Cont: Cancel culture IRL Part 2

lionking said:
Agreed. It’s a pretty good example of cancel culture to me. Which will no doubt brand me as a rabid right winger, when I have never voted for a Conservative party in 50 years of voting and I was a young socialist.
Click to expand...

Can you define how you use that phrase?
 
lionking said:
This thread is very long. If you don’t know what it means you are not paying attention. I’m not playing your semantic games.
Click to expand...

The thread is all about the definitions we use for "cancel culture", that's been a major component of the discussion from the very first posts.

Without knowing how you are using the term "cancel culture" then it is impossible for anyone to know what you mean when you use it.

Now you may have given us your definition sometime over the two years' worth of posts and if so I apologise that I've not remembered your definition, by all means simply point me to your past post.
 
lionking said:
I think losing your job in these circumstances meets my definition of cancelling.
Click to expand...

You seem to have a unique and very specific definition of "cancelling".

Could you please explain what "these circumstances" means exactly?
 
Cain said:
Clownishness is not surprising from you, but this is. The phrase "The politics of Zionism" is not generally regarded as any kind of conspiracy, let alone a right-wing conspiracy. How you inferred "New World Order" from my comment is just bizarre, and not on speaking terms with reality. There's a simple exercise that even you can perform: Suppose we replace "The politics of Zionism" with "Apologists for Israel..." does the same criticism follow? You're ignoring the content of the post to turn a phrase into an association into a conspiracy. Again, clownish.
Click to expand...

If you read, or even skimmed, the link and can't understand how "Zionism" and the "New World Order" are related, then your current "intellectual right wing conspiracy theorist" pose is funny. But we're getting into Andy Kaufman style humor, here. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be laughing at a not so smart poster who thinks he can fool people with a "smart person" veneer or if this is a smart comedian making obvious mistakes to look like a dumb comedian acting like a smart comedian.

If that's your new gig, you do you, I guess.
 
Cain said:
Except it was not cut out. It was in the first sentence. Get better at quoting. And writing. And arguing.
Click to expand...

Quite the castigation considering the literal quotation formatting error in your post. Yes, I stopped deleting one or two sentences too early, having already deleted an entire paragraph and the context of the body of my writing making it clear what I was addressing from your post. I remove the mote, but sure, stick by your beam.


Uh huh, my fellow traveler. A pathetic smear job. I will say one thing in Warp12's favor: He has been one of the few people on this forum who has apologized for mischaracterizing something I said. It rendered me temporarily aphasic.
Click to expand...

How is that a smear? Warp12 was (presumably still is) an Obama voting moderate. He said so himself. Like people say they're against violence while leveraging hate crime murders to oppress non-straight people are obviously against violence.


It is saying something that you think this is somehow "amenable" to me. We have two examples side by side:



When it comes to Hamline University, the administration chooses not to renew an adjunct's contract (probably) because enrollment increasingly depends on recruiting from a student population that includes many more Muslims.
Click to expand...

Because the desired outcomes and acceptable actions for entertainment and education are different. This is why cases should be judged on their merits, not just if they 'count as cancel culture' or whatever it is you think you're arguing.

One of the main reasons I bothered to respond at all was to demonstrate that this "free speech warrior" readily condemns the actions of Harvard, and has done so consistently for many years. My goodness, you're like a cannibal trying to someone's table manners. What else did I write: "Right-wingers opportunistically use [cancel culture] as a cudgel, trying to claim the mantle of "warriors for free speech."

We need a left opposition to cancel culture because it's the sort of behavior that comes more naturally to the right. They're ideologically/procedurally more inclined to approve of non-state actors cooperatively shunning; they're temperamentally more inclined to support punitive punishment. Until relatively recently, these ideas have had little purchase on the left, but here you are trying desperately to lump me in with Warp12.
Click to expand...

That doesn't actually address what I wrote. Holding someone else's (supposed) standards against them isn't the same as holding one's self to someone else's standards. Again, there is no contradiction there.

