Lying Away Cancel Culture

[ajax18]

Yeah, wow. If you think protecting the right to vote from suppression has the first thing to do with “wokeism,” then you are a nut. It has been shown, time and again, that there is no voter fraud on the level that justifies making it harder for minorities and poor people to vote. All this is about is keeping the “wrong” people from making political decisions as the Constitution provides.

Are you aware that you have to show ID at the welfare office to get your food stamps application approved? Do minorities go to the doctor or any of the other myriad of activities that require an ID?

But if you think this way, I guess you don't have a problem with MLB moving the All Star game out of Atlanta? You probably have no problem with Sarah Sanders being run of the Red Hen restaurant for serving as press secretary for Donald Trump. Just think of cancel culture as consequence culture and your dilemma is solved.

[Kishkumen]

Are you aware that you have to show ID at the welfare office to get your food stamps application approved? Do minorities go to the doctor or any of the other myriad of activities that require an ID?

Are you aware that it is the same group of people who don’t want there to be any public assistance or suffrage of the poor who come up with these rules? I guess they only sting when they impact you personally.

But if you think this way, I guess you don't have a problem with MLB moving the All Star game out of Atlanta?

Because Georgian Republicans sought to keep poor Black people from voting? No. No problem at all. I’ve driven Republicans to the polls when I voted straight Democrat. People who seek to keep people from exercising their Constitutional right to vote disgust me. There is no Constitutional right to watch the MLB All Star game, so buck up buttercup.

You probably have no problem with Sarah Sanders being run of the Red Hen restaurant for serving as press secretary for Donald Trump. Just think of cancel culture as consequence culture and your dilemma is solved.

Yeah, the Goebbels thing. Donald Trump sought to overturn what was, ACCORDING TO REPUBLICAN VOTING AUTHORITIES AND JUDGES, a free and fair election. I find the Brutus and Cassius solution for that tempting, but I’ll settle for prison for the rest of his natural life, the grotesque effer. Calling those who aided and abetted him pond scum is an insult to pond scum.

You see, destroying the Republic is for me an unforgivable offense. You would happily watch it happen just so long as you get yours and can watch the game.

That said, I also hold those who shriek at anyone who would dare talk about certain controversial issues to be culpable in their own way. There is a Constitucional right to free speech and a spirit of free speech. The latter sustains the former. Those who trample on the latter because they argue that only the former is important are ultimately undermining the former too. A free society must be able to traffic freely in discussion. The left has become too illiberal in its treatment of speech.

[Kishkumen]

Oh I agree. I have some authorial interests I'm in the latter stages on and have been stuck here for at least a year. I don't care about failing in the usual sense, I mean, I'd be out a small amount of money that would have been wasted on something else that matters even less. However, on the small chance someone links my work to me in real life, I haven't thought through all the ways I might be politically insensitive; the small although real chance that offense could be taken and have an effect with employers -- I haven't been able to get past that.

I can see that. On a somewhat related note, there is good scholarly work to be done on Suetonius’ depiction of Roman pederasty, but the reaction I received at a UK conference when I addressed the subject convinced me not to publish it. Too many people assume or suspect that those who write on such a topic only do so because of their disturbing predilections or practices. People openly told me that they hoped my argument was wrong, without offering any substantive challenge to the evidence or argument, and it was clearly their polite way of telling me to drop the topic or commit career and social suicide.

These are the open minded academics of the world.

Yes, pederasty is disgusting. No, I am not the least bit curious about it beyond its historical existence in certain Mediterranean cultures. The fact that I find it gross does not change the fact that it actually happened and was practiced by some elite Romans such as the emperor Trajan. And I will never publish that research because it is just a stupid move.

I was also once told not to publish anything that took the position that human beings are shaped by some consistent biological characteristics. Since Marxism and cultural constructionism were the right-thinking views, to take a different position in such an issue would be a career killer.

Academics are fundamentally conservative in their ideological perspectives. Small c conservative, that is. They don’t take kindly to boat rockers.

[Chap]

I was also once told not to publish anything that took the position that human beings are shaped by some consistent biological characteristics

Weird ...

How far did 'THEY' (who were they by the way) go? Was it OK to say (e.g.) that Roman policy in the Mediterranean tended to foreground the maintenance of grain shipments from Egypt, because Roman people had this biological characteristic of getting upset if they did not get anything to eat?

