The problem with joining Bari Weiss (e.g.) in a defense of "free speech" is Bari Weiss uses this as a cudgel to quell criticism of dubious views and joining her stands a high probability of being taken the wrong way and undermining cultural support of free speech. You want to distance yourself from the people whose defense of first amendment protections or liberal tolerance of opposing views isn't a means to say say that the public space shouldn't be as critical of their personal prejudices and sketchy habits. Freedom of speech isn't freedom from criticism or a right to limitless platforms, and it's a good idea to not make people think otherwise.
Seems like better company than currently present to me.
For people of a certain age, it might seem odd that Weiss should be a favorite punching bag for lefties with itchy Twitter fingers. If you read her work, she’s a liberal humanist whose guiding principle is free expression in art, love, and discourse, something the left spent decades fighting to achieve. Some of Weiss’s articles have been harshly but fairly criticized, with basic civility, by prominent journalists, such as Rebecca Traister and Glenn Greenwald. But Twitter is something else. There lives a non-negotiable doctrine, in which there’s only “good” opinion and “bad” opinion. Anyone who strays must be called out, but “called out” is too gentle a term. The targets must be taken down, not just hated but hated on. And the trolls aren’t random. Some have platforms beyond Twitter, including HuffPost, Esquire, and lefty news sites. For writers hoping to gain a following, slamming Bari Weiss has become an easy way to be seen. It wouldn’t matter if she were writing for The Wall Street Journal. The problem—or opportunity, really—is that she’s writing for The New York Times, which is supposed to be their paper, and that she’s getting famous for it.
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Broadly speaking, Weiss’s work is heterodox, defying easy us/them, left/right categorization. Since getting hired at the paper in the spring of 2017, she has focused on hot-button cultural topics, such as #MeToo, the Women’s March, and campus activism, approaching each topic with a confrontational skepticism that until recently had a strong place within the liberal discourse. Her basic gist: while such movements are well-intentioned, their excesses of zeal, often imposed by the hard left, can backfire.
Take one of her early pieces, an August 2017 column on the Women’s March. The march “moved me,” Weiss wrote, and was an important response to Trump’s “attacking the weakest and most vulnerable in our society.” Yet she was disturbed that two of the four leaders of the march had recent histories of praising known anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. Weiss’s view turned out to be prescient, and the march has since splintered into factions.
Weiss has approached #MeToo with attention to the gray areas. A piece called “The Limits of ‘Believe All Women’” praised those who started #MeToo but cautioned that if we believe women in every instance, it could result in a doozy of a mistake and harm the overarching movement.
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So that’s her take on Trump. If she wanted to, Weiss could criticize him in every one of her articles. But, she asks, “is our job to be a warm bath and an ideological safe space for people who we think are our readers? Or is it our job to show them the scope of opinions, legitimate opinions, that people all over this country have? I think that’s our job. But there are other people out there who apparently think the job of a newspaper is almost to be socialist realist art.”
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Malcolm Gladwell, someone you mentioned, was a rabid fan of the destruction of Gawker by a vengeful billionaire because he didn't like fact that Gawker frequently wrote criticism of him. Doesn't seem like a dude who is just abstractly a purist when it comes to the values of free speech in the marketplace of ideas.
You seem to have forgotten our roles here. I'm not the one arguing for purity. I don't think anyone is without blemish, and frankly find it weird your made this point.
Because Malcolm Gladwell doesn't actually think that there needs to be a robust tolerance for disagreeable opinions in media as evidenced by his cheering on destroying media outlets that criticize him for being a charlatan, one might get the reasonable impression that Malcolm Gladwell just selectively uses the banner of free speech to try to defend only certain people from experiencing criticism or professional consequences when it suits him like he's an amateur Bari Weiss. This is not what defense of free speech is supposed to be about, however. And because he (among others) is on the list, you risk sending a mixed message about what the letter actually means.
I don't blame any individual signer for this outcome. The responsibility lies mostly with whomever curated the list of people to sign.
Because Malcolm Gladwell doesn't actually think that there needs to be a robust tolerance for disagreeable opinions in media as evidenced by his cheering on destroying media outlets that criticize him for being a charlatan, ...
And there it is. EA is onboard with Gladwell being a "charlatan" as evidenced by the smarmy quote above about his being the thinking man's Stephan Covey so his being cool with the demise of Gawker is all the evidence needed to prove he's not really for free expression so much as shutting down shut down culture because it's mean.