And there are many left wing oppositions to the actions described as 'cancel culture'. Some of them were pointed out to you on page thirteen of the original thread!

Expanded worker protections, decoupling health insurance from employment, strengthening unions, there isn't much need to change what the left is seeking to address the things described as 'cancel culture', only in getting them done.

Never mind that I opened by saying I would "restate old ideas." Also, one does not need a "system of morality"; we need a principled way of adjudicating these matters. I've discussed this many times in the thread: Fostering a culture of free expression by separating a person's work from their political views. Gina Carano is unqualified to work for a public health department. I have never watched her former television show, but she generally received critical and popular praise. Kaepernick expressed his views on the field -- before the game, while others are expressing their political views. Any "distraction" this causes, not unlike, say, having one Black player on an all-white team or in an all-white league, should be trumped by a commitment to free expression, which, if it were to broadly take hold, would reduce social friction.
Click to expand...

This is old-man clinging onto failed systems that he thinks protected him. It's hunched men in the park, carefully considering moving their rook, dutifully ignoring that the pigeons they're playing against have knocked over the pieces, **** on the boards, and are trying to arrest parents of trans gender kids for child abuse.

'Separating their work from their political views' sounds all well and good if one considers 'politics' as an abstraction from real life, a fiction akin to separating the actor from the character. It works only so long as what is considered 'political' are things like 'should the estate tax kick in at $1m or $1.5m of unprotected assets?' and not things like 'wearing a mask in a pandemic' or 'is it ok to ignore the will of the people and just claim elections?'. As 'political' issues become more and more personal, it became more difficult and less wise to create such abstractions. Or rather, as people realized how personal politics was that became the case.

This isn't an argument for no or zero leeway. In fact I personally think there should be a great deal of it. I'd advise against joining dog-pile unless things are very clear. That is an argument against lashing yourself to the post and trying to get through all the 'cancellation' by just pretending where we are is where we were.

And what you describe is a part of a system of morality. Social norms intersect with ethics and morality.

Your willful ignorance on Carano continues to mirror your willful ignorance on several other right wing figures.

And hey, what are you going to do about it? Cancel people? Some of you all read The Paradox of Tolerance and decided, 'hot dam, that's the noble suicide pact for me!' If you're advising against using one's freedom of speech and freedom of association to withhold support, and convince others to withhold support, for 'politics', then just consider cancel culture to be a political view. There! Now everyone can focus on the people who absolutely will not head your words and apply 'cancel culture' selectively for political gain. Make no mistake, what you're doing is arguing for unilateral disarmament. The right wing currently supports things like the 'Stop WOKE act' and government retaliations against private companies for political opposition. Until that's brought back, there is no reason to give up the leverage the left has. Grow up.

Popular opinions change, and so do people. Eich opposed same-sex marriage when it was not only a majority view, but a view shared by leading Democrats. While opposing same-sex marriage has always been wrong, most people are not political philosophers and we should give them a wide berth to make mistakes (as they do with religious beliefs). This is something you should acutely understand, what with being so sloppy and unreasonable -- but it's something you don't (because you're sloppy and unreasonable). Even highly educated people know what to make of the metaphysics of gender, so we should allow more grace for new norms.

Punishment should be proportionate to the offense. A related problem with mob "justice" is that similar cases do not have similar outcomes.

Intent matters. A language professor using filler words that sound like a racial slur, or a political science professor reading a letter from Martin Luther King Jr. (which includes a racial slur).
Click to expand...

None of that is inconsistent with what I or as far as I see anyone else has argued. It's exactly in line with what I have said. If people being 'cancelled' for unpopular stances have strong enough grounds to believe they're correct, I encourage them to have the courage of their convictions just like those pushing for marriage equality have been forced to have in the past. There is nothing in anything you've suggested (to say you're proposing things would imply your writings have the integrity of concrete ideas) that would alleviate the need for this.

