6 ms·

Hilarious that the top comment exemplifies the problem. It seems few today are still able to engage with ideas directly, always trying to filter them through so

by gfodor 6y ago

Hilarious that the top comment exemplifies the problem. It seems few today are still able to engage with ideas directly, always trying to filter them through some, any, lens to discredit the ones they don’t like. Sometimes it’s attacking the speaker, sometimes their associations, sometimes the tweets they have “liked.” If all else fails, seek out language in the text itself for unfalsifiable “dog whistles” that allow the affixing of a label. Whatever allows one to shield their eyes, ignore the argument made, and secure the moral high ground.

dimgl 6y ago
It's truly telling that the most upvoted comment is one working to discredit the writer, rather than taking what's being said at face value.
- Redoubts 6y ago
  > rather than taking what's being said at face value Why should I be this credulous?
  - aaronbrethorst 6y ago
    It is incumbent upon all of us to be as credulous about Bari Weiss's stated rationale as James Bennett always was about guest op-eds.
  - dimgl 6y ago
    No one is asking you to be naive and all-accepting. Simply to not be dismissive.
- duxup 6y ago
  >rather than taking what's being said at face value Should we? I don't always do that, hard to imagine doing so all the time, you'd experience constant whiplash of opinions.
  - dimgl 6y ago
    And I'm not advocating for that, especially given the amount of garbage on the Internet. But the pendulum has swung too far in one direction and many people are scared to voice their opinions for fear of being rejected or worse, outcast from their livelihood and their way of life. What the writer is saying is that she no longer feels that The Times is unbiased. I don't see how that's a hard thing to take at face value.
    - duxup 6y ago
      > I don't see how that's a hard thing to take at face value. How about I say the Times is unbiased. Ok now what do we do? Do we take it at face value? I might be misunderstanding what you mean, but it seems like you are in fact advocating ... 'that'.
  - Bjartr 6y ago
    > you'd experience constant whiplash of opinions I don't understand this phrase. I certainly wouldn't describe what I experience when I take the time to consider things at face value as causing anything I'd describe as whiplash. Just because I attempt to evaluate what I read from another's perspective doesn't mean I give up my own in the meantime.
- shkkmo 6y ago
  I don't see anything "discrediting" the that comment. I think it is very salient to point out that it us much easier to call out intolerance in other people than to face our own intolerance. Weiss's own intolerance doesn't negate the intolerance she faced, instead it reminds us to remember to strive for tolerance within ourselves as well as pushing for it from other people.
vangelis 6y ago
Eh, nobody likes a hypocrite.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Barrin92 6y ago
In this particular case the author argues from her particular experience in her workplace without providing any evidence, so I think it's pretty relevant to take such things into account because she might be exaggerating. I'm not exactly inclined to take someone's purely personal criticisms at face value if they have engaged in the same behaviour. For all we know she might be leaving on bad terms and is taking it out on her coworkers who may have a different story to tell.
- ideals 6y ago
  Right, the parents complaint is essentially Spiderman_pointing_at_Spiderman.jpg If the original complaint is a "dog whistle" then people will also respond the same way. Otherwise know as debating
- DavidSJ 6y ago
  I agree, as someone who is concerned about "cancel culture" broadly, and found Weiss's resignation later interesting and noteworthy, that her credibility as a witness is a relevant consideration in this situation, since she is asking us to believe her accounts of the internal politics at the New York Times. She isn't just making an argument based on publicly available facts. I would appreciate a better source for the claim that Weiss tried to get a professor at Columbia fired than that article by Glenn Greenwald. I dug through it (admittedly a bit quickly, so maybe I missed something), and could only find evidence that she was harshly critical of a Columbia professor, but not that she attempted to get him fired. It's also noteworthy that some or all of her criticism of that professor concerned not his expressed opinions, but the way he (allegedly) berated Israeli students in his classroom. Ironically, I haven't generally found Greenwald himself to be the most reliable narrator, but that discussion would take us far afield.
  - solvorn 6y ago
    Greenwald smears anyone who says anything not mean about Israel.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kup0 6y ago
Look, I believe people can change, but how they've behaved previously, especially as recently as in the case (2 years ago) is relevant to now. Especially when the very arguments they are making- they were recently, actively working against
minikites 6y ago
You're right, we shouldn't account for people's reputation when considering their opinion. On an unrelated note, let's get the opinion of Andrew Wakefield on a COVID vaccine.
horsemessiah 6y ago
This comment is not explemifying the problem, as you put it. It's pointing out the hypocrisy of this author for condemning something she engages in herself, without taking any blame.
alecb 6y ago
So you're digestion of her letter should not be informed in anyway by the fact that she routinely employed the tactics that she now claims she's a victim of? She's spent her career vilifying and seeking out personal retribution for people who she's disagreed with, I don't know how this doesn't factor into one's purview.
- ashconnor 6y ago
  I think readers here think that you are engaging in an "Ad hominem" attack on Weiss but since she herself is the subject of discussion I don't see why you wouldn't include her historical contradictory actions in a response.
  - clawedjird 6y ago
    I certainly don’t think that. What “ideas” that Bari Weiss presents in this essay does your conversational counterpoint here fail to engage? And why is the context of her hypocrisy not relevant?
  - ritchiea 6y ago
    Aren’t there times when an ad hominem attack is fitting? If I have a documented history of a certain type of bad behavior and turn around to say I’m a victim of exactly that same sort of behavior. If I write a screed about my victimhood it does lie in the background that my own behavior likely seeded the negativity I received in return. In that sense this goes beyond “ad hominem attack”. The accusation is more accurately that Bari Weiss is a bad faith actor in a system of mutual journalistic integrity, accusing her current colleagues of being bad faith actors. I don’t know if her colleagues are bad faith actors are not but Weiss does seem to be a case of “the pot calling the kettle black” or whataboutism which should be taken seriously rather than dismissed as ad hominem.
    - ashconnor 6y ago
      > Aren’t there times when an ad hominem attack is fitting? Yes! That's why I'm saying it's relevant.
majormajor 6y ago
The people who have spent decades trying to keep the airwaves "clean," "family friendly," "anti-communist," etc, are suddenly shocked that they don't get to set the rules anymore, and that they're on the wrong side of some of them. Context is everything for this discussion, because if you truly don't want there to be such censorship, you have to be aware of the motivations of the people pushing for change at the top now. Otherwise you just get them running the show again, and you've just rolled back the clock a few decades to a world with a more violent state and a more cheerleading media.
- hsitz 6y ago
  That's an interesting thought that I don't think I've encountered before; I'll think about that.
- jimbokun 6y ago
  Bullshit. Censorship by the right, and censorship by the left are not the only two exclusive options. Free exchange of ideas in a constructive and respectful fashion should be the ideal.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    They aren't the only two options, but they're our actual history. So be aware of that.
- gfodor 6y ago
  Your argument that “context is everything” is exactly my point. It’s not. Context is something. If context was everything, then there is no point in writing anything, because words cannot be wielded to create new meaning. Their meaning will be imbued by their collectively interpreted context.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > The people who have spent decades trying to keep the airwaves "clean," "family friendly," "anti-communist," etc, are suddenly shocked that they don't get to set the rules anymore, and that they're on the wrong side of some of them. Or, to frame it another way, the people who spent decades saying "We should be allowed to broadcast whatever we want, because we support equality and liberty", and "If you don't like what we broadcast then you can just avoid it", are now suddenly finding themselves drunk on the power that they have gained, and are abusing it in much the same way as the people they were complaining about before.
s17n 6y ago
Those who disagree with Bari Weiss have spent plenty of time and energy engaging with her ideas directly. At this point, it's pretty clear that she's a troll.
chasing 6y ago
> It seems few today are still able to engage with ideas directly... Who has the TIME? I mean, you have to filter what you choose to think about and engage on. The world doesn't need to pause and refute every stupid opinion someone trots out.
srpablo 6y ago
If I say "only weak people would choose to smoke; and I have never been weak" you don't think pointing out that I was once a smoker is relevant? Who's really making the contortions here?
- gfodor 6y ago
  Nobody is ignoring the smoking history of people who make claims about quitting smoking. But a lot of people are rejecting such claims on their surface if they come from someone who smoked, or knows a smoker, or was once rumored to have sat in the smoking section of a restaurant 20 years ago. (As if that should be tolerable by anyone other than someone who, in their heart of hearts, is a smoker even if they’ve never actually been seen with a lit cigarette before.)

by gfodor 6y ago

dimgl 6y ago

It's truly telling that the most upvoted comment is one working to discredit the writer, rather than taking what's being said at face value.

