Blessed Mother Jones Rage Bait

The first rule of social media: Be angry, very very angry!

Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones magazine, was angry. Some poor flight attendant had had the temerity to wish Jeffery a “blessed” night as she landed in San Francisco. A clear sign of “creeping Christian nationalism”! In her tweet, Jeffery tagged Alaska Airlines to make sure they knew what their employees were up to.

Jeffery was obviously being incredibly wacky. Flight attendants wish passengers well after every trip. Usually, with a pro-forma “Bye, buh bye, bye” as bleary passengers file out of the plane. Making a “blessed” goodbye wish isn’t weird. Lots of Americans use “bless” and “blessed.” Jeffery herself has been known to bless a few things!

None of what happened to Jeffery was evidence of a rising Christo-Fascist state led by hordes of Bible-worshiping Alaskan Air flight attendants. For all Jeffery knew, the blessed flight attendant might be voting for Harris! She extrapolated a paranoid world of creeping Christian nationalism from one anodyne word.

In reality-land, Christianity in the United States is on the decline. Growing numbers of Americans identify as atheists, agnostics, or “nothing in particular.” According to the Pew Research Center, if these trends continue, Christians will make up a minority of the country within 50 years.

Does Jeffery truly believe that Christians are taking over the country? I can’t say. It’s an idea I’ve heard echoed in some corners of the left, but I think her reaction was probably more fueled by contempt (“this ain’t Montgomery”) than fear.

To be very clear, this is not universal for progressives. I know a few lefty Christians, and most of my atheist friends wouldn’t be contemptuous in the way Jeffery was. However, for a type of sanctimonious lefty, Christians are an acceptable object of scorn in a way that no other religion would be. It is unthinkable that Jeffery would have made fun of a woman who was Buddhist or Hindu. If a flight attendant had said, as-salamu alaykum (Arabic for “peace be with you”), Jeffery wouldn’t have uttered a peep, but belittling Christians guarantees applause from some.

Unfortunately for her, Jeffery’s tweet escaped her local Twitter bubble and the resulting firestorm made her a target for a day.

Look at that ratio! Sixteen thousand comments! And climbing! It reached twenty-seven thousand comments later that evening. The quote-tweets went on for days!

When people pushed back politely, Jeffery was having none of it. She knew she was in the right!

The obliviousness of Jeffery’s response to Armand Domalewsky (a left-wing Bay Area activist) was impressive. She accused the flight attendant of being part of a “dominant culture” that wanted to “enforce their norms.” But as Zaid Jilani (another lefty) pointed out, Jeffery was the dominant one. She is the editor-in-chief of a well-known political magazine and a product of elite institutions. She attended the Sidwell Friends School—whose alumni include Chelsea Clinton, Sasha Obama, and Malia Obama—and received a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. She was the one with power trying to enforce her norms on society by tweeting contempt for a harmless Christian greeting uttered by a powerless flight attendant.

As Jeffery’s ratio picked up steam, did she recognize that she’d put her foot in it? Of course not! In a follow-up tweet, she said…

It wasn’t her; it was all the dumb right-wingers who were at fault! Never mind that many of those dunking on her came from the left.

I respected Jeffery’s insistence on doubling and tripling down. Once the mob has you in its crosshairs, apologizing is pointless. If I were her, I’d have made my account private and waited for the hubbub to die down, but I respect her trying to brazen things out. In the end, however, sanity, or the advice of friends, convinced her to delete the offending tweet. By Sunday morning (after hitting 10 million views), it had disappeared.

Is any of this important? Not very, of course, but it does offer a lesson. Jeffery’s attitude towards Christians and non-coastal America is too common on the left, and as a center-left guy who wants Kamala Harris to win, I think it’s bad for all of us. There are a lot of Christian voters out there!

As Jeremiah Johnson pointed out, Democrats are trying not to be the weirdos, and Clara Jeffery and those like her are not helping our cause! It's all too reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s “basket full of deplorables” line that alienated many voters in 2016. I know people who still think Hillary was correct (“well, they ARE deplorables”), and that’s their right, but if you want to win elections, it’s not the sort of thing the editor of an influential magazine should be spouting.

Working-class Americans are increasingly voting for Republicans, and making fun of their values is not the way to win them back.

It’s especially perverse for Jeffery to attack working-class values when Mother Jones is supposedly dedicated to the cause of the working class. It was named after Mary Harris Jones (1837-1930), nicknamed Mother Jones, a trade union activist who fought hard for the rights of the working poor.

Mother Jones giving President Calvin Coolidge a piece of her mind in 1924.

Jeffery, however, seemed contemptuous of working-class Americans and their worldview. It was that contempt, the elitist snobbery, that made so many people angry.

The meta irony is it’s all rage bait. Clara Jeffery was angry at the woman who wished her a blessed day, which in turn made Twitter angry at Jeffery. Everyone was looking for their rage fix, and everyone found it, including me!