Times Columnist Bret Stephens Has A Total Meltdown After Being Called A 'Bedbug' By Twitter User

​New York Times op-ed columnist Bret Stephens has often earned the ire of Twitter for his columns on campus free speech issues, as he has repeatedly warned of the dangers of cancel culture from his perch at the Grey Lady. But on Monday, Stephens decided to get in on cancel culture himself and it blew up in his face. 

Yesterday, it was reported that the Times' office has bedbugs. The news sparked many snarky tweets, including one from George Washington University professor David Karpf, who suggested that the bedbug was Stephens:

The tweet did not tag Stephens and, as Karpf wrote later, initially earned him 0 retweets and 9 likes. Nevertheless, Stephens found the tweet and got real mad:

Yes, Stephens not only emailed Karpf, he also cc'd the provost at GWU (Karpf's boss, more or less). Here's the email:

Once Karpf released the email, the internet had a field day with Stephens, supplying Twitter dunks and Wikipedia edits (Stephens' Wiki page has now been locked):

On Tuesday morning, Stephens returned to Twitter to announce that he was deactivating his account for good:

The episode is the second awkward moment for a prominent Times' employee in recent weeks, after former deputy Washington editor Jonathan Weisman was demoted following a series of ill-advised tweets.