10 ms·

After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

47 points by artur_makly 9y ago

meri_dian 9y ago
Something she had to say about herself... "For those of you honestly concerned. I don't support weev, that's not given in how I define friendship. I believe white folks should engage with the racists in their life … and I believe all people are redeemable, and "all people" is all people." That's an admirable perspective. She is clearly not racist or anything else herself. She is a casualty of the reactionary zeitgeist. Lest we all forget the words of one of the greatest Americans in history, Martin Luther King Jr., here is a portion of his speech from Dexter Baptist Church delivered in Montgomery Alabama in 1957: "So I want to turn your attention to this subject: "Loving Your Enemies." It’s so basic to me because it is a part of my basic philosophical and theological orientation—the whole idea of love, the whole philosophy of love. In the fifth chapter of the gospel as recorded by Saint Matthew, we read these very arresting words flowing from the lips of our Lord and Master: "Ye have heard that it has been said, ‘Thou shall love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.’ But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." Certainly these are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions. And over the centuries, many persons have argued that this is an extremely difficult command. Many would go so far as to say that it just isn’t possible to move out into the actual practice of this glorious command. They would go on to say that this is just additional proof that Jesus was an impractical idealist who never quite came down to earth. So the arguments abound. But far from being an impractical idealist, Jesus has become the practical realist. The words of this text glitter in our eyes with a new urgency. Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies."
- badwebsite 9y ago
  > She is clearly not racist or anything else herself. She is a casualty of the reactionary zeitgeist. Nah she's pretty racist http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/ny-times-quinn-norton-neonazis_us_5a837db8e4b0cf06751f8fbe http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/ny-times-quinn-norton-neo...
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I also think it's inherently silly to believe you can't be friends with people you disagree with. Some of the more lasting memories in my life came from conversations I've had with people that I couldn't be further apart from in perspective and opinion, and some of them, I'd go so far as to say I was friends with.
  - fred_is_fred 9y ago
    How many Nazis are you friends with? Could you be friends with someone who wants to murder "jew children" like weev? I sure hope not.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      I don't think I'm friends with anyone I'd call a Nazi or white supremacist, I don't follow everyone I've ever been friends with before, so couldn't tell you for sure noone I've been friends with isn't one today. I did have an annoyingly frustrating conversation yesterday with someone I had to work really hard to convince the footage from the Tesla in orbit wasn't shot in a studio. I'd call him a friend, I think. Definitely have some big rifts of views though.
      - fred_is_fred 9y ago
        Flat earther versus actively advocating for the murder of Jewish children is not even in the same ballpark.
    - sctb 9y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive inflammatory comments in this thread? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - ulrikrasmussen 9y ago
    Right, if we force ourselves to be declared enemies of anyone who does not share our world view, then nobody will grow, and people will just get more entrenched in their bubbles. This reminds me of a podcast, incidentally "The Daily" produced by NYTimes, where a former white nationalist tells a quite fascinating story about how he completely changed his mind about the white nationalist movement after being regularly invited to dinners by his Jewish friend whom he met in college. If anyone is interested, the episode can be found here: https://dfkfj8j276wwv.cloudfront.net/episodes/d7b8650b-3ef3-42c5-a1ce-c548463b04db/b11553ee2b88f5539c6a3d5827c84b38496d0373daca83c4f71d6d47cc359956249c3a1adbe4ad0ec89ff2c2225c641db67f5d90fe2786bfde111ba5b97d30a5/TD%20Aug%2022%20FINAL%20no%20ad%20break.mp3 https://dfkfj8j276wwv.cloudfront.net/episodes/d7b8650b-3ef3-...
- fred_is_fred 9y ago
  Stop being an apologist. Based on what she's said in the past, she's a racist and a homophobe. It's not a total stretch to see that she's friends with Nazis because maybe she believes in what they are saying. Are any of you friends with Nazis? I can barely deal with my racist in-laws in Texas, so I have no idea how you could be friends with a Nazi. Her words that she spoke back when she wasn't under the microscope are what counts. And stop quoting MLK in your Nazi apology bullshit.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    I can understand why you would think that, but you should read her tweets a few more times. The words she used in the past don't seem to have been used with the intention of belittling anyone. While it's probably unwise to use them at all, I doubt her intent was to hurt others. And I'll quote MLK whenever I want. His words may make you uncomfortable because they preach love of people you disagree with, something you may not support, but they are his words.
  - berberous 9y ago
    For those in this thread that think you can’t be friends with a racist, consider this story of a black guy who has convinced over 200 KKK members to give up their robes, simply by engaging them and being their friend: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-befriends-kkk-documentary-accidental-courtesy_us_585c250de4b0de3a08f495fc https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-b...
  - azangru 9y ago
    > I can barely deal with my racist in-laws in Texas, so I have no idea how you could be friends with a Nazi Aren't there lots of interactions that people can have with each other besides discussing topics such as race, or nation, (or gender, or sexuality)? Why are people so willing to define themselves by their stance on any of these particular topics, to the point of being openly hostile to people with other positions on any of those subjects?
    - fred_is_fred 9y ago
- econnors 9y ago
  There's a difference between engaging with people who have different viewpoints and being friends with them. I consider friendship to be an endorsement of the other person. Same for "loving your enemies". MLK is advocating for peaceful protest here, not saying that you should excuse and forget your enemy's actions. I'm not sure I agree with any argument made in favor of being friends with white supremacists. Defend their right to free speech and engage in debate? Sure. But society should strongly condemn and criticize them for racist thoughts and words. Freedom of speech doesn't guarantee you freedom from consequence of those words.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    "I consider friendship to be an endorsement of the other person." Not everyone feels that way.
  - iambateman 9y ago
    Friendship can’t be an unqualified endorsement of another person. I have an alcoholic friend. Does that mean I believe alcoholism is healthy? I have an anarchist friend. Do I call for the end of government? I have a Muslim friend. Does that mean I abide by Sharia? Of course not. If I must agree with every view a person holds in order to be friends with them, I shall sooner or later find I have but one friend - myself.
  - ghthor 9y ago
    If you want to have no idea what your enemy is doing, then by all means cut all types of communication with them. If you want to be caught unexpected by the actions of your enemy, then by all means pay no attention to them. If you want to be destroyed by your enemy, then by all means ignore and belittle them as there is no faster way to your own destruction. The most efficient way to understand and predict the actions of your enemy then by befriending and walking among them.
    - scarface74 9y ago
      I have friends who lean toward the conservative side of libertarianism and I lean more liberal, I have a friend who is the opposite politically from me in almost every way but they all seem to believe that one shouldn't be judged by their color or discriminated against. That's basically the only line I draw.
- zerb 9y ago
  Certainly. 2016 is evidence of what happens when you don't listen to people you disagree with. Lower class whites are disproportionally-likely to have "deplorable" views. Yet even as we as a society move to bring education to more and more people, still this demographic has become the last remaining group of people that it's "OK" to hate. So they've reacted. Disclaimers: Obviously, not everyone who's a lower-income white person is racist. Nor do I support racist views -- just saying that ignoring people will not help effect change. MLK was a genius and great person.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    I believe it's important to put racism and hate in their contexts. Often times people are racist or discriminatory because they fear, either for their own way of life being eroded or because they don't understand the "other". This does not mean those attitudes are good. Far from it. But we must try to empathize with all people. Which is much easier to do when, as MLK advocated, we love all people.
    - zerb 9y ago
      Oh, that's another great point. There are different kinds of racism. There's a great video from the 80s called "The Color of Fear" which has a bunch of randomly-chosen people of various ethnicities put into a room, who slowly start to talk about more and more uncomfortable subjects. There's fear. There's lack of empathy for problems which don't affect you personally. There's even outright hate. These are different problems with different solutions.
  - oceanghost 9y ago
    This is the problem with the big tent. My primary concern in the 2016 election was media propaganda. I voted for Trump in California, where it would never, ever, matter, as a protest vote. That makes me a deplorable racist? :)
  - spoovy 9y ago
    I am very doubtful that 'lower-class' people are more likely to hold racist views. In my experience in the UK it's the opposite. Working class people here are constantly used as a scapegoat by the middle classes when it suits their pockets. Brexit for example had nothing to do with race and everything to do with massive immigration distorting the housing market. The average house price in London is now around $750,000 USD, which is of course an enormous problem for the poor, but enormously profitable to property-owning middle classes. But the middle-class mainstream media paint a picture of a mob of racist working classes being the root cause. Bully them into line with the worst kind of insults, and keep those house prices rising.
- IntronExon 9y ago
  It’s worth noting that like Jesus, MLK was murdered by said enemies. Maybe they were still right to love them, but maybe Malcom X was right.
CPLX 9y ago
What were the actual racist and homophobic statements? Reading this article the actual offending things are absent and not linked to.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ny-times-quinn-norton-neonazis_us_5a837db8e4b0cf06751f8fbe https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ny-times-quinn-norton-n...
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    This seems to me that she was mostly using words which are offensive, but frequently used outside of their intended meaning. Definitely language I wouldn't use myself. But for example, "that's gay" has been relatively often used as an insult/derogatory, inadvertently by people not intending to be homophobic. I'd definitely call out it's use today, but I'm not sure I'd hunt someone down and try to ruin their career over them using language they shouldn't have five years ago.
    - fred_is_fred 9y ago
      Edit: removed since apparaently it was a RT
      - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        Wasn't that was a retweet (the good ole-fashioned retweet, starting with "RT")? It looks like it was a retweet from John Barlow, the founder of the EFF. And it was definitely sarcastic, in nature. If you remove the loaded language, it's a bit easier to parse, I think: "If a black man was meant to talk to our schoolchildren, God would've made one President. Oh, wait, he did." Ergo, a black man was, indeed, meant to talk to our schoolchildren.
        meri_dian 9y ago
        That's exactly how I interpreted it as well. It is unwise to use slurs regardless of intent, because people are sensitive to them and rightly so. But her intent in using them was not to hurt or belittle.
badwebsite 9y ago
If any of you didn't know about Quinn Norton, she also sold out Aaron Swartz and contributed to his suicide. She is a terrible person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_Norton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_Norton
spoovy 9y ago
I genuinely fear where this new puritanism is heading.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
The only thing left for these comments is something along the lines of "Now I know people on HN are smarter than average..."
stevemk14ebr 9y ago
I legitimately do not understand why people expose themselves on social media like this! I was 12 or so when i got my first social media, and even back THEN i knew that posting the wrong thing would get be in trouble with my friends, parents, or even school. It blows my mind that full grown adults use such devisive language in a public setting. You have to KNOW that what you are doing is dumb and risky. Not to mention she works in writing, which is a job that's at least partially about YOUR PUBLIC IMAGE, i mean really this is first grade "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say it at all...[ESPECIALLY IF YOUR LIVELYHOOD DEPEND ON YOUR IMAGE]" Reading the comment by @meri_dian I initially thought "ok she had a non-pc racist friend and supported them. Then by association she was deemed to risky for NYTimes". That by itself is a not "character damning" to her, but you can see how a company would want to distance themselves. Then i read her actual tweets, where she actually called people slurs. That is not defend-able, and I think she deserves it.
dirtyhand 9y ago
The smart thing to do here is build a Twitter background check app and sell a subscription to the NYTimes.
- olympus 9y ago
  This is a pretty good idea. Something that scans tweets and other publicly accessible social media for a list of known words and then compiles it into a report for potential employers would go gangbusters in the HR/hiring areas. It obviously couldn't get everything, but would be a big help for employers.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Sounds wonderful. /s An automated tool that disqualifies people from employment for something ill-advised they once wrote in college based on a naive algorithm. ADDED: Of course, if you want to be an authentic disruptive Silicon Valley startup you'd offer both this service and a service for end users to expunge any online content that would be flagged by their employer service. Should be good for some fawning tech press writeups.
    - olympus 9y ago
      I'm sure people that don't get a job because of something they said in the past wouldn't like it. I don't really like the idea of not hiring someone based on behavior far in the past (recent public behavior on social media is fair game in my mind). However, in terms of a startup product that companies would pay for, I stand by my claim that it's a great idea. After all, HN is ran by yCombinator and startups are kind if its thing.
olympus 9y ago
What a load of b.s. Since she engages with communities known for hateful actions she must also be a hateful person and agree with all their thoughts? If you have to dig all the way back to 2013 to find someone using the word "fag" then that's not too bad. Nobody's perfect. Do we not allow for people's attitudes to change over time, or is using the word "fag" once enough to brand you a homophobe for life? Most gay men have used the word before. Or maybe, just maybe, we need to examine the context in which a word is used. There's an old story about a dude named Jesus that hung out with the deplorables of his time, and it got him killed. Whether or not you believe it actually happened it's got a good moral, and that is: The people in power don't like the people who actually engage with the enemy, you might find that they are people too, or you might actually persuade them to fix their evil ways and then you can't hate them any more. They would rather sit in their ivory towers and do nothing. When someone actually talks with people to try and understand their mindset it makes those ivory tower dwellers look bad for not actually doing anything.
gadders 9y ago
Can we just stop these twitter outrage storms now? I don't care any more if the "victim" of the storm is left-wing, right-wing, SJW or fascist. Can't we have a truce on this stuff? It's pointless and achieves nothing but to help a few outrage-merchants get off.
iron0012 9y ago
Ah, I knew I could count on Hacker News to defend the Nazi lover. Repulsive.
- sctb 9y ago
  Since you won't seem to post according to the guidelines like we've already asked, we've banned this account.
  - iron0012 9y ago
    Apologies for not providing an HN-approved defense of Nazism couched in paragraphs of bloviation.
tasty_freeze 9y ago
Post some inflammatory things on your twitter account and it can come back to bite you. But it is funny that it disqualifies her from writing opinion pieces for a newspaper, while other people tweet far more outrageous things nearly daily and can be President. I'm not sure why some people get teflon and others don't.
- fhood 9y ago
  > I'm not sure why some people get teflon and others don't. In the unlikely case that that was not rhetorical, how much overlap do you think there is between the nytimes readership and Trump's base?
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    > how much overlap do you think there is between the nytimes readership and Trump's base? More than you'd think, apparently, given their editorial stance that leans heavily towards normalising his supporters and actions.
- Grue3 9y ago
  Hint: she just so happened to be a woman. Interesting how that happens every time one of these Internet mobs heats up. See also Justine Sacco, and many others.
harrumph 9y ago
This is about treating someone who advocates genocide as if they were merely holding an opinion rather than promoting a prescription for murderous mass action. I don't think this is about someone befriending someone else who merely has a different, detestable point of view. This is palpably worse. This is about befriending someone who advocates for withholding the right to live -- in a sense, for taking away the right of millions to have any point of view. I think that's a big difference. I'm saddened to learn that she was Aaron Swartz's romantic interest. And I'm saddened that no comments here seem to have noticed that this is simply not about a mere disagreement.
jancsika 9y ago
> Some of my friend are terrible people, & also my friends. That's a really big deal. And for most people, that situation is a) unfortunate, b) unwelcome, and c) confusing in the extreme. People talk a lot with close friends about such a situation just to get a handle on it, to remain honest about the affection they feel while refraining from apologizing for the terrible person's behavior. It's usually painful to come to terms with it. Especially if the terrible person still acts unapologetically to hurt other people. No one I know tweets casually about something like that, much less humble brags about the terrible person friends they've collected.

