Mother Jones editor in chief Clara Jeffery has been dealing with quite a bit of backlash online. Now, where did the backlash come from? It was in response to, I would say, a pretty unhinged tweet. Okay, so here's what the tweet says, she writes creeping [00:00:17] Christian nationalism alert. Alaska air flight attendant just wished us a blessed night as we landed in San Francisco to groans. Other adjectives that would have sufficed. Great awesome fabulous amazing fantastic. [00:00:34] As my roommate said, this ain't Montgomery. Sweetie, I'm going to need you to calm down. Clara. I'm gonna need you to calm down. Creeping Christian nationalism. I mean, come on. For the bounds of reason, man. So the problem with crying wolf like this is that there actually is [00:00:51] creeping Christian nationalism, but it isn't because some decent person person told you to have a blessed day. That's the most normal thing on planet Earth. So please don't like not only for yourself but for everyone else. Lose credibility. Like when they say that there is no separation of church and state and that we [00:01:10] should follow their theocratic rules. That's when you talk about Christian nationalism, not when someone says, have a blessed day. I just it's so embarrassing. Look there at some point was this crazy trend among some on the left. [00:01:27] Okay, this is not indicative of everyone on the left, but there's like a small faction of people on the left where in recent years they just decided that intent doesn't matter at all. Okay. So in this case, what is the intent? The intent is to wish good things upon you, right? [00:01:44] Like, look, a lot of people who aren't even religious say blessed this, bless that, bless you after you sneeze. That is not a sign of creeping Christian nationalism. Listen. You're grumpy. You're having a bad day. [00:02:00] I feel you okay, but don't let it out on this poor flight attendant who did something nice and said something nice. Now, what made me happy? What gave me some solace is that other left wing people did criticize her for this post. [00:02:16] Andrew Krasinski, who is I'm assuming he's not a Republican, but he's a reporter over at CNN. He says seems like she was just being polite. Yep. It does seem like she was just being polite. Let's go to graphic four, where Armand de Malevsky, who is a lefty, says, [00:02:35] respectfully, I'm a pretty left leaning guy and I wish folks a blessed day. Fairly often. It's just a nice thing to say, but Claire is not buying it. Jake. Clara says, it's a matter of respect for the audience before you. Respecting their space and norms and wishes. [00:02:53] Dominant cultures always feel they have a right to enforce their norms and intents and way off Alaska Airlines brand. Okay, well, that's interesting because I'm actually going to skip ahead real quick and give you some examples of tweets from Clara Jeffery. [00:03:14] Here's an example a blessed Giselle Pellico hero. Oops. Why is she forcing her religion down everyone's throats? She should know the audience. How dare you! Creeping Christian nationalist. Yeah, I am an atheist and I'm in your audience, Clara. [00:03:31] And I was deeply offended by that. And, so there's actually one more here from Clara. Jeffrey, let's go to the next one. - Oh, yeah. - That's right. And it's about a fight somehow on this pack flight. The center next, the center seat next to me is empty. [00:03:48] - Truly, I am blessed. - Done done done done. What are you. What are you doing? Are you. Are you disrespecting yourself? That seems very wrong. So, look, guys, I'll give you a tweet from me too. So, I'm definitely an atheist, and, I come from a muslim background, [00:04:08] and I talk about that often. Right? But obviously, I don't believe in the religion anymore. Nevertheless, this was a recent tweet. Happy Labor Day weekend, everybody. Try to enjoy the three days off. God bless the upcoming football season. God bless the fall. God bless America and God bless the American workers who are [00:04:23] supposed to be celebrating this weekend. Even if you don't believe in God, see? That's easy. Nice and easy. Look, guys, don't lose credibility by, like, criticizing people in not only an unfair way, but in a way that alienates everyone. [00:04:39] So here, I'll give you a different example. It's not as egregious as this one, but when people make too big a deal out of mispronouncing, Kamala Harris, her name. So, look, there's exceptions like Nancy Mace on CNN. She said it correctly and then forgot that she was supposed to purposely mispronounce [00:04:56] it so that she mispronounced it. Okay, that one was obvious, right? But it's also possible that people are making an honest mistake with a name that they're not as familiar with. Let it go. Let it go. And in fact, the perfect example of this and I live by it is me. [00:05:13] My name is John Cougar, but the c is pronounced like a j. That's inexplicable. It's perfectly explicable in Turkish, but I know my audience and the American people are not familiar with a C pronounced as a J. In fact, today on Piers Morgan, Clay Travis said, sank. [00:05:29] And you know what I said? How dare you, you creeping Christian nationalist? No, I get it, man. It looks like a C. I mean, it is a C, and it looks like you should pronounce it sink, but it's actually sank. You see, then people go, oh, he's not a bad guy. [00:05:45] He's being generous and understanding. It's not that hard. How the hell are they supposed to know? And if someone's trying to be nice to you, take the win. Yeah, that's exactly right. Can we just meet people with some grace and be kind to people and accept their [00:06:02] kindness when they're trying to be kind? Intentions matter. That's it. Yeah. You know what? I'll do one last thing. Everybody's piling on Clara. Jeffrey here. And rightfully so. We just did it right now, let's let it go. Let it go. Okay. - Hold on a little bit longer. - Okay. [00:06:17] Just hold on a little longer, but I'm letting it go. It was an obvious misstep, especially when you show her past tweets where she said it. Yeah, she's got to be a little bit embarrassed. - In fact, probably a lot embarrassed. - Clearly, it's going to be okay. Like I'm actually not holding. Like I don't care, right? Like, I think this is a funny story, but, Clara, I'm worried about you, right? [00:06:37] Like, if you're constantly panicking about Christian nationalism to the point where someone saying something nice to you contributes to that panic, you got to log off for a little bit. Just log off for a little bit, okay? Because I get it, the news sometimes can get in your head [00:06:55] and you can work yourself up. Don't let that happen to you. Yeah. Take a step back. Yeah. Last two things I'll say first. So it's a minor infraction, guys. So the main reason why we did a story about it is because we want everybody to get along better. And we don't want each other like Democrats and Republicans, left and right, [00:07:12] attacking each other nonstop over the tiniest little things. Right. So as a matter of principle. Right. But we can just it doesn't have to be like, okay, now we're going to judge her for the rest of our lives, right? But also, let's also remember, too, that this is not a purely left wing thing. [00:07:27] I mean, Bill O'Reilly and Fox News invented the war on Christmas because instead of saying Merry Christmas, people were saying Happy Holidays. And they're like, how dare you? We demand that you say Merry Christmas based on our religion. I think you kind of missed the whole point of the season, right? [00:07:46] It's not to yell at each other because you didn't say Happy Holidays in the right way, or the Christian enough way, right? So like, this goes in both directions and it's mental in both directions. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. [00:08:03] You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. [00:08:20] So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. Thank you.