Eye-rolling stuff. "hey, you can rest assured that the History and Sociology professors won't blame the anti-cancel culture alliance when they get cancelled for teaching that racism is in fact correct..."

This is like a child who instead of saying "beard" says "bwead." And now you're reduced to shoddy Nazi comparisons. As I've said for years (and in this post), there's a distinction made between recent norms and long-standing norms. In academia, this issue is complicated by a fading commitment to tenure, but in the real world, it almost never comes up. Which is not to say racism does not come up. I asked a dean what was the most complain he received and he said it was racism. How do you investigate that? In an exhausted tone, he says "I ask the student what the professor said or did that was racist."

"Handwaving" "evidence" like we know Lauren "I failed the GED three times" Boebert wants trans people to be murdered in mass shootings because of what Tim Pool said on Twitter and two plus two equals cheese fries. Then there are the Bernie Shaw style questions like whether I'd favor an irrevocable death penalty if someone brutally raped and murdered my wife.
Click to expand...

Your failure to be able to deal with even extreme examples using your stated preferences isn't childish of me, it isn't just calling people 'Nazis' and your handwaves of such are inevitably failures. Learn how to argue. When you're still trying to defend not even close calls like Carano, it isn't unreasonable to explore how far from reasonable the call would have to be for you to adjust the advice. A professor in an unrelated field using The Bell Curve as an example of what academic freedom should be would call for correction, maybe even public calling out if doubled down on, while anyone in a related field who does and doubles down should be fired, whether or not there is a public uproar. A public 'cancelling' should shield from that, but what you're arguing is that it should.

Should people be called out for advancing disproven, harmful ideas related to their position? I'm not saying the cashier should be put out of a job, but on the list of threats to entry-level or even the vast majority of positions in the US, 'cancel culture' doesn't make the top 100. Are you all really so detached from reality that you think this is even broadly an issue? Almost anyone below middle management can be fired for one not even determined asshat with two friends. It's because the things from 'cancel culture' can reach the dwindling 'middle class' that it's blown out of proportion. They forgot what it's like to really be afraid of losing your job.

To revive an old point of mine in this very thread, claiming persecution and a violation of academic freedom to avoid academic rigor has become a mainstay of those complaining about 'cancel culture'. Roll your eyes all you want, it's your failure to deal with these situations that shows how your suggestions are so deeply flawed.
 
Cain said:
Greg Lukianoff, the president of FIRE, disagrees (a previous president of FIRE was conservative David French). The group has received funding by right-wing billionaires. Anyway, Lukianoff is a leading opponent of cancel culture. Maybe the leading opponent. Here's an article he authored: Don’t Stop Using the Term ‘Cancel Culture’

"A culture of censorship—of shaming, shunning, and attempting to destroy people’s lives for ideological reasons—exists in America, and Americans have a name for it: cancel culture.

Let’s not abandon that name in a vain attempt to please the people most responsible for perpetuating the problem."
Click to expand...

And they need to support the victims of it. Get that teacher with the nazi podcast her job back! Get those cops talking about how they want to kill blacks their jobs back. Free speech. You can't choose to not be someone's friend just because they are a nazi, that's censorship.
 
ahhell said:
So then, commies still had freedom of speech in 1950s hollywood?

ETA: There's not much point in taking this further really. I can't imagine a way to convince you that shouting folks down and trying to get them fired for speaking their minds is a bad thing. I don't know how you could convince me its not a bad thing.

I do agree private citizens using their free speech rights to prevent others from speeking is fundamentally different from the government doing it though. Legal use of force and what not, etc. In my mind, that doesn't make it ok to shout folks down just because you disagree with them though.
Click to expand...

Which is why the bikers drowning out the Westboro Baptist church and their protesting at funerals are the real villains. I see lots of people here really must hate how Alex Jones got canceled.

Harassment is just a part and parcel of free speech after all.
 
The New York Times (Not the New York Post) has produced a second article on the Hamline Affair in which a (non-tenured) teacher was essentially fired after showing an image of Mohammed, that she had prepared for in advance by warning students about it three times (Once in the course syllabus, once the day before the lesson in question and finally two minutes before the image was shown.) an act which the 'Associate Vice-President of Inclusive Excellence' proclaimed to be:


“...undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.”
Click to expand...


Source: https://www.twincities.com/2023/01/...over-dismissal-amid-islamophobia-controversy/


From the latest reports, the teacher has sued, and it seems that Hamline may be reconsidering their position.


Hamline University officials made an about-face on Tuesday in its treatment of a lecturer who showed an image of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class, walking back one of their most controversial statements — that showing the image was Islamophobic. They also said that respect for Muslim students should not have superseded academic freedom.


University officials changed their stance after the lecturer, who lost her teaching job, sued the small Minnesota school for religious discrimination and defamation.
Click to expand...


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/us/hamline-lawsuit-prophet-muhammad-religion.html
 
Cain said:
This is probably the most articulate part of what is, yet again, a tribute to BS. However, I am happy to use this as an opportunity to restate old ideas.



The charge is that there is no principled framework. Instead of trying to muddy matters with vague references to these people and those people, we have individuals in this thread who supported specific firings. In the case of your circle-jerk buddy, claimed FIRE does not "fear monger," but Lukianoff and co-author raise the same cases that are discussed endlessly in this thread and pooh-poohed as usual background noise. The characterizations of d4am10n vs. FIRE are discrepant.



Everybody decides matters on the "merits" of a case the way they support "reasonable" gun laws, or killing scores of people when "necessary." In other words, meaningless statements. We articulate a principle first -- what is or is not justified -- and then see if the case meets those criteria.

I'll illustrate by giving you an example. Not long ago, there was a magazine article titled something to the effect, "Cancelled at 17." A young man was ostracized by peers because he showed a nude photo of his girlfriend to several other boys at a party. Johnny supported this cancellation, eventually saying that what the young man did was a crime! Well, that can serve as a kind of moral foundation, but if it's not consistently applied, then it's not a moral foundation at all. Let's take it for granted that the level of ostracization reasonably follows from the crime. Students who befriended the boy were also ostracized. Whether or not people ought to be cancelled for non-criminal acts, no reason was given.
Click to expand...

Nice to see someone supporting revenge porn.
 
Stout said:
Whoa, NASTY! I like it.:thumbsup::thumbsup:

There's a slight problem though, Cancelled at 17 had nothing to do with revenge porn and that comment only works with people who haven't actually read the story.
Click to expand...

It is distribution of naked pictures without permission. The act is the same just different motivation. But I guess as the return of Lois C.K. to prominence caring about consent is not a good reason to not want to associate with someone.
 
ponderingturtle said:
It is distribution of naked pictures without permission. The act is the same just different motivation. But I guess as the return of Lois C.K. to prominence caring about consent is not a good reason to not want to associate with someone.
Click to expand...

Getting warmer. He didn't distribute anything, he showed a single nude image of his then girlfriend while being a drunken idiot at a party, something even The Guardian felt the need to amend their (then current) article to clarify.

So who's supporting revenge porn?
 
Stout said:
Getting warmer. He didn't distribute anything, he showed a single nude image of his then girlfriend while being a drunken idiot at a party, something even The Guardian felt the need to amend their (then current) article to clarify.

So who's supporting revenge porn?
Click to expand...

Ah so the violation of consent doesn't really matter because he was drunk.
 
Stout said:
Except nobody said that.
Click to expand...
With out that it seems hard to grasp what the supposed problem here is. Either showing around naked pictures with out permission is a problematic behavior or it isn't.

People are not being at all clear on what the supposed bad thing that happened here was other than his behavior.

And if intoxication is relevant why bring it up at all, what next bring up the lighting quality?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom