To reuse and expand upon a comment of mine from elsewhere: I don't really care whether celebrities feel persecuted or not. (I believe there's too much cult of

To reuse and expand upon a comment of mine from elsewhere: I don't really care whether celebrities feel persecuted or not. (I believe there's too much cult of celebrity already, so I do not feel any more sympathy for them than I do for everyone else.) I'm not really sure why a few different people thought my comment was relevant specifically to that NY Times IDW article. The danger I was referring to is the danger to _anyone_ and the reason behind an academic journal being created to allow regular academics to publish under pseudonyms. This is a far more serious issue than celebrities feeling unloved and blaming a conspiracy. For instance I've personally seen multiple people ostracized from their predominantly-left-leaning friend groups for saying something mildly positive about something Trump has done in office, or for arguing that not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist. I'm not sure how rational political discussion can be held when saying such innocuous things as I've mentioned can result in instant ostracization. Fortunately I noticed this happening before I too said something that would end the same way for me. (I already learned not to discuss politics with my very right-leaning dad, so adding "most of my friends" to the do-not-discuss-politics-with-them list was fairly easy.) Although I'm in a very liberal area so I see this primarily happening in fervently left-leaning circles, I understand that similar happens in fervently right-leaning circles as well. I can only imagine how much one has to censor themselves when publishing something that shouldn't be controversial at all in an academic journal! This is seriously not good.