• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Cont: Cancel culture IRL Part 2

Nice free speech fest we have here. I’ll add a log to the fire:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/05/11/toby-price-butt-book-school/

On March 1, he hosted a virtual reading for second-graders. When the event’s scheduled reader did not show, Price was asked to leap into the breach. He picked out a book from his shelf he thought would be engagingly funny. “I Need a New Butt!” by Dawn McMillan and illustrator Ross Kinnaird was a favorite he had read to students at a previous school.
Click to expand...

That’s how you lose a career in education.
 
EaglePuncher said:
It's just good ole plain xeno- and homophobia, projected on these poor children.
Click to expand...

No, this is much worse. They’ve moved from punishing teachers and children to harming companies. This is too much.

Oh, they have long term contracts and will be paid even if the service is shut down? Nevermind, carry on.
 
where there is a Will

Some months ago George Will commented on the Jason Kilborn case: "But it takes just a few pebbles to start an avalanche, and just a few flamboyantly brittle students to start an infection of indignation."
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Some months ago George Will commented on the Jason Kilborn case: "But it takes just a few pebbles to start an avalanche, and just a few flamboyantly brittle students to start an infection of indignation."
Click to expand...

Yeah, I blame those thin and brown skinned people as well. :rolleyes:


That's the USA in 2022, folks.

Black people have an opinion "You are just race baiting and flamboyantly brittle!"

Some old ugly racist gets booted from university: "FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS IN DANGER!!!!!!!!CANCEL CULTURE!!!!HALP! HALP!!!!!"
 
Ken White at Popehat

EaglePuncher said:
Some old ugly racist gets booted from university: "FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS IN DANGER!!!!!!!!CANCEL CULTURE!!!!HALP! HALP!!!!!"
Click to expand...
Your description of what happened to Jason Kilborn at UIC is extremely far from reality. Cancel culture is a problem, whether it is done by people on the left or the right; the only alternative to this realization is denialism. I do not mean to imply that both sides are equally culpable.

First amendment expert Ken White posted about cancel culture at substack. I don't agree with everything he wrote, but his essay is worth reading. He wrote that he has debated and disagrees with his friend Greg Lukianoff (head of FIRE). That also is worth pondering. Here is a paragraph:

"Let’s discuss some examples, because when I criticize sloppy use of “cancel culture” I’m accused of denying that there are ever any unfair, disproportionate, or evil responses to speech. I don’t deny that. What happened to Justine Sacco was, in my opinion, very disproportionate. What happened to David Shor was disproportionate and maddeningly stupid. What’s happening in the community of Young Adult Fiction seems like a complete ******** that makes me want to avoid everyone there. What happened to Professor Greg Patton was disproportionate and anti-Asian bigotry to boot. Shouting invited speakers down so they can’t speak and attendees can’t listen is fascist and contemptible. I could go on, but you get the point."
 
Last edited:
Chris_Halkides said:
Your description of what happened to Jason Kilborn at UIC is extremely far from reality. Cancel culture is a problem, whether it is done by people on the left or the right; the only alternative to this realization is denialism. I do not mean to imply that both sides are equally culpable.

First amendment expert Ken White posted about cancel culture at substack. I don't agree with everything he wrote, but his essay is worth reading. He wrote that he has debated and disagrees with his friend Greg Lukianoff (head of FIRE). That also is worth pondering. Here is a paragraph:

"Let’s discuss some examples, because when I criticize sloppy use of “cancel culture” I’m accused of denying that there are ever any unfair, disproportionate, or evil responses to speech. I don’t deny that. What happened to Justine Sacco was, in my opinion, very disproportionate. What happened to David Shor was disproportionate and maddeningly stupid. What’s happening in the community of Young Adult Fiction seems like a complete ******** that makes me want to avoid everyone there. What happened to Professor Greg Patton was disproportionate and anti-Asian bigotry to boot. Shouting invited speakers down so they can’t speak and attendees can’t listen is fascist and contemptible. I could go on, but you get the point."
Click to expand...

Yeah, no one should face consequences for making racist AIDS jokes, the poor lady is totally fine. Cancel Culture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
EaglePuncher said:
Yeah, no one should face consequences for making racist AIDS jokes, the poor lady is totally fine.
Click to expand...
I don't believe her joke was at the expense of either AIDS patients or non-white Africans; more like here's something an ignorant white person might say.

...after thinking about her tweet for a few seconds more, I began to suspect that it wasn’t racist but a reflexive critique of white privilege — on our tendency to naïvely imagine ourselves immune from life’s horrors. Sacco, like Stone, had been yanked violently out of the context of her small social circle.
Click to expand...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html
 
Last edited:
Jon Ronson's perspective on Justine Sacco

"After the backlash started to settle down, Sacco talked to author Jon Ronson and offered an explanation for her tweet.

“'To me it was so insane of a comment for anyone to make,' she said at the time. 'I thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal.'

She continued: 'Unfortunately, I am not a character on ‘South Park’ or a comedian, so I had no business commenting on the epidemic in such a politically incorrect manner on a public platform ... To put it simply, I wasn’t trying to raise awareness of AIDS or piss off the world or ruin my life. Living in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the third world. I was making fun of that bubble.'” link

Jon Ronson wrote, "I wrote about Justine not because I identified with her, although I did, but because I identified with the people who tore her apart. I consider myself a social justice person. It was my people, abusing our power link2

Her number of Twitter followers was about 170. My offhand opinion is that this was intended as a joke, but it was poorly thought through and poorly expressed, which made it offensive. There is no contradiction between saying that and saying that the reaction was out of proportion.
 