47 points by artur_makly 9y ago

Something she had to say about herself... "For those of you honestly concerned. I don't support weev, that's not given in how I define friendship. I believe white folks should engage with the racists in their life … and I believe all people are redeemable, and "all people" is all people." That's an admirable perspective. She is clearly not racist or anything else herself. She is a casualty of the reactionary zeitgeist. Lest we all forget the words of one of the greatest Americans in history, Martin Luther King Jr., here is a portion of his speech from Dexter Baptist Church delivered in Montgomery Alabama in 1957: "So I want to turn your attention to this subject: "Loving Your Enemies." It’s so basic to me because it is a part of my basic philosophical and theological orientation—the whole idea of love, the whole philosophy of love. In the fifth chapter of the gospel as recorded by Saint Matthew, we read these very arresting words flowing from the lips of our Lord and Master: "Ye have heard that it has been said, ‘Thou shall love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.’ But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." Certainly these are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions. And over the centuries, many persons have argued that this is an extremely difficult command. Many would go so far as to say that it just isn’t possible to move out into the actual practice of this glorious command. They would go on to say that this is just additional proof that Jesus was an impractical idealist who never quite came down to earth. So the arguments abound. But far from being an impractical idealist, Jesus has become the practical realist. The words of this text glitter in our eyes with a new urgency. Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies."

badwebsite 9y ago
> She is clearly not racist or anything else herself. She is a casualty of the reactionary zeitgeist. Nah she's pretty racist http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/ny-times-quinn-norton-neonazis_us_5a837db8e4b0cf06751f8fbe http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/ny-times-quinn-norton-neo...
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I also think it's inherently silly to believe you can't be friends with people you disagree with. Some of the more lasting memories in my life came from conversations I've had with people that I couldn't be further apart from in perspective and opinion, and some of them, I'd go so far as to say I was friends with.
- fred_is_fred 9y ago
  How many Nazis are you friends with? Could you be friends with someone who wants to murder "jew children" like weev? I sure hope not.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    I don't think I'm friends with anyone I'd call a Nazi or white supremacist, I don't follow everyone I've ever been friends with before, so couldn't tell you for sure noone I've been friends with isn't one today. I did have an annoyingly frustrating conversation yesterday with someone I had to work really hard to convince the footage from the Tesla in orbit wasn't shot in a studio. I'd call him a friend, I think. Definitely have some big rifts of views though.
    - fred_is_fred 9y ago
      Flat earther versus actively advocating for the murder of Jewish children is not even in the same ballpark.
  - sctb 9y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive inflammatory comments in this thread? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ulrikrasmussen 9y ago
  Right, if we force ourselves to be declared enemies of anyone who does not share our world view, then nobody will grow, and people will just get more entrenched in their bubbles. This reminds me of a podcast, incidentally "The Daily" produced by NYTimes, where a former white nationalist tells a quite fascinating story about how he completely changed his mind about the white nationalist movement after being regularly invited to dinners by his Jewish friend whom he met in college. If anyone is interested, the episode can be found here: https://dfkfj8j276wwv.cloudfront.net/episodes/d7b8650b-3ef3-42c5-a1ce-c548463b04db/b11553ee2b88f5539c6a3d5827c84b38496d0373daca83c4f71d6d47cc359956249c3a1adbe4ad0ec89ff2c2225c641db67f5d90fe2786bfde111ba5b97d30a5/TD%20Aug%2022%20FINAL%20no%20ad%20break.mp3 https://dfkfj8j276wwv.cloudfront.net/episodes/d7b8650b-3ef3-...
fred_is_fred 9y ago
Stop being an apologist. Based on what she's said in the past, she's a racist and a homophobe. It's not a total stretch to see that she's friends with Nazis because maybe she believes in what they are saying. Are any of you friends with Nazis? I can barely deal with my racist in-laws in Texas, so I have no idea how you could be friends with a Nazi. Her words that she spoke back when she wasn't under the microscope are what counts. And stop quoting MLK in your Nazi apology bullshit.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  I can understand why you would think that, but you should read her tweets a few more times. The words she used in the past don't seem to have been used with the intention of belittling anyone. While it's probably unwise to use them at all, I doubt her intent was to hurt others. And I'll quote MLK whenever I want. His words may make you uncomfortable because they preach love of people you disagree with, something you may not support, but they are his words.
- berberous 9y ago
  For those in this thread that think you can’t be friends with a racist, consider this story of a black guy who has convinced over 200 KKK members to give up their robes, simply by engaging them and being their friend: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-befriends-kkk-documentary-accidental-courtesy_us_585c250de4b0de3a08f495fc https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-b...
- azangru 9y ago
  > I can barely deal with my racist in-laws in Texas, so I have no idea how you could be friends with a Nazi Aren't there lots of interactions that people can have with each other besides discussing topics such as race, or nation, (or gender, or sexuality)? Why are people so willing to define themselves by their stance on any of these particular topics, to the point of being openly hostile to people with other positions on any of those subjects?
  - fred_is_fred 9y ago
econnors 9y ago
There's a difference between engaging with people who have different viewpoints and being friends with them. I consider friendship to be an endorsement of the other person. Same for "loving your enemies". MLK is advocating for peaceful protest here, not saying that you should excuse and forget your enemy's actions. I'm not sure I agree with any argument made in favor of being friends with white supremacists. Defend their right to free speech and engage in debate? Sure. But society should strongly condemn and criticize them for racist thoughts and words. Freedom of speech doesn't guarantee you freedom from consequence of those words.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  "I consider friendship to be an endorsement of the other person." Not everyone feels that way.
- iambateman 9y ago
  Friendship can’t be an unqualified endorsement of another person. I have an alcoholic friend. Does that mean I believe alcoholism is healthy? I have an anarchist friend. Do I call for the end of government? I have a Muslim friend. Does that mean I abide by Sharia? Of course not. If I must agree with every view a person holds in order to be friends with them, I shall sooner or later find I have but one friend - myself.
- ghthor 9y ago
  If you want to have no idea what your enemy is doing, then by all means cut all types of communication with them. If you want to be caught unexpected by the actions of your enemy, then by all means pay no attention to them. If you want to be destroyed by your enemy, then by all means ignore and belittle them as there is no faster way to your own destruction. The most efficient way to understand and predict the actions of your enemy then by befriending and walking among them.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    I have friends who lean toward the conservative side of libertarianism and I lean more liberal, I have a friend who is the opposite politically from me in almost every way but they all seem to believe that one shouldn't be judged by their color or discriminated against. That's basically the only line I draw.
zerb 9y ago
Certainly. 2016 is evidence of what happens when you don't listen to people you disagree with. Lower class whites are disproportionally-likely to have "deplorable" views. Yet even as we as a society move to bring education to more and more people, still this demographic has become the last remaining group of people that it's "OK" to hate. So they've reacted. Disclaimers: Obviously, not everyone who's a lower-income white person is racist. Nor do I support racist views -- just saying that ignoring people will not help effect change. MLK was a genius and great person.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  I believe it's important to put racism and hate in their contexts. Often times people are racist or discriminatory because they fear, either for their own way of life being eroded or because they don't understand the "other". This does not mean those attitudes are good. Far from it. But we must try to empathize with all people. Which is much easier to do when, as MLK advocated, we love all people.
  - zerb 9y ago
    Oh, that's another great point. There are different kinds of racism. There's a great video from the 80s called "The Color of Fear" which has a bunch of randomly-chosen people of various ethnicities put into a room, who slowly start to talk about more and more uncomfortable subjects. There's fear. There's lack of empathy for problems which don't affect you personally. There's even outright hate. These are different problems with different solutions.
- oceanghost 9y ago
  This is the problem with the big tent. My primary concern in the 2016 election was media propaganda. I voted for Trump in California, where it would never, ever, matter, as a protest vote. That makes me a deplorable racist? :)
- spoovy 9y ago
  I am very doubtful that 'lower-class' people are more likely to hold racist views. In my experience in the UK it's the opposite. Working class people here are constantly used as a scapegoat by the middle classes when it suits their pockets. Brexit for example had nothing to do with race and everything to do with massive immigration distorting the housing market. The average house price in London is now around $750,000 USD, which is of course an enormous problem for the poor, but enormously profitable to property-owning middle classes. But the middle-class mainstream media paint a picture of a mob of racist working classes being the root cause. Bully them into line with the worst kind of insults, and keep those house prices rising.
IntronExon 9y ago
It’s worth noting that like Jesus, MLK was murdered by said enemies. Maybe they were still right to love them, but maybe Malcom X was right.

CPLX 9y ago

What were the actual racist and homophobic statements? Reading this article the actual offending things are absent and not linked to.

meri_dian 9y ago
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ny-times-quinn-norton-neonazis_us_5a837db8e4b0cf06751f8fbe https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ny-times-quinn-norton-n...
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  This seems to me that she was mostly using words which are offensive, but frequently used outside of their intended meaning. Definitely language I wouldn't use myself. But for example, "that's gay" has been relatively often used as an insult/derogatory, inadvertently by people not intending to be homophobic. I'd definitely call out it's use today, but I'm not sure I'd hunt someone down and try to ruin their career over them using language they shouldn't have five years ago.
  - fred_is_fred 9y ago
    Edit: removed since apparaently it was a RT
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      Wasn't that was a retweet (the good ole-fashioned retweet, starting with "RT")? It looks like it was a retweet from John Barlow, the founder of the EFF. And it was definitely sarcastic, in nature. If you remove the loaded language, it's a bit easier to parse, I think: "If a black man was meant to talk to our schoolchildren, God would've made one President. Oh, wait, he did." Ergo, a black man was, indeed, meant to talk to our schoolchildren.
      - meri_dian 9y ago
        That's exactly how I interpreted it as well. It is unwise to use slurs regardless of intent, because people are sensitive to them and rightly so. But her intent in using them was not to hurt or belittle.

badwebsite 9y ago

If any of you didn't know about Quinn Norton, she also sold out Aaron Swartz and contributed to his suicide. She is a terrible person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_Norton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_Norton

spoovy 9y ago

I genuinely fear where this new puritanism is heading.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

The only thing left for these comments is something along the lines of "Now I know people on HN are smarter than average..."

stevemk14ebr 9y ago

I legitimately do not understand why people expose themselves on social media like this! I was 12 or so when i got my first social media, and even back THEN i knew that posting the wrong thing would get be in trouble with my friends, parents, or even school. It blows my mind that full grown adults use such devisive language in a public setting. You have to KNOW that what you are doing is dumb and risky. Not to mention she works in writing, which is a job that's at least partially about YOUR PUBLIC IMAGE, i mean really this is first grade "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say it at all...[ESPECIALLY IF YOUR LIVELYHOOD DEPEND ON YOUR IMAGE]" Reading the comment by @meri_dian I initially thought "ok she had a non-pc racist friend and supported them. Then by association she was deemed to risky for NYTimes". That by itself is a not "character damning" to her, but you can see how a company would want to distance themselves. Then i read her actual tweets, where she actually called people slurs. That is not defend-able, and I think she deserves it.

dirtyhand 9y ago

The smart thing to do here is build a Twitter background check app and sell a subscription to the NYTimes.

olympus 9y ago
This is a pretty good idea. Something that scans tweets and other publicly accessible social media for a list of known words and then compiles it into a report for potential employers would go gangbusters in the HR/hiring areas. It obviously couldn't get everything, but would be a big help for employers.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Sounds wonderful. /s An automated tool that disqualifies people from employment for something ill-advised they once wrote in college based on a naive algorithm. ADDED: Of course, if you want to be an authentic disruptive Silicon Valley startup you'd offer both this service and a service for end users to expunge any online content that would be flagged by their employer service. Should be good for some fawning tech press writeups.
  - olympus 9y ago
    I'm sure people that don't get a job because of something they said in the past wouldn't like it. I don't really like the idea of not hiring someone based on behavior far in the past (recent public behavior on social media is fair game in my mind). However, in terms of a startup product that companies would pay for, I stand by my claim that it's a great idea. After all, HN is ran by yCombinator and startups are kind if its thing.

olympus 9y ago

What a load of b.s. Since she engages with communities known for hateful actions she must also be a hateful person and agree with all their thoughts? If you have to dig all the way back to 2013 to find someone using the word "fag" then that's not too bad. Nobody's perfect. Do we not allow for people's attitudes to change over time, or is using the word "fag" once enough to brand you a homophobe for life? Most gay men have used the word before. Or maybe, just maybe, we need to examine the context in which a word is used. There's an old story about a dude named Jesus that hung out with the deplorables of his time, and it got him killed. Whether or not you believe it actually happened it's got a good moral, and that is: The people in power don't like the people who actually engage with the enemy, you might find that they are people too, or you might actually persuade them to fix their evil ways and then you can't hate them any more. They would rather sit in their ivory towers and do nothing. When someone actually talks with people to try and understand their mindset it makes those ivory tower dwellers look bad for not actually doing anything.

gadders 9y ago

Can we just stop these twitter outrage storms now? I don't care any more if the "victim" of the storm is left-wing, right-wing, SJW or fascist. Can't we have a truce on this stuff? It's pointless and achieves nothing but to help a few outrage-merchants get off.

iron0012 9y ago

Ah, I knew I could count on Hacker News to defend the Nazi lover. Repulsive.

sctb 9y ago
Since you won't seem to post according to the guidelines like we've already asked, we've banned this account.
- iron0012 9y ago
  Apologies for not providing an HN-approved defense of Nazism couched in paragraphs of bloviation.

tasty_freeze 9y ago

Post some inflammatory things on your twitter account and it can come back to bite you. But it is funny that it disqualifies her from writing opinion pieces for a newspaper, while other people tweet far more outrageous things nearly daily and can be President. I'm not sure why some people get teflon and others don't.

fhood 9y ago
> I'm not sure why some people get teflon and others don't. In the unlikely case that that was not rhetorical, how much overlap do you think there is between the nytimes readership and Trump's base?
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  > how much overlap do you think there is between the nytimes readership and Trump's base? More than you'd think, apparently, given their editorial stance that leans heavily towards normalising his supporters and actions.
Grue3 9y ago
Hint: she just so happened to be a woman. Interesting how that happens every time one of these Internet mobs heats up. See also Justine Sacco, and many others.

harrumph 9y ago

This is about treating someone who advocates genocide as if they were merely holding an opinion rather than promoting a prescription for murderous mass action. I don't think this is about someone befriending someone else who merely has a different, detestable point of view. This is palpably worse. This is about befriending someone who advocates for withholding the right to live -- in a sense, for taking away the right of millions to have any point of view. I think that's a big difference. I'm saddened to learn that she was Aaron Swartz's romantic interest. And I'm saddened that no comments here seem to have noticed that this is simply not about a mere disagreement.

jancsika 9y ago

> Some of my friend are terrible people, & also my friends. That's a really big deal. And for most people, that situation is a) unfortunate, b) unwelcome, and c) confusing in the extreme. People talk a lot with close friends about such a situation just to get a handle on it, to remain honest about the affection they feel while refraining from apologizing for the terrible person's behavior. It's usually painful to come to terms with it. Especially if the terrible person still acts unapologetically to hurt other people. No one I know tweets casually about something like that, much less humble brags about the terrible person friends they've collected.