[Kishkumen]

Weird ...

How far did 'THEY' (who were they by the way) go? Was it OK to say (e.g.) that Roman policy in the Mediterranean tended to foreground the maintenance of grain shipments from Egypt, because Roman people had this biological characteristic of getting upset if they did not get anything to eat?

LOL! I think it was more the boundary between culture and biology they get concerned about. Certain facts of life like “Roman must eat” don’t bother them. It is more “Greek more smart by nature” that gets dangerous. My project would have been neither. It would have been about the interplay of biology and culture in mass hysteria, following on some comments of Burkert regarding primate behavior and human religion. I am very interested in the concept of cultural illness.

My professor was also interested in this stuff but wanted me to have a career.

[Physics Guy]

If an artist or entertainer loses a platform or an audience because they have somehow offended people, then that sucks for them, sure. I don't see that they have any actual right to complain, though. There's a right of free expression but no-one is entitled to a platform or an audience. Artists and entertainers earn money by pleasing their customers; the customers are under no obligation to support the entertainers. The customers can withhold their money for any reason they want.

Theater proprietors and web hosts can likewise decline to host people for any reason they want. They can lock you out if they just don't think you're going to pull in big enough crowds this year. They can lock you out if they're trying to re-brand their platform for a niche community of ostrich fanciers. They can lock you out if they feel you're insufficiently woke. They're the proprietors and they can do what they like with their property.

There's something repugnantly hypocritical, to me, about entertainers getting indignant about being "cancelled". There was never any reason for their success besides the public's whim. They were happy enough to profit from that whim when it favored them, but if the tide turns they suddenly want to pretend that not tossing coins in their particular hats is undermining civilization. Oh, please.

[Some Schmo]

There's something repugnantly hypocritical, to me, about entertainers getting indignant about being "cancelled". There was never any reason for their success besides the public's whim. They were happy enough to profit from that whim when it favored them, but if the tide turns they suddenly want to pretend that not tossing coins in their particular hats is undermining civilization. Oh, please.

This.

What we're talking about here is privileged people suddenly losing their privilege. My advice to them is that if they have something that valuable, maybe they should do what they can to protect it. Their whining about "cancel culture" betrays their belief that they innately deserve their privilege. I've got no sympathy for that.

This is what I keep telling people: there are advantages people have for not being famous. Having very few consequences for what you say is one of those advantages.

[Res Ipsa]

Weird ...

How far did 'THEY' (who were they by the way) go? Was it OK to say (e.g.) that Roman policy in the Mediterranean tended to foreground the maintenance of grain shipments from Egypt, because Roman people had this biological characteristic of getting upset if they did not get anything to eat?

LOL! I think it was more the boundary between culture and biology they get concerned about. Certain facts of life like “Roman must eat” don’t bother them. It is more “Greek more smart by nature” that gets dangerous. My project would have been neither. It would have been about the interplay of biology and culture in mass hysteria, following on some comments of Burkert regarding primate behavior and human religion. I am very interested in the concept of cultural illness.

My professor was also interested in this stuff but wanted me to have a career.

You piqued my interest enough to look up and read a paper that applied Marx’s dialectical materialism to biology. From what I gathered, the paper you described would be right in line with a Marxist approach. So, I’m not understanding your reference to Marxism as something that would be in contrast to your paper.

Is your concern that this paper (which sounds pretty interesting to me) would offend the woke left or religious folks. Maybe both?

[ajax18]

For me this is example of cancel culture and data manipulation by the left. If you don't like what the data says or if it doesn't fit your narrative, prohibit it, cancel it, and make sure people don't have access to this information. NO violation of the 1st amendment or authoritariasm there... It's the right that is the authoritarian, lol

Nolte: Two Top Real Estate Sites Remove ‘Racist’ Crime Data

Two real estate sites, Realtor.com and Redfin, have decided not to include crime data in their websites because of racism or something…

The idiots at Realtor.com explained it this way:

As a relative newcomer to the real estate industry, I’ve been struck by how entrenched this problem is. Stories abound about Black, Hispanic and Asian homebuyers receiving unequal treatment, starting with their ability to see whatever homes they like, and continuing through to the appraisal and mortgage processes. At virtually every step of the way, too often people of color find hurdles in their path, making it difficult to turn their dreams of home ownership into reality.

