That Harpers Open Letter

[_EAllusion]

Fox News has an internal memo regarding Neff:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ecq158XWoAE ... me=900x900

The memo explicitly states that he was fired because Fox News is intolerant of his speech.

[_honorentheos]

As an economic argument I don't view my opinion of what a business should or shouldn't do as absolutely what they should or shouldn't do. A point of departure from the more extreme ends of the progressive spectrum is that belief in markets. And, in the marketplace of ideas I may have opinions about the views of someone like Blake Neff but I'm not going to weigh in on what Fox should or shouldn't have done. I don't consume Fox News and I have my views about their content that I've expressed and feel free to express. And if he chose to leave Tucker Carlson's show due to internal pressure to resign, that's between him and Fox. Is the world going to be a better place for it? Don't know. Maybe it matters and maybe it doesn't. Maybe it sets off concern internal to Fox about systemic racial biases and maybe it triggers bad blowback in some other way. Maybe the world forgets about it by Monday. Don't know.

[_EAllusion]

That's a lot of reading into there that, again, feeds Angry Twitter tropes but hardly demands the letter itself be expanded. The signatory list is diverse. As you are now fond of saying, who one focuses on and why seems to be a bit of a Rorschach Test.

It's not reading into it. The letter is talking about public instances in which writers, artists, and journalists faced social and professional consequences for speech people found offensive and saying this goes too far and hurts the lifeblood of a liberal society by shrinking the space for an open exchange of ideas. That's literally what is happening to Neff.

The key here is that the letter is vague enough that people who agree with it can go, "Well, not him." But this is a problem, now, isn't it? Because what is it then saying?

[_honorentheos]

That's a lot of reading into there that, again, feeds Angry Twitter tropes but hardly demands the letter itself be expanded. The signatory list is diverse. As you are now fond of saying, who one focuses on and why seems to be a bit of a Rorschach Test.

It's not reading into it. The letter is talking about public instances in which writers, artists, and journalists faced social and professional consequences for speech people found offensive and saying this goes too far and hurts the lifeblood of a liberal society by shrinking the space for an open exchange of ideas. That's literally what is happening to Neff.

The key here is that the letter is vague enough that people who agree with it can go, "Well, not him." But this is a problem, now, isn't it? Because what is it then saying?

It is reading into it. Freedom of association (In this case Fox being free to associate with Neff or disassociate from him over his speech) is in a sense a different topic from freedom of expression. The letter focused on the latter while touching on the former only so far as to urge caution in allowing a rush to judgement over the content of expression take the place of consideration on the part of the institution or individual choosing with whom to associate and why.

You want it to draw lines. It seems the scope of the letter was to push back against the mob and, like in the Milgram experiments foster conditions where people and institutions have space to think before they act.

[_EAllusion]

It is reading into it. Freedom of association (In this case Fox being free to associate with Neff or disassociate from him over his speech) is in a sense a different topic from freedom of expression. The letter focused on the latter while touching on the former only so far as to urge caution in allowing a rush to judgement over the content of expression take the place of consideration on the part of the institution or individual choosing with whom to associate and why.

You want it to draw lines. It seems the scope of the letter was to push back against the mob and, like in the Milgram experiments foster conditions where people and institutions have space to think before they act.

The letter's main focus is a criticism of people having professional threats looming over them for expressing "controversial" opinions people with socially liberal views deem sufficiently bad to shun, criticize, and/or boycott in a possible effort to deplatform them. The argument is to tolerate opinions you disagree with more by refraining from doing things like threatening people's jobs when they promote a viewpoint you dislike. The cancel culture forces at Fox News took this person's job because of his controversial views, then sent a memo it their employees threatening to do the same to anyone else with who expresses similar controversial views.

If you can't see how the letter applies to this situation, then that further demonstrates the letter for you is some viewpoint about Twitter culture you had in your head that you wished to project onto it.

There's probably not too many people who signed this letter who think it is travesty that Blake Neff lost his job to the forces of cancel culture. The trick is understanding that the letter means "sometimes" and disputes about this letter concern people's interpretations of what that "sometimes" means.

Nick Cannon was recently outed as a conspiratorial anti-Semite. He may or may not be losing some professional opportunities over this one. Is anyone high fiving over this letter gonna care? Not too many. Because they're not talking about protecting conspiratorial anti-Semiticism from social consequences in the marketplace of ideas. In fact, the letter has multiple signatories who have infamously tried to napalm people for comments about the government of Isreal or lobbying for it that are no where near this. Are they talking about protecting transphobic writing from social consequence? Some of them probably are.

[_EAllusion]

Letter signatory Jeet Heer doesn't seem too broken up about Blake Neff's termination for not sufficiently following the liberal orthodoxy here:

https://www.thenation.com/article/cultu ... lson-neff/

Literally the reign of terror with the self-appointed forces of blinding moral certainty executing people for wrong-think going on, and he complains about white nationalism? Pfft.

[_honorentheos]

Letter signatory Jeet Heer doesn't seem too broken up about Blake Neff's termination for not sufficiently following the liberal orthodoxy here:

https://www.thenation.com/article/cultu ... lson-neff/

Literally the reign of terror with the self-appointed forces of blinding moral certainty executing people for wrong-think going on, and he complains about white nationalism? Pfft.

Your commitment to this deflection is noted, though it seems odd that you keep pushing it after it's been pointed out that the boundaries for a company's decision over who should be terminated versus who should not should be theirs. And, as mentioned multiple times, if the purpose is simply to create space where companies can do so relieved of an artificial sense of urgency and monolithic outrage, you seem to be muttering to yourself again about a conversation you wish was being carried on here rather than on Angry Twitter.

[_EAllusion]

Your commitment to this deflection is noted

Deflection? You sound like Robspierre, with your absolutely certainty of who is right and wrong and who's cancellation we should care about and not. First you come for Blake Neff, then invetiably you're coming for grandma and apple pie.

, though it seems odd that you keep pushing it after it's been pointed out that the boundaries for a company's decision over who should be terminated versus who should not should be theirs.

That's a weird perspective you appear to have injected into the letter that contradicts examples the letter appears to be referring to. When papers fire editors for running controversial articles, that's papers making their own decision about who stays as employees or not. In fact, that' the case with all termination decisions, which is the main thing the letter is admonishing about. It's preaching tolerance to people in positions to make termination decisions just the same whether or not those decisions are internally or externally pressured. The whole point is to say that people in general need to be more tolerant of diversity of opinion and to ratchet down consequences for perceived offense.

There are people inside of Fox who decided that Neff's views were unacceptable to their more liberal than Neff sensibilities. They took is job for that reason. We don't need to speculate on this point because they said so. And that's to preempt outrage because Fox didn't cancel the show Neff was the head writer for despite it being soaked in the same ideas, only expressed with less vulgarity.

And, as mentioned multiple times, if the purpose is simply to create space where companies can do so relieved of an artificial sense of urgency and monolithic outrage, you seem to be muttering to yourself again about a conversation you wish was being carried on here rather than on Angry Twitter.

Because you are projecting your own hobbyhorse into the letter, you're probably missing that it is likely referring to examples that have nothing to do with Twitter or "monolithic" outrage. David Shor may or may not be reference point for the vague allusions, but he is an example virtually everyone reaches to, including signatories, as a example of bad cancellation. That wasn't caused by Twitter outrage. In fact, his removal produced a Twitter outrage. It was caused by an internal decision-making process of the progressive values of a small number of people who suck.

The worst examples, including ones that are likely reference points for the letter, involve niche campus group activity with organizing that is not driven in any way by Twitter or "monolithic mobs" unless that's a term you like to use when two or more people who agree get together.

The very recent attempt to de-fellowship Stephen Pinker that may or may not be a reference point on the letter was the result of a letter campaign supported by a handful of academics. A good, old-fashioned letter. The letter concerns objection to Pinker's tweets, and it produced a Twitter mob in defense of Pinker against that letter campaign.

[_EAllusion]

a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study

If that's not a reference to David Shor, and it most likely is, then David Shor is exactly the sort of situation that people are apt to think of when they read that line.

[_honorentheos]

You sure like having your hand held for a libertarian. Telling.