The Washington Post amended columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria’s Thursday opinion column after it received fierce backlash from the left for pointing out the Democratic Party is too preoccupied with “pronouns” and gender ideology over issues most Americans care about.
By Friday evening, The Washington Post had changed the headline of his piece from its original title, “Forget Pronouns: Democrats need to become the party of building things,” to simply “Democrats need to become the party of building things.”
Zakaria’s headline and argument that getting “stuff done” is “a lot more important to most Americans than using the right pronouns” angered leftists, notably the husband of Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Chasten Buttigieg.
On Thursday, Zakaria shared the piece with its original headline to Twitter on Thursday, commenting, “Democrats need to once more become the party that gets stuff done, builds things and makes government work for people. That’s a lot more important to most Americans than using the right pronouns.”
The next day, Secretary Buttigieg’s husband responded to Zakaria’s post with a scathing lecture. He tweeted, “Addressing someone by the name/pronoun they prefer is free, easy, and kind. Using them builds community and belonging. Democrats can walk and chew gum. We can fix roads and build bridges while also making it a little easier to go about your life. That’s called freedom.”
Buttigieg continued, “It is wildly inappropriate to instruct Democrats to toss aside an entire group of Americans in order to win. Democrats are making historic investments and bold moves while proposing life-saving and democracy-strengthening legislation that republicans continue to vote no on,” he added.
Zakaria defended himself from Buttigieg’s criticism. “I hope it is clear that I am NOT arguing against any minority groups. (I belong to several myself.) I am arguing against giving Republicans an easy way to demagogue and divert attention,” he tweeted, echoing the argument made in his piece.
He added, “If the Democrats are wiped out in the midterms, it will not help these embattled groups any!”
Others tore into Zakaria’s piece, including New York Times contributing writer Elizabeth Spiers. She posted a screenshot of Zakaria’s original headline and called his article a “wild misreading of that Times poll to begin with,” referencing the columnist citing a recent New York Times poll in his article.
Spiers also wrote, “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.”
Liberal podcaster Kimberley Johnson slammed Zakaria as well, tweeting, “Who is running on pronouns, @FareedZakaria? No candidate is making pronouns part of their 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.”
“Why are we acting like we have to choose between building things and using the right pronouns? Do both,” urged Vanity Fair contributing editor Franklin Leonard.
Stand-up comedian and podcaster Kate Willet tweeted, “Aside from being wrong this just isn’t even true. Democrats failed to pass Build Back Better bc centrist Democrats blocked it. None of this has anything to do with trans people or pronouns.”
Transgender author D.E. Anderson took Zakaria’s argument personally and responded forcefully, tweeting, “Oh f— this. We can do all that while respecting who people are. Also notice the rhetorical trick here: reduce trans issues to ‘pronouns’ and dismiss it as silly. Stops you from having to consider that Republicans are hellbent on making it easier to kill us.”