These challenges also afflict people by virtue of their gender, sexual orientation and religion. Whatever the root cause, more must be done to level the real estate playing field for all. We at Realtor.com have been working to break down those hurdles.

For example, earlier this month, we removed the crime map layer from all search results on Realtor.com to rethink the safety information we share on Realtor.com and how we can best integrate it as part of a consumer’s home search experience.

The idiots at Redfin explained it this way:

We recently decided not to add neighborhood crime data to Redfin.com. We were considering this because we’re very much focused on answering all the questions people have when they’re considering a home purchase, and we know that one of these questions is whether they’ll feel safe in a given home or neighborhood. But the data available don’t allow us to speak accurately to that question, and given the long history of redlining and racist housing covenants in the United States there’s too great a risk of this inaccuracy reinforcing racial bias. We believe that Redfin–and all real estate sites–should not show neighborhood crime data.

People Are Interested in Safety, Not Crime

One big thing we learned through our research is that there’s real variety in how people define and evaluate safety, and that it doesn’t line up very well with purely crime-based data. When we survey people about what they want to know about a neighborhood, they define safety in a number of different ways: people variously say they care whether there’s trash on the street, care solely about violent crime, or care whether they are going to frequently see people who are homeless.

Do these idiots honestly believe that 1) this gibberish makes any sense to any sane individual, or that 2) people are going to make the most important investment choice of their lives without looking at crime data, or 3) that this woke, Orwellian nonsense will convince people that they shouldn’t be concerned with crime data when buying a home?

Something you frequently hear from me in reference to woke is how it’s a violation of human nature. Well, this is a perfect example. On no planet is someone going to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars without looking into the primary need of human nature—which is safety. And it’s not only physical safety but the safety of a massive investment.

Simply put, this is not going to work. Eventually, Realtor.com and Redfin will either lose a ton of business or have to reverse course.

As far as this claim of racial bias… Do these idiots honestly believe that racial minorities are unconcerned with crime statistics when looking into buying a new home?

You cannot mess with people’s safety, and you cannot gaslight them with woke buzzwords into believing it’s “appropriate” or “correct” to move their family somewhere without knowing just how safe it is or isn’t.

If there is one constant in American politics, it is that crime matters. Years ago, I told you that this defund the police nonsense would end in a disaster and then a reversal. Well, violent crime is now exploding in these Democrat-run citifies, and now some of the bluest cities in America are reversing course and promising to clamp down on crime. I’m no genius, no fortune teller. It’s just that outcome was the only possible outcome. And it’s the same here with Realtor.com and Redfin. There’s nothing decent or compassionate, or progressive about withholding crime data from homebuyers. It’s wholly immoral and unacceptable, and the outcome is inevitable.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021 ... rime-data/

[Res Ipsa]

If an artist or entertainer loses a platform or an audience because they have somehow offended people, then that sucks for them, sure. I don't see that they have any actual right to complain, though. There's a right of free expression but no-one is entitled to a platform or an audience. Artists and entertainers earn money by pleasing their customers; the customers are under no obligation to support the entertainers. The customers can withhold their money for any reason they want.

Theater proprietors and web hosts can likewise decline to host people for any reason they want. They can lock you out if they just don't think you're going to pull in big enough crowds this year. They can lock you out if they're trying to re-brand their platform for a niche community of ostrich fanciers. They can lock you out if they feel you're insufficiently woke. They're the proprietors and they can do what they like with their property.

There's something repugnantly hypocritical, to me, about entertainers getting indignant about being "cancelled". There was never any reason for their success besides the public's whim. They were happy enough to profit from that whim when it favored them, but if the tide turns they suddenly want to pretend that not tossing coins in their particular hats is undermining civilization. Oh, please.

Yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel about “cancelled” celebrities. I do think that academia is a more serious issue. Orthodoxy, and in particular political orthodoxy, should not keep a guy like Kish from publishing an interesting paper that may advance some understanding in history. What I have no feel for is whether the situation is substantively worse today or whether it is just more visible. Has this type of orthodoxy existed in the past but was was not visible to an outsider like me because it was enforced within the discipline itself?