8 ms·

I do not know who this guy is. I don't read the NYT. I have a hard time reading long texts. I get distracted or bored real quick and switch to a different tab

• LanceH 6y ago
  Apologies are frequently taken as admission and only fan the flames.
  • hojjat12000 6y ago
    I meant in my personal life. I make a joke, she gets offended. I can spend the next hour explaining the joke and how it wasn't supposed to be offensive. Or I just apologize. Of course, I'm a coward.
    • nickff 6y ago
      I don't think that makes you a coward, it just means that you value other things over being 'right'. Some people are obsessed with always 'winning', and don't pay attention to how their fighting can hurt people and relationships. I obviously don't know you or the specifics of your disagreements, but I think you should be forgiving of yourself.
    • autoditype 6y ago
      > Or I just apologize. Of course, I'm a coward. You can apologize AND simultaneously it can be true that such other person is also a jerk who purposefully gets offended by stupid things and takes everyone out of context for their own benefit who leads a march to cancel you.
    • mseepgood 6y ago
      Maybe your jokes aren't that good.
    • tjalfi 6y ago
      There's nothing cowardly about apologizing when you hurt someone's feelings. If your jokes are frequently poorly received by her then I would consider telling them to other people. Some jokes can be told to anyone but many have a limited audience.
    • j4yav 6y ago
      Wow, there's something incredibly heartbreaking about summing things up that way.
  • dominotw 6y ago
    Its game over once you apologize. Never seen anyone recover from an apology. Never apologize to anyone who is unwilling to forgive you.
    • mc32 6y ago
      It seems analogous to not asking a dog to do a trick you know it can’t perform.
    • unethical_ban 6y ago
      This sounds like advice from the GOP playbook. "Can't be shamed if you have none". A sincere apology implies that one truly feels bad about their behavior in some way. If someone truly feels bad about something that has public visibility, they should apologize for that for their own benefit, regardless if the other party accepts it.
      • dominotw 6y ago
        > they should apologize for that for their own benefit Whats the benefit though?
        • unethical_ban 6y ago
          Their image in the eyes of decent people who think like them, who also realize they made a mistake. I'm talking in the abstract, not about this man.
          • dominotw 6y ago
            Apologize publicly where 'decent people' can see and adjust their 'image' of you accordingly. I missed the public apology part, i think it was implied in your statment.
      • thomasz 6y ago
        A lot of these people, including McNeil, have written submissive apologies. https://twitter.com/marcatracy/status/1357806202277797889/photo/1 https://twitter.com/marcatracy/status/1357806202277797889/ph...
• Judgmentality 6y ago
  > But these 4 articles were so interesting and horrifying to read I read them all in one setting. Wow, I was barely able to get through the first part and honestly the whole time I was thinking "I can't believe this guy has been a professional writer for decades. He desperately needs help from an editor." I find the content interesting, but the writing seems to wander unnecessarily and I wish he'd focus more on getting to the point than needlessly interject his, at least to me, obnoxious attempts to defend his character rather than let the audience decide for themselves. Yes, I realize the entire point of this article is to defend himself, but I'd rather read the meat of the story than variations of "I don't think I'm a bad guy." To each his own.
  • ceres 6y ago
    Not commenting on this guy in particular but sometimes when people use long-winded stories to explain themselves, it's usually to hide something. Like hiding the truth in between embellishments. I don't know anything about this guy though so he maybe innocent of whatever thing he did? I skimmed over the article but still don't know what happened.
    • BitwiseFool 6y ago
      I also suspect that being an older journalist, he's accustomed to writing long-form content. There's a level of fluff and narrative crafting that is not at all appreciated in today's information saturated landscape.
    • roenxi 6y ago
      "I don't trust his writing style" is a fallacy of mammoth proportions. Being a writer, he probably comes from a culture where people write lots of words and has many friends who respect people who write verbosely. Someone's level of articulateness provides no information whatsoever of how truthful their writing is. There are countless extremely articulate lies told by people with mastery over their medium.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• lefstathiou 6y ago
  Imagine next: the trolls start petitioning Medium to remove his articles and terminate his account for violating their policies and or Amazon for hosting Medium which hosts content published by "racists". Soon the only thing left for this life-long journalist will be mopping floors. This may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better eventually.
  • rob74 6y ago
    If you're referring to that other guy whose social media accounts were terminated, it was because he incited his followers to storm an important government building, which left five people dead. So it's quite a stretch to suggest that may happen to anyone...
  • afavour 6y ago
    Is anyone actually calling for that, though? Because if not we're just conjuring up things to worry about.
• tshaddox 6y ago
  It's pretty remarkable. Every time the writer says something like "let me back up and explain more" I understand less and less who the writer is and what happened to them (apparently they said or were accused of saying certain things in multiple unrelated situations?).
  • dawg- 6y ago
    This article comes across as very "inside baseball" i.e. the crowd who are intimately familiar with the ongoing melodrama in journalism, the history of the NY Times, etc. See his reference to his "until now anonymous comments in an internal Times report", for example
  • blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Aye, same. The gist is that he doesn't vibe with... someone?... and finds that his colleagues have wildly different expectations about... something?
  • lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    It was due to this: A student asked me: “Do you think one of my classmates should have been suspended for using the N-word in a video from two years ago?” I said: “Well, wait — what exactly happened on this video? Did she actually call someone “nigger”? Or was she just using it in passing, like quoting the title of a book?” Because when he asked for context around how the person said “nigger”, he didn’t self-censor when making reference to the word. That’s it. That’s how bad this juvenile cancel culture mob has become. They let some 15 year old activist wannabe complain to the paper and get him fired.
    • cryptoquick 6y ago
      It not only ended the man's career, it tarnished his legacy. He worked 50 years, and this is what he'll be remembered for. It's really screwed up. The Times really mishandled this one. I hope those involved one day come to regret what they've done. Sometimes... Regret is the best form of karma we can get.
  • eli 6y ago
• Udik 6y ago
  > as soon as you start explaining yourself, you have lost the argument (I learned this when I tried to explain myself to my partner) Yes. When it's about minor things, you don't care to be right when the relationship with your partner is at stake. But the angry mobs fuelled by hypocrisy and bad journalism are not your partner. They are the problem. They need to be told loud and clear that they're not just dead wrong, they're also dangerous and bigoted.
• DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  > I've learnt that no matter if I'm right or wrong, I should just apologize. It's faster and less painful. I'm genuinely curious if this is a good strategy, relationship-wise. I would expect that insincere / dishonest communication would put a limit on intimacy, but maybe that's preferable to frequent arguments?
  • marshmallow_12 6y ago
    if you genuinely haven't done something wrong, chances are she's upset about something else you did.
  • munchbunny 6y ago
    > I'm genuinely curious if this is a good strategy, relationship-wise. Not in the naive "always apologize" sense. That has the risk of creating a dynamic where the apology can't be trusted to be sincere and problems don't actually get addressed. Sure, if you actually did something wrong, by all means apologize. But if it's somewhat of a gray matter, a healthier dynamic would be to establish a baseline, something that is only built over the long term, that whatever happened it wasn't either person's intention to create conflict or upset the other person. That might mean apologizing for triggering something. With a bit of space, ideally both people could talk about what they were thinking or perceiving, understand why the other person behaved the way they did, and come up with ideas for how to prevent the same problem from happening next time. Obviously that only works if both people are well-intended, able to deescalate conflicts, and willing to put in the work. No amount of this would fix fundamental differences or relationship red flags.
  • NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    Its the nature of struggle sessions. No matter what, unless you admit to doing harm, no matter if you did, no one will let you rest until you admit it. I'd like to think the only winning move is to not play, but I dont think modern social media allows that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
    • lawnchair_larry 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• will4274 6y ago
  > I learned this when I tried to explain myself to my partner. I've learnt that no matter if I'm right or wrong, I should just apologize. It's faster and less painful. Fwiw, I've always found such statements insanely baffling - in an amused befuddled sort of way. Why would anybody want to spend their life with somebody to whom they couldn't explain themselves and or find common ground?
  • etchalon 6y ago
    Because life shouldn't be spent afraid to apologize, or in constant debate about whether an apology is "required." If you hurt someone, whether intentional or not, apologizing is the least you can do. If you don't believe an apology is warranted, apologize, and sort though where the disconnect is later.
    • anoncake 6y ago
      No. By apologizing, you admit what you did was wrong/a mistake. If you don't actually think your apology is warranted, it's nothing but a lie.
      • etchalon 6y ago
        I’m sorry, that’s nonsense. First, you can injure someone, physically or emotionally, without making a mistake or being wrong. So, it’s possible to feel guilt over an injury even if ultimately, you did the “right thing.” The point of an apology isn’t solely to say “I was wrong”. They can be an acknowledgment of the injury you caused. If your actions cause an injury, and you feel no need to apologize, because you “didn’t do anything wrong”, you’re just an asshole.
        • anoncake 6y ago
          But you don't have to feel guilty over every "injury". Sometimes the "injured" party just needs to stop being offended, apologizing to them would just encourage them. Consider homophobes and transphobes: Apparently the public existence of LGBT people somehow hurts them. Should we apologize to them? Hell no, that would only validate them. Here we have a similar, if weaker situation. People just need to stop confusing using and mentioning the word "negro". Or was it "nigger"? I really don't know.
• underwater 6y ago
  There are a few situations I am extremely wary of — how I'm perceived when I'm interacting with children, being accused of inappropriate behaviour in the workplace, or being accused of being racist or otherwise bigotted. These moments help me empathise with people who live their entire lives with that fear. On the whole I have it good. I can walk down the street without people assuming I'm looking for cars to break into. Or fly on a plane without people wondering if I am going to blow it up. But at the same time I get the feeling that some people see those behaviours as punishment for my percieved privilege, and might even enjoy seeing me squirm. Which doesn't sit right with me. I think the answer to bigotry is to be aware of it, counter it, and fix it so we can lift everyone up. Rather than wield it as a weapon to cut down those you perceive as being unfairly advantaged by history.
  • orthecreedence 6y ago
    The catch for me is that so much of what people consider privilege is effectively just skin color or other outward attributes. Yes, those are attributes that are discriminated on so we should be hyper aware of those attributes, but those aren't the only attributes that constitute privilege. You absolutely cannot make the determination of someone's privilege just by skin color or hair or whatever else. It's impossible. You can make a generalized, probabilistic guess, but you don't know if a white person grew up in a leaky trailer with abusive parents, or if a black person grew up in an upper middle class family. You don't know if someone sleeps in their car, or if the bank won't give them a loan, or if they're chronically depressed or in pain. There are so many vectors to privilege beyond race. There's so much more to a person's position in society, whether cultural or economic, than can be determined just by looking at them. And it seems to me that so much of "punishment" you speak about is directed towards people specifically based on outward attributes. The old phrase "never judge a book by its cover" really does apply here.