In other words, hypocrite much?
Yeah.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
And that's what this always turns into. A game of Pokemon, or the card game war if you will. This card Trump's that card, but then this move changes that move, etc, etc, and it's not about substance but "winning".
Robespierre. "My sources are pure, my ideology grounded, my facts unassailable, my opinions self defending. Therefore if you disagree, it's not my fault you're just wrong and stupid for being wrong."
Thing is, you're full of crap. And it seems pretty obvious with the thinnest of scratching past the veneer. So, yeah. Bari Weiss seems like a better person than you if that's how you want to score this. And probably better company. Twitter's opinion not withstanding.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Jenn Kamp Rowling recently, as in a few weeks ago, menacingly threatened to sue a transgender activist because they said she shouldn't be around children (probably intending to convey she's a bad influence). British libel law is looser than America's and this cowed the critic into submission, but not before it became a news story. This was in the context of her engaging people criticizing her for her transphobic comments. Jenn Kamp Rowling is, quite obviously, not someone who just generically thinks there needs to be a robust tolerance for disagreement or that the principles underlying the first amendment need cultural reinforcement. She's an open enemy of free speech. So why is she, and her agent, on the list signing it? The reasonable interpretation is that she doesn't think people like her should face so much criticism and cultural headwind for saying transphobic things because that's just reasonable people disagreeing about reasonable things. Some criticism of her crosses the line, however, and she'll use her wealth and the state to punish them if they don't shut up. Is that what the letter is saying then? What kind of cancelling are we worried about here? Is this free speech best viewed as just a means to insulate the people with important platforms from meaningful social consequence? Well, I'm 99.9999% sure that's not what Atul Gawande means. But this, unfortunately, creates a muddled context for understanding what's being said that is counterproductive.
So Rowling threatens legal action against someone saying she shouldn't be allowed around children during a rather public open debate over her apparent radical form of second wave feminism based beliefs and so you know her heart. Because that's how Robespierre rolled. Heads, that is.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Because Malcolm Gladwell doesn't actually think that there needs to be a robust tolerance for disagreeable opinions in media as evidenced by his cheering on destroying media outlets that criticize him for being a charlatan, ...
And there it is. EAllusion is onboard with Gladwell being a "charlatan" as evidenced by the smarmy quote above about his being the thinking man's Stephan Covey so his being cool with the demise of Gawker is all the evidence needed to prove he's not really for free expression so much as shutting down shut down culture because it's mean.
In other words, hypocrite much?
Yeah.
Where's the hypocrisy here. Calling Gladwell a charlatan is like cheering on shutting down media outlets who criticize you because...?
Gladwell is a charlatan, but that's beside the point. The point is he's also someone who thinks that it's good when billionaires with a personal vendetta destroy media outlets that criticize him, which not the deeply held values of a person with respect for robust tolerance for diversity of opinion, criticism, and disagreement in the media. Those things are in direct contradiction with one another. When someone says you should listen to this statement on free speech, "is it like Gladwell means it or like Jeet Heer means it?" is a question that is going to influence how it is received. My criticism here that the inconsistency on the underlying message produced by a muddled context, rather than just the fact that these people disagree about lots of things, is counterproductive. Because you heard about leftwing purity tests at one point, you try to cram it into that box even though it doesn't fit.
When someone says you should listen to this statement on free speech, "is it like Gladwell means it or like Jeet Heer means it?" is a question that is going to influence how it is received. My criticism here that the inconsistency on the underlying message produced by a muddled context, rather than just the fact that these people disagree about lots of things, is counterproductive.
And now we're back to the whole P/Q part of the circle.
Let’s outline a few important features of rhextortion. One important thing is that the rhextortionist knows exactly what the target means. The potential misinterpretation is entirely in the hands of generally unnamed third parties who are not present. The rhextortionist then presents themselves to the target as doing them a favor. Here, for example, the target learns from the rhextortionist what the target themselves “wants.” How kind! They’re not the ones trying to control your language; they’re simply warning you that the misinterpretation is out there, somehow, without commenting on whether it’s justified.
Now, what’s the goal of the rhextortionist? Let’s just look at the facts. When someone prevents you from saying P on the grounds that someone else might interpret it as meaning Q, you haven’t been prevented from saying Q. You’ve been prevented from saying P. A realist has to assume that the goal, therefore, is to prevent people from saying P.
You don't like Gladwell. That's new atleast. But sounds about right so not really additive to the discussion..
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa