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Media sure seems to spend a lot of time navel gazing lately. Any random group of five people or random bunch of twitter users criticizing an “intellectual” or p

by erentz 6y ago

Media sure seems to spend a lot of time navel gazing lately. Any random group of five people or random bunch of twitter users criticizing an “intellectual” or pointing out the hypocrisy of an opinion columnist now seems to rise to the most important moral issue of our time. In the past it was great because nobody really had a means to criticize or point out problems with “the paper of record” or our “intellectuals”. So we didn’t have to hear this constantly. Now they don’t know what to do with themselves that people do and that criticism is everywhere.

rbecker 6y ago
By 'criticizing' you of course mean trying to get them fired, and claiming their presence makes them feel 'unsafe'? Lets not pretend 'cancel culture' refers to pointing out flaws in arguments.
- erentz 6y ago
  Did you read the letter? If not go read it. They’re essentially making a complaint to the manager of their society. Their criticisms are there and public. They’re within their right to do so. The society considered and rejected the merits of the complaint or decided it didn’t rise to the level of warranting removing Pinker’s honorary title. The letter may have been entirely fabricated since its not even verified. Which even leaves open the possibility this is a very small group of “cranks” who wrote it and forged people’s names which then gets turned into “OMG CANCEL CULTURE” level story. What are the “get them fired” and “makes them feel unsafe” ones? Is that where Bari Weiss tried to get the professors fired and suggest she was harassed at work because she misrepresented things that went on inside NYT and a whole bunch of other NYTers were like “uh, no that didn’t happen”, then she made a big splash this week about the end of “centrism” leading to the past few days of endless media navel gazing about cancel culture? There are real cases of people trying to get others fired and plenty of real cases of reporters being “cancelled” for having contrary opinions (such as on Israel-Palestine) over the decades. But strangely those aren't the cases the media are talking about.

by erentz 6y ago

rbecker 6y ago

By 'criticizing' you of course mean trying to get them fired, and claiming their presence makes them feel 'unsafe'? Lets not pretend 'cancel culture' refers to pointing out flaws in arguments.

erentz 6y ago
Did you read the letter? If not go read it. They’re essentially making a complaint to the manager of their society. Their criticisms are there and public. They’re within their right to do so. The society considered and rejected the merits of the complaint or decided it didn’t rise to the level of warranting removing Pinker’s honorary title. The letter may have been entirely fabricated since its not even verified. Which even leaves open the possibility this is a very small group of “cranks” who wrote it and forged people’s names which then gets turned into “OMG CANCEL CULTURE” level story. What are the “get them fired” and “makes them feel unsafe” ones? Is that where Bari Weiss tried to get the professors fired and suggest she was harassed at work because she misrepresented things that went on inside NYT and a whole bunch of other NYTers were like “uh, no that didn’t happen”, then she made a big splash this week about the end of “centrism” leading to the past few days of endless media navel gazing about cancel culture? There are real cases of people trying to get others fired and plenty of real cases of reporters being “cancelled” for having contrary opinions (such as on Israel-Palestine) over the decades. But strangely those aren't the cases the media are talking about.