’s words and leave the other person’s words normal. My goodness. The list goes on and on.
TYLER: Okay, well. Given such limitations, maybe it would have been better for you to just write your own opinion persuasively instead of making up a fake guy to debate?
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: Better in what way? Writing a Q+A with an imagined critic makes it much easier to flatten their contrary opinions into the thinnest of strawmen that I can then defeat with facts and logic.
TYLER: A real critic might accuse you of being too scared to put your opinion up against real, flesh and blood pushback.
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: They might. We’ll never know! I don’t talk to real critics.
TYLER: I guess I’m struggling to understand why the most prestigious newspaper in the world would run this piece. Like, I’m making up an obviously fake conversation right now. At any moment, I can choose to have you say something very stupid or grossly offensive. Or I could just have you surrender to my superior intellect. I can make you say or do whatever I want and it doesn’t matter because it’s not real and everyone knows that. So why should anyone care that you made up a fake conversation about a real and incredibly serious issue?
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: What if I told you that you can take my word for it that the fake person I came up with did a pretty good job at expressing the pro-ceasefire viewpoint?
TYLER: I’d disagree. But, moreover, I don’t think the crux of my complaint is “you did not do justice to the pro-ceasefire viewpoint.” It’s “work this lazy does not belong in the pages of the New York Times.”
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: And yet here you are, writing your own fake conversation!
TYLER: In my defense, I’m hoping that by replicating this format, people can see how easy and stupid it is. I mean, if I can do all this for free then maybe a guy with a cushy, high-profile job at America’s Paper of Record should hold himself to a higher standard. Failing that, maybe the Times itself should hold him to a higher standard?
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: Well, the problem is, the modern conservative movement is explicitly anti-intellectual. It dismisses expertise as elitism and elevates ignorance as a virtue. This is a problem for a paper like the New York Times, which seeks to present both conservative and liberal opinion as equally matched wrestlers. Liberal opinion, of course, frequently has its head way up its own —
TYLER: Come on. The real Bret Stephens would never say it like that.
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: Good point. Let’s just say liberal opinion is frequently coconuts and the NYT dutifully presents these coconuts liberal opinions. But conservative opinion, at large, actually detests the New York Times and everything it stands for. You can’t get mainstream conservative op-ed writers for the Times because mainstream conservative opinion would like to see the whole institution riddled with bullets and abandoned on the dustheap of history. This puts the Times between a rock and a hard place. It wants to present a mainstream conservative opinion. But it doesn’t want to jettison all respectability by publishing, for example, the mainstream conservative opinion that Joe Biden lost the 2020 election . So, to thread this vexing needle, you get people like me: Fake Bret Stephens. I may not be the smartest guy or the best writer or the hardest worker, but I can play the Times’ little game of presenting mainstream conservative opinion without completely embarrassing everyone involved.
TYLER: Well, I’d argue you embarrass everyone involved somewhat regularly. No offense.
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: None taken. I’m not real.
TYLER: Fair enough. Do you have time for one more question?
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: Very funny.
TYLER: Just trying to keep things light. This is kind of a long question but here it goes. I am very privileged to know so many smart, thoughtful, interesting people with great opinions about important topics who challenge me, sharpen me and edify me. These people are able to communicate their opinions with clarity, wit and courage, and whether or not they change my mind about something, I always come away better just for having heard or read them. And yet, very few of these people are actually employed as actual pundits! Some of them are barely employed at all, and are struggling to make ends meet out here. I guess my question is, why do so many of the actual pundits seem so unqualified for the job while so many of the smartest, sharpest and best “opinion havers” I know are languishing in relative obscurity?
FAKE BRET STEPHENS: My honest guess? Those friends of yours just have better things to do.
TYLER: You might be smarter than I gave you credit for, Bret Stephens.