Fareed Zakaria Accidentally Gets Something Right About Pronouns in WaPo Op-Ed, Faces Immediate Backlash – Opinion

Fareed Zakaria, CNN fan favorite, wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post on Thursday. He pointed out that it is more important for politicians in these difficult times to address the major problems facing the country, rather than wasting their time worrying about which pronouns someone might prefer.

Zakaria hosts CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” writes a foreign affairs column for The Post, and is also a contributing editor for the Atlantic. He’s got all his liberal credentials lined up in a neat row, but even he can’t escape the insatiable appetite of the outrage mob.

He predictably faced an immediate backlash over the story for daring to step away from liberal orthodoxy, with outrage pouring in from such important voices as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s husband Chasten and triggered New York Times writer Elizabeth Spiers.

Zakaria’s offending headline? “Forget Pronouns: Democrats need to become the party of building things.”  Forget pronouns?! Nuts, where are you? There is nothing more valuable than pronouns.

Democrats should once again become the party that does things, builds things, and makes government work. That’s a lot more important to most Americans than using the right pronouns.

My latest column: https://t.co/x8ULfqjdfQ

— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) July 14, 2022

That headline has already been updated on the WaPo website to delete the offending phrase, now simply reading, “Democrats need to become the party of building things.” Gone is the outrageous phrase, “Forget the pronouns.” Thank goodness.

How could the Washington Post quickly change their headline? After all, it wasn’t even a story by WaPo writer Taylor Lorenz, whose writings regularly need updates, corrections, and clarifications. No, they didn’t change the headline because there was an error; they changed it because of the severe criticism and whining of the left. Here’s Chasten Buttigieg, hubby of Pete:

It is easy to address someone using the preferred name or pronoun. These help build belonging and community. Democrats are able to walk and chew gum. While we can repair roads and make it easier for you to live your daily life, this is possible because of our ability to build bridges and fix roads. That’s called freedom.

— Chasten Buttigieg (@Chasten) July 15, 2022

The New York Times wouldn’t pass up the chance to punch at its competitor, so writer Elizabeth Spiers quickly piled on. In reference to Fareed’s article, she tweets:

This is a wild misreading of that Times poll to begin with, but if you conflate civil rights with pronoun etiquette and are completely unaware that you’re parroting a transphobic GOP talking point, maybe step back from the keyboard.

Ooh, “better step away from the keyboard”! Them’s fighting words.

A liberal podcaster named Kimberley Johnson was overwrought too, tweeting: “Who is running on pronouns, @FareedZakaria? Pronouns are not part of any candidate’s platform. It is a social issue that most Democrats embrace… This is lazy journalism and it’s transphobic. You’re singling out one group and it’s gross.”

There’s more emotional devastation out there, but you get the idea. It’s all wrong because the Professional Aggrieved Class overlooks the main point. Fareed actually has 100 percent correct in his opinion-ed. Instead of obsessing about polarizing issues, we should focus more on fixing the country. He wrote:

Analyzing some of the findings of the poll, David Leonhardt wrote, “Many Democrats — both politicians and voters, especially on the party’s left flank … seem more focused on divisive cultural issues than on most Americans’ everyday concerns, like inflation…”

There is plenty of evidence that the Democratic Party has moved left, that it is out of sync with Americans on many of these cultural issues, and that it needs to correct course.