My run-in with the New York Times

It’s never a good sign when you’re watching a scene of street terror in yet another gut-churning YouTube video and you find yourself thinking: ‘Hang on a minute, that’s around the corner from my apartment!’ But there’s a now infamous video from last week where a mob of enraged millennials with their fists pumped in the air surrounded a lone young woman sitting outside a Washington restaurant where I often eat. Like a scene from the Cultural Revolution, the crowd demanded she shout certain slogans and raise her clenched fist in solidarity — or be damned as a racist. Most of her fellow diners took the path of least resistance. She wouldn’t. The chants grew louder: ‘White silence is violence!’ They started screaming in her face. She wouldn’t cave. Wokeness, in case you hadn’t noticed, has entered a more intense phase. Not so long ago, you were cancelled for something you did or said or wrote.