Last edited:
Chris_Halkides said:
"After the backlash started to settle down, Sacco talked to author Jon Ronson and offered an explanation for her tweet.

“'To me it was so insane of a comment for anyone to make,' she said at the time. 'I thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal.'

She continued: 'Unfortunately, I am not a character on ‘South Park’ or a comedian, so I had no business commenting on the epidemic in such a politically incorrect manner on a public platform ... To put it simply, I wasn’t trying to raise awareness of AIDS or piss off the world or ruin my life. Living in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the third world. I was making fun of that bubble.'” link

Jon Ronson wrote, "I wrote about Justine not because I identified with her, although I did, but because I identified with the people who tore her apart. I consider myself a social justice person. It was my people, abusing our power link2

Her number of Twitter followers was about 170. My offhand opinion is that this was intended as a joke, but it was poorly thought through and poorly expressed, which made it offensive. There is no contradiction between saying that and saying that the reaction was out of proportion.
Click to expand...

She was so thoroughly cancelled that you only have multiple links to her explaining her position!
What a tragic case. She now only has a pension and several retirement accounts to live on .
Oh! The poor downtrodden!
 
Chris_Halkides said:
"After the backlash started to settle down, Sacco talked to author Jon Ronson and offered an explanation for her tweet.

“'To me it was so insane of a comment for anyone to make,' she said at the time. 'I thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal.'

She continued: 'Unfortunately, I am not a character on ‘South Park’ or a comedian, so I had no business commenting on the epidemic in such a politically incorrect manner on a public platform ... To put it simply, I wasn’t trying to raise awareness of AIDS or piss off the world or ruin my life. Living in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the third world. I was making fun of that bubble.'” link

Jon Ronson wrote, "I wrote about Justine not because I identified with her, although I did, but because I identified with the people who tore her apart. I consider myself a social justice person. It was my people, abusing our power link2

Her number of Twitter followers was about 170. My offhand opinion is that this was intended as a joke, but it was poorly thought through and poorly expressed, which made it offensive. There is no contradiction between saying that and saying that the reaction was out of proportion.
Click to expand...

"Oh noes, I did not expect my actions to have consequences" :)
 
Dr. Keith said:
Is there one that explains how bad it sucks to have a **** employer?

Because saying the internet is crazy isn’t all that enlightening.
Click to expand...

The one common denominator running through this whole thing is how precarious employment is in the US for the vast majority of workers. The second a worker's personal life becomes even the slightest bit inconvenient for their employer, they get tossed out on their ass.

It's a bit funny watching these centrist and right-wing pundits clutch their pearls about "cancel culture" in our prestigious publications. They would absolutely recoil in disgust at the notion that workers deserve some employment stability, either enforced by law or union contract, that would insulate them quite a bit from any embarrassing personal-life faux-pas. At the very least, being outed as a tasteless moron (or worse) wouldn't necessarily mean a person's income and financial security were in jeopardy.

Even if you take all this whining about cancel culture seriously, what exactly do these ghouls propose? They claim it's a culture and cultures don't exactly turn on a dime or follow directions. You may as well be shouting at the rain to stop falling. It's the ultimate pearl clutching exercise for centrist pundits, a problem they invented in which they have no solutions.

Meanwhile, meaningfully fortifying worker's financial security through protection from arbitrary firing would do a lot to free their tongues, though the bosses probably wouldn't like what they heard very much. Push come to shove, these pundits would surely be willing to lose on the "cancel culture" issue if it meant preserving a deferential, whipped workforce.
 
Last edited:
SuburbanTurkey said:
Even if you take all this whining about cancel culture seriously, what exactly do these ghouls propose? They claim it's a culture and cultures don't exactly turn on a dime or follow directions. You may as well be shouting at the rain to stop falling. It's the ultimate pearl clutching exercise for centrist pundits, a problem they invented in which they have no solutions.
Click to expand...

Sure they do! The solution is "vote for their guys more".
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The one common denominator running through this whole thing is how precarious employment is in the US for the vast majority of workers. The second a worker's personal life becomes even the slightest bit inconvenient for their employer, they get tossed out on their ass.

It's a bit funny watching these centrist and right-wing pundits clutch their pearls about "cancel culture" in our prestigious publications. They would absolutely recoil in disgust at the notion that workers deserve some employment stability, either enforced by law or union contract, that would insulate them quite a bit from any embarrassing personal-life faux-pas. At the very least, being outed as a tasteless moron (or worse) wouldn't necessarily mean a person's income and financial security were in jeopardy.

Even if you take all this whining about cancel culture seriously, what exactly do these ghouls propose? They claim it's a culture and cultures don't exactly turn on a dime or follow directions. You may as well be shouting at the rain to stop falling. It's the ultimate pearl clutching exercise for centrist pundits, a problem they invented in which they have no solutions.

Meanwhile, meaningfully fortifying worker's financial security through protection from arbitrary firing would do a lot to free their tongues, though the bosses probably wouldn't like what they heard very much. Push come to shove, these pundits would surely be willing to lose on the "cancel culture" issue if it meant preserving a deferential, whipped workforce.
Click to expand...

I mentioned this to a very right wing coworker and their head nearly exploded.
 
Dr. Keith said:
Sacco is still unemployed?
Click to expand...
Do you sincerely believe losing one's job is such a minor inconvenience that it is an appropriate sanction for making a joke about white privilege, however badly? If so, I'd be interested in how your career trajectory has played out.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom