Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
When you read her account, what did you think was missing? What additional facts that she made not have included would make it OK for him to have someone pretending to be a Russian government official call, to print lies about what she said in response, and to print lies about her conversations with a third party?
I didn't and you didn't, so we didn't.
Not sure I follow you at all. Cancel culture is when someone says something that other people find offensive but that you don't find offensive. If you agree that it's offensive, it's not cancel culture. So all this nonsense about cancel culture is just a way to disagree with people about what is and is not offensive, but in a euphemistic way that makes it sounds like it's a problem with them, not that you are defending speech they find offensive.
I have a hard time understanding why you have a problem with the guy who criticized Dolly Parton but you have none with Taibbi using his publication to lie about another reporter. Baker was at least commenting on a current political controversy, in a way that had nothing to do with his job, and Parton would have had no problem responding. Taibbi told lies designed to hurt his target professionally, with no way for her to respond. I think you have no problem with people who punch down, because you can call the target a loser, but when someone punches up at someone like Parton, he's the loser. You have a soft spot for people with social status, and you don't like it when people with less status criticize them. Your complaints about cancel culture are all about belittling the idea that people should be able to make their complaints on social media about people with more status. None of it has much to do with free speech.
As a matter of simple fact, you can use Google or Twitter and find people making other criticism of him, if you care. I have better things to do.
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A. The guy said Parton, who’d done nothing but innocently support BLM, had “freak titties” and “betrayed her white heritage.” This is not a journalist going low on another. It’s vile. It’s not even attempting to be funny. He’s a troglodyte. I’d fire him simply for being trashy and stupid, without any hint of irony or possibility what he said was clever. Comedy has license. This guy is just a dumb redneck.
B. Taibbi walked the line. His was a mean spirited and lousy attempt to mimic Thompson’s made up story about Muskie taking ibogaine. I see it as a juvenile and failed attempt to copy someone Taibbi admired, and who made shit up all the time (read Thompson’s fake story about hanging out with a debauched Clarence Thomas for an example). (PJ O’Rourke did similar stuff early in his career.)
C. You’re wrong on status. I love a smart dissident. These moral scolds aren’t smart. They’re quite stupid, and their presence makes the internet less amusing. My chief criticism is the same one I have for all scolds, rule custodians, and morality police. They seek power, they seek blood, and they feel they’re entitled, that they’ve been shafted. But they never examine their own lacking that puts them in a rotten position. It’s basic lack of brains to a great extent. Show me a man who takes himself terribly seriously and I’ll show you a guy who doesn’t have a whole lot upstairs. (Eric Hoffer has the rest of my brief on that observation.)
Vaclav Havel was a dissenter. The internet mobs here aren’t worthy of washing his underwear (which probably smells pretty bad right now).
ETA: You have drawn out one admission I must make. I am picking and choosing the rules and who is deserving to be heard and who is not. I do not think any ardent moralizer, right or left, is worthy of consideration. I share your subjective view. Each opinion should be taken on its own. But how does one do that with mobs who simply scream and retweet and repeat their strange orthodoxies?
