https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190830/23255742898/bedbug-privilege-bret-stephens-uses-his-ny-times-column-to-suggest-jokingly-comparing-him-to-bedbug-is-prelude-to-ethnic.shtml

It's one thing to trigger a massive Streisand Effect. It's another to keep on making it worse. Bret Stephens is entering new territory here. Last week, we wrote about his bedbug freakout, in which he misread a tweet that basically no one had seen or read, and tried to use his high and mighty position as a "NY Times Columnist" to get a professor fired, by angrily emailing that professor and cc'ing university provost. As you'll recall, the professor, David Karpf of George Washington University, had simply cracked a mild joke in response to someone at the NY Times tweeting that there were bedbugs in the NY Times offices: "The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens."

Now, let's pause for a second, to note that Stephens appears to have misread this tweet. It is not calling him a bedbug. It's saying that "bedbug is a metaphor for Bret Stephens." In other words, he's joking that other NY Times staffers want to get rid of Stephens, but are having trouble doing so.