The New York Times is standing by its new editorial hire, Sarah Jeong, despite her history of admittedly racist tweets.

The way the newspaper tells it, Jeong was only kidding when she wrote things like, “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants” and, “Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins."

She was only mimicking her racist online haters, according to the Times. Because who among us hasn’t tweeted racist-y things to own the trolls?

“Her journalism and the fact that she is a young Asian woman have made her a subject of frequent online harassment,” the Times said, suggesting that Jeong is the real victim.

It added, “For a period of time she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers. She sees now that this approach only served to feed the vitriol that we too often see on social media. She regrets it, and The Times does not condone it.”

The Times’ response tacks closely to Jeong’s own statement, where she claimed both that she is a victim and that her old tweets were in jest.

“As a woman of color on the Internet, I have faced torrents of online hate,” she said. “I engaged in what I thought of at the time as counter-trolling.”

She added, “While it was intended as satire, I deeply regret that I mimicked the language of my harassers. These comments were not aimed at a general audience, because general audiences do not engage in harassment campaigns. I can understand how hurtful these posts are out of context, and would not do it again.”

First, if you look at some of Jeong’s racist tweets, including this one and this one and this one, she’s not responding to anyone. Her dozens of “white people” tweets, which span several years, often appear by their lonesome and unprompted. Second, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the Times and Jeong are asking us to accept as a rational explanation the idea that her admittedly racist tweets were part of some clever anti-racist performative gag. I mean, sure. If they say so.

The point here isn’t to suggest Jeong should be fired. She’s obviously free to be as stupid as she wants, and the Times is free to hire whomever it pleases. In fact, the world will be a better place the day organizations stop bowing to online rage mobs.

The point here is to suggest that the Times’ backing of Jeong shows its handling of the Quinn Norton fiasco was both unfair and disingenuous. The newspaper hired and fired Norton in February, explaining her old tweets made her a bad fit at the Times. But now we see the standard the paper set for itself is more of a guideline, and that it moves for the right people.

I suppose Norton could've just said she was only kidding when she claimed friendship with a neo-Nazi, but my guess is her then-editors would’ve been as skeptical of that defense as I am today of Jeong's.

The Times made its bed when it fired Quinn Norton. It just doesn’t want to sleep in it.