Redoubts 6y ago
> rather than taking what's being said at face value Why should I be this credulous?
- aaronbrethorst 6y ago
  It is incumbent upon all of us to be as credulous about Bari Weiss's stated rationale as James Bennett always was about guest op-eds.
- dimgl 6y ago
  No one is asking you to be naive and all-accepting. Simply to not be dismissive.
duxup 6y ago
>rather than taking what's being said at face value Should we? I don't always do that, hard to imagine doing so all the time, you'd experience constant whiplash of opinions.
- dimgl 6y ago
  And I'm not advocating for that, especially given the amount of garbage on the Internet. But the pendulum has swung too far in one direction and many people are scared to voice their opinions for fear of being rejected or worse, outcast from their livelihood and their way of life. What the writer is saying is that she no longer feels that The Times is unbiased. I don't see how that's a hard thing to take at face value.
  - duxup 6y ago
    > I don't see how that's a hard thing to take at face value. How about I say the Times is unbiased. Ok now what do we do? Do we take it at face value? I might be misunderstanding what you mean, but it seems like you are in fact advocating ... 'that'.
- Bjartr 6y ago
  > you'd experience constant whiplash of opinions I don't understand this phrase. I certainly wouldn't describe what I experience when I take the time to consider things at face value as causing anything I'd describe as whiplash. Just because I attempt to evaluate what I read from another's perspective doesn't mean I give up my own in the meantime.
shkkmo 6y ago
I don't see anything "discrediting" the that comment. I think it is very salient to point out that it us much easier to call out intolerance in other people than to face our own intolerance. Weiss's own intolerance doesn't negate the intolerance she faced, instead it reminds us to remember to strive for tolerance within ourselves as well as pushing for it from other people.

vangelis 6y ago

Eh, nobody likes a hypocrite.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Barrin92 6y ago

In this particular case the author argues from her particular experience in her workplace without providing any evidence, so I think it's pretty relevant to take such things into account because she might be exaggerating. I'm not exactly inclined to take someone's purely personal criticisms at face value if they have engaged in the same behaviour. For all we know she might be leaving on bad terms and is taking it out on her coworkers who may have a different story to tell.

ideals 6y ago
Right, the parents complaint is essentially Spiderman_pointing_at_Spiderman.jpg If the original complaint is a "dog whistle" then people will also respond the same way. Otherwise know as debating
DavidSJ 6y ago
I agree, as someone who is concerned about "cancel culture" broadly, and found Weiss's resignation later interesting and noteworthy, that her credibility as a witness is a relevant consideration in this situation, since she is asking us to believe her accounts of the internal politics at the New York Times. She isn't just making an argument based on publicly available facts. I would appreciate a better source for the claim that Weiss tried to get a professor at Columbia fired than that article by Glenn Greenwald. I dug through it (admittedly a bit quickly, so maybe I missed something), and could only find evidence that she was harshly critical of a Columbia professor, but not that she attempted to get him fired. It's also noteworthy that some or all of her criticism of that professor concerned not his expressed opinions, but the way he (allegedly) berated Israeli students in his classroom. Ironically, I haven't generally found Greenwald himself to be the most reliable narrator, but that discussion would take us far afield.
- solvorn 6y ago
  Greenwald smears anyone who says anything not mean about Israel.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

kup0 6y ago

Look, I believe people can change, but how they've behaved previously, especially as recently as in the case (2 years ago) is relevant to now. Especially when the very arguments they are making- they were recently, actively working against

minikites 6y ago

You're right, we shouldn't account for people's reputation when considering their opinion. On an unrelated note, let's get the opinion of Andrew Wakefield on a COVID vaccine.

horsemessiah 6y ago

This comment is not explemifying the problem, as you put it. It's pointing out the hypocrisy of this author for condemning something she engages in herself, without taking any blame.

alecb 6y ago

So you're digestion of her letter should not be informed in anyway by the fact that she routinely employed the tactics that she now claims she's a victim of? She's spent her career vilifying and seeking out personal retribution for people who she's disagreed with, I don't know how this doesn't factor into one's purview.

ashconnor 6y ago
I think readers here think that you are engaging in an "Ad hominem" attack on Weiss but since she herself is the subject of discussion I don't see why you wouldn't include her historical contradictory actions in a response.
- clawedjird 6y ago
  I certainly don’t think that. What “ideas” that Bari Weiss presents in this essay does your conversational counterpoint here fail to engage? And why is the context of her hypocrisy not relevant?
- ritchiea 6y ago
  Aren’t there times when an ad hominem attack is fitting? If I have a documented history of a certain type of bad behavior and turn around to say I’m a victim of exactly that same sort of behavior. If I write a screed about my victimhood it does lie in the background that my own behavior likely seeded the negativity I received in return. In that sense this goes beyond “ad hominem attack”. The accusation is more accurately that Bari Weiss is a bad faith actor in a system of mutual journalistic integrity, accusing her current colleagues of being bad faith actors. I don’t know if her colleagues are bad faith actors are not but Weiss does seem to be a case of “the pot calling the kettle black” or whataboutism which should be taken seriously rather than dismissed as ad hominem.
  - ashconnor 6y ago
    > Aren’t there times when an ad hominem attack is fitting? Yes! That's why I'm saying it's relevant.

majormajor 6y ago

The people who have spent decades trying to keep the airwaves "clean," "family friendly," "anti-communist," etc, are suddenly shocked that they don't get to set the rules anymore, and that they're on the wrong side of some of them. Context is everything for this discussion, because if you truly don't want there to be such censorship, you have to be aware of the motivations of the people pushing for change at the top now. Otherwise you just get them running the show again, and you've just rolled back the clock a few decades to a world with a more violent state and a more cheerleading media.

hsitz 6y ago
That's an interesting thought that I don't think I've encountered before; I'll think about that.
jimbokun 6y ago
Bullshit. Censorship by the right, and censorship by the left are not the only two exclusive options. Free exchange of ideas in a constructive and respectful fashion should be the ideal.
- majormajor 6y ago
  They aren't the only two options, but they're our actual history. So be aware of that.
gfodor 6y ago
Your argument that “context is everything” is exactly my point. It’s not. Context is something. If context was everything, then there is no point in writing anything, because words cannot be wielded to create new meaning. Their meaning will be imbued by their collectively interpreted context.
dane-pgp 6y ago
> The people who have spent decades trying to keep the airwaves "clean," "family friendly," "anti-communist," etc, are suddenly shocked that they don't get to set the rules anymore, and that they're on the wrong side of some of them. Or, to frame it another way, the people who spent decades saying "We should be allowed to broadcast whatever we want, because we support equality and liberty", and "If you don't like what we broadcast then you can just avoid it", are now suddenly finding themselves drunk on the power that they have gained, and are abusing it in much the same way as the people they were complaining about before.

s17n 6y ago

Those who disagree with Bari Weiss have spent plenty of time and energy engaging with her ideas directly. At this point, it's pretty clear that she's a troll.

chasing 6y ago

> It seems few today are still able to engage with ideas directly... Who has the TIME? I mean, you have to filter what you choose to think about and engage on. The world doesn't need to pause and refute every stupid opinion someone trots out.

srpablo 6y ago

If I say "only weak people would choose to smoke; and I have never been weak" you don't think pointing out that I was once a smoker is relevant? Who's really making the contortions here?

gfodor 6y ago
Nobody is ignoring the smoking history of people who make claims about quitting smoking. But a lot of people are rejecting such claims on their surface if they come from someone who smoked, or knows a smoker, or was once rumored to have sat in the smoking section of a restaurant 20 years ago. (As if that should be tolerable by anyone other than someone who, in their heart of hearts, is a smoker even if they’ve never actually been seen with a lit cigarette before.)