Objectively intelligent.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Are you familiar with the NYT op-ed page? On paper, it takes up two pages. That's enough room for, say, three editorials, some letters to the editor, two columns by regular columnists, and two guest pieces. It's hardly a brainstorm to point out that someone has to "make choices" about what will appear in that limited space. There has always been someone whose job it is to "make choices" about what appears in a newspaper. That person is typically called an "editor" because they "edit" the pieces before they appear, in the process, "making choices" about what is said. None of this is particular controversial to anyone who has, say, ever picked up a newspaper.

Bullshit. Your reaction to the Cotton story was similar to your reaction to Sam Harris months ago. You supported the notion there that even though Harris' exploration of numerous issues regarding race, sex, and class (only one small one of which was his analysis of Charles Murray's work via interview with Murray) was of value, it was nevertheless insensitive (Harris having asked "third rail" questions that challenged progressive narratives on race, sex, and class) and therefore should not have been performed.

Adder codified it a bit for you by simply shouting "Harris is a racist!" over and over, much as Ben Affleck did on Maher (embarrassing himself in front of Harris, Maher, and the audience). His was a simplistic response, but on the same continuum with yours: Certain stuff cannot be debated! Those conversations must be precluded!

If you are trying to describe the world as it is, this is obviously wrong. If you are trying to describe the world as it should be, I don't really care about the personal views and sensibilities of the editor of the NYT op-ed page. I'd rather not need to know who that person is. A good editor elevates the voices of the authors she is editing. A good editor of an op-ed page curates interesting views. Do I want an op-ed page that simply tells me what I already believe? No, I do not. For that, I could have Facebook, as I was just saying. Pass, thanks.

So do I. For that reason, I do agree with you that Cotton's piece, to the extent it was factually inaccurate and poorly vetted should not be an editorial anywhere. But as to subject matter? No. I do not think as you do that his argument falls into the sphere of deviancy (look it up if you don't know it). And I disagree with the borders you have admitted you would use to define what is acceptable debate and what is deviant. That's where the rubber meets the road in our dispute on these subjects. You would place a number of things beyond debate - I think you said "too offensive to our shared values as a nation" or something like that. I'd say this back to you:

I don't share all of the same values with you. My sphere of deviancy is far broader, more curious, and relativist than yours.

The New York Times has never, ever chosen to use its op-ed page to reflect the wide range of political views. It does not publish pieces calling for things like communism, racism, man-boy love, or ethnic cleansing, even though all have their adherents. It has always had editors who have edited its pages to reflect a certain set of views.

And thankfully, they're broader than yours.

(BTW, I see no reason not to engage a conversation about Communism in the paper. I would not allow a conversation on ethnic cleansing or pedophilia because those are not actions involving consenting adults. I would not allow an argument in favor of racism because it would seek to prey upon another group and therefore be akin to ethnic cleansing. I would allow an argument in favor of prostitution. I'd allow an argument that suicide is sometimes not a terrible idea, as Camus explored in Sisyphus. I would not fear the exposition of any idea so long as the argument advocated something that would occur between or impact only consenting adults and adhered to logic and factual rigor. In this regard, I understand I am at the extreme.)

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Shall I just reverse this? I hate saying "Your insistence to the contrary shows that you reside is a bubble." But I don't know how else to put it.

If you think there aren't left wing media sources that traffic is Fox like behavior, you aren't living in reality.



His views tend to nearly lockstep with a demographic profile of a center/progressive who thinks Mother Jones is a source of serious commentary and news.



He's very clearly of the opinion Trump is some form of existential threat. That puts one in the deluded bucket for two reasons. First, it's a rather extreme and paranoid view of the power of politics. (Kinda like people who believe the President controls the economy.) Second, it shows a bird bath deep understanding of the issues. Decades of economic policies that our government has followed caused the circumstances in which Trump emerged as a symptom.

He is not the cause. He's the metastatic tumor that finally results after decades of disease.

What he's said about Floyd in regard to living through the riots is worth reading. The connection he routinely makes between Trump being the cause of much racism, and a significant driver of the classism and racism that splits the country, is naive. The split is caused by a number of aligned actors who seek to divide the disenfranchised, white and black. Trump is simply the opportunist capitalizing on it.

The doomsday most of the top 20% of the country fears most is one in which the groups which are being marginalized stop squabbling, realize they're being divided and conquered, and get behind a candidate like Sanders. The affluent and educated who actually understand the American class structure will pay lip service to curing racism, or uniting people, but they don't really want that. They need to have the poor split along class, regional, and racial lines, so their votes can be neutralized, never congealing en masse behind any real transformative candidate.

That's why people here freaked about Bernie in roughly the same way Republicans did. "Holy shit... That guy's going to gore our ox!"

If you don't see the world thru the lens I just described... If you buy into the bickering, if you focus on party, if you allow the media to whip Trump into some massively scary would-be despot, rather than the hapless PT Barnum he is, your views can only be described as unlettered. Highly unlettered.

And yet that's so much of the country, on both sides of the argument. Including many people here, who should know better.

The problem with the caricature you have created in your mind about my political views is that everyone else here also reads my posts and, as Ty pointed out, I actually don't talk about the specifics of my political views very often. So everybody knows that the image of me as knee-jerk liberal who spreads leftists memes and petitions on Facebook and worships Mother Jones and believes that our country had no race or equity issues until Trump came along and created them is something that you pulled out of your ass. If I'm wrong, find the posts I have written to prove it.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

If you think there aren't left wing media sources that traffic in Fox-like behavior, you aren't living in reality.

Why don't you provide some names then? Maddow and O'Donnell can get a little kooky at times, but they're hardly Fox & Friends. They over-reach for hype at times, but they are generally engaging with reality (disclaimer, I don't watch any of them). The latter, especially, might be the poster boy for the kind of both sides politics you're talking about, though.

His views tend to nearly lockstep with a demographic profile of a center/progressive who thinks Mother Jones is a source of serious commentary and news.

This is bizarre, both because of course Mother Jones is a source of serious commentary and news and because Mother Jones is hardly far to the left. It's also hardly comparably to, say, the Federalist, both in ideological extreme or straight up nonsense.

If you want to match the Federalist for distance from the center, you'd have to go with the likes of Jacobin, but that illustrates the problem. The fringe on the right is conspiracy theory nonsense. The fringe on the left is serious, sometimes literally academic, political theory that we just don't happen to agree with. Gee, maybe both sides aren't actually the same.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Excellent NYT op-ed (!) on objectivity in journalism by Wesley Lowery:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/o...ronavirus.html

Good Twitter thread in response by Tom Rosenstiel:

https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/...83966319169539

[LessinSF]

More on the progressive ourobouros - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020...avid-shor.html

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Shall I just reverse this? I hate saying "Your insistence to the contrary shows that you reside in a bubble." But I don't know how else to put it.

If you think there aren't left wing media sources that traffic in Fox-like behavior, you aren't living in reality.

You said PLF is the left-wing analogue of a Fox News viewer, which is stupid. I wasn't talking about left-wing media sources. I don't know what you mean by "Fox-like behavior", but that wasn't what we were talking about.

He's very clearly of the opinion Trump is some form of existential threat. That puts one in the deluded bucket for two reasons. First, it's a rather extreme and paranoid view of the power of politics. (Kinda like people who believe the President controls the economy.) Second, it shows a bird bath deep understanding of the issues. Decades of economic policies that our government has followed caused the circumstances in which Trump emerged as a symptom.

He is not the cause. He's the metastatic tumor that finally results after decades of disease.

What he's said about Floyd in regard to living through the riots is worth reading. The connection he routinely makes between Trump being the cause of much racism, and a significant driver of the classism and racism that splits the country, is naive. The split is caused by a number of aligned actors who seek to divide the disenfranchised, white and black. Trump is simply the opportunist capitalizing on it.

The doomsday most of the top 20% of the country fears most is one in which the groups which are being marginalized stop squabbling, realize they're being divided and conquered, and get behind a candidate like Sanders. The affluent and educated who actually understand the American class structure will pay lip service to curing racism, or uniting people, but they don't really want that. They need to have the poor split along class, regional, and racial lines, so their votes can be neutralized, never congealing en masse behind any real transformative candidate.

That's why people here freaked about Bernie in roughly the same way Republicans did. "Holy shit... That guy's going to gore our ox!"

If you don't see the world thru the lens I just described... If you buy into the bickering, if you focus on party, if you allow the media to whip Trump into some massively scary would-be despot, rather than the hapless PT Barnum he is, your views can only be described as unlettered. Highly unlettered.

And yet that's so much of the country, on both sides of the argument. Including many people here, who should know better.

FWIW, Trump is both symptom and cause, and what you just said has some real truths and serious errors.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Bullshit. Your reaction to the Cotton story was similar to your reaction to Sam Harris months ago.

Not sure who you were reading, but it wasn't me. My reaction to the Cotton story was that the issue that everyone was up in arms about was boring, and not worth the ink. That's why, when I posted about it here, I simply linked to Jeet Heer's piece, which was more of a description of the challenges of running the NYT op-ed page than a complaint about Cotton. If I had wanted to complain about the NYT running Cotton, I could have, but I didn't bother, nor did I share any number of those complaints. You responded as if I wanted to complain about Cotton, which made me think you misread Heer, and so I basically responded that you were missing the point. You then claimed that you actually had read Heer, and provided a tl;dr that completely missed most of what he was saying. So I called you a moron, and then I posted this:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Seriously -- he's not even talking about what you think he's talking about. Why pretend to read something you haven't?

If you were the editor of the NYT, would you have chosen run Cotton's op-ed piece?

Note the effort there to change the question to the one that I think is more interesting, which is, what is the editor of the NYT supposed to do these days?

So if you're keeping score at home, my "reaction" to Cotton was zero posts where I said that Cotton is "too offensive to our shared values as a nation," words that you put in quotation marks but which I do not believe I have ever said. (It's a neat trick you have, but it shows why editors are useful -- an editor would not let you get away with suggesting that someone has said something they haven't.)

If the NYT does its job, its readers will understand all about Cotton's views. IMO, it should do this by reporting on his views as news, treating the substance what Cotton thinks and does as a real story that people should understand, rather than with horserace journalism, faux objectivity or simply turning over part of the op-ed page to Cotton without editorial supervision. When the NYT does that, it's an abdication of what journalism should do.

You supported the notion there that even though Harris' exploration of numerous issues regarding race, sex, and class (only one small one of which was his analysis of Charles Murray's work via interview with Murray) was of value, it was nevertheless insensitive (Harris having asked "third rail" questions that challenged progressive narratives on race, sex, and class) and therefore should not have been performed.

Adder codified it a bit for you by simply shouting "Harris is a racist!" over and over, much as Ben Affleck did on Maher (embarrassing himself in front of Harris, Maher, and the audience). His was a simplistic response, but on the same continuum with yours: Certain stuff cannot be debated! Those conversations must be precluded!

I don't think that's a fair description of what I said or my views.

So do I. For that reason, I do agree with you that Cotton's piece, to the extent it was factually inaccurate and poorly vetted should not be an editorial anywhere. But as to subject matter? No. I do not think as you do that his argument falls into the sphere of deviancy (look it up if you don't know it). And I disagree with the borders you have admitted you would use to define what is acceptable debate and what is deviant. That's where the rubber meets the road in our dispute on these subjects. You would place a number of things beyond debate - I think you said "too offensive to our shared values as a nation" or something like that.

I haven't "admitted" I would use borders to define any topics out of bounds -- I pointed out that, contra your notion that the NYT is just presenting a debate, it has *always* defined what is acceptable debate and what is not by deciding what and to whom it will give space. I personally prefer to have a wider range of opinions on the NYT op-ed than it has had (and so does Jeet Heer), but if its editors are going to cast a wider net then they have to be *more selective* about which of those views they choose to share -- among other things, it's just math. If they can find a good piece on man-boy love, I'm game to read it. If they run a shit piece on man-boy love because the author went to prep school with the editor, and the author wants to troll readers for the attention, I'm not in favor of that. Are you?

I'd say this back to you:

I don't share all of the same values with you. My sphere of deviancy is far broader, more curious, and relativist than yours.

I doubt it, except for the relativist part.

And thankfully, they're broader than yours.

(BTW, I see no reason not to engage a conversation about Communism in the paper. I would not allow a conversation on ethnic cleansing or pedophilia because those are not actions involving consenting adults. I would not allow an argument in favor of racism because it would seek to prey upon another group and therefore be akin to ethnic cleansing. I would allow an argument in favor of prostitution. I'd allow an argument that suicide is sometimes not a terrible idea, as Camus explored in Sisyphus. I would not fear the exposition of any idea so long as the argument advocated something that would occur between or impact only consenting adults and adhered to logic and factual rigor. In this regard, I understand I am at the extreme.)

Again -- you are missing the point. I'm not saying that what the NYT has always done is right and good -- I'm saying that it has *always* limited the views on the op-ed page in a way you say you have a principled objection to. If that really bothered you, you would be more interested in talking about what you would do if *you* ran the NYT, the question I tried to pivot to. Like many Trump voters, you would rather be on the outside, complaining about shit, instead of picturing yourself on the inside, trying to make things better.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

More on the progressive ourobouros - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020...avid-shor.html

Happy to say that my Twitter feed has been full of progressives saying that what happened to Shor was wrong.

Protesters in Wisconsin last night pulled down a statute of anti-slavery activist who died fighting on the Union side in the Civil War. Do you think they knew? I doubt it. Maybe it's social media, maybe it's Trump, maybe it's pent-up craziness from sheltering in place, but it seems like there is more than the usual amount of craziness out there right now.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Bullshit. Your reaction to the Cotton story was similar to your reaction to Sam Harris months ago. You supported the notion there that even though Harris' exploration of numerous issues regarding race, sex, and class (only one small one of which was his analysis of Charles Murray's work via interview with Murray) was of value, it was nevertheless insensitive (Harris having asked "third rail" questions that challenged progressive narratives on race, sex, and class) and therefore should not have been performed.

Adder codified it a bit for you by simply shouting "Harris is a racist!" over and over, much as Ben Affleck did on Maher (embarrassing himself in front of Harris, Maher, and the audience). His was a simplistic response, but on the same continuum with yours: Certain stuff cannot be debated! Those conversations must be precluded!



So do I. For that reason, I do agree with you that Cotton's piece, to the extent it was factually inaccurate and poorly vetted should not be an editorial anywhere. But as to subject matter? No. I do not think as you do that his argument falls into the sphere of deviancy (look it up if you don't know it). And I disagree with the borders you have admitted you would use to define what is acceptable debate and what is deviant. That's where the rubber meets the road in our dispute on these subjects. You would place a number of things beyond debate - I think you said "too offensive to our shared values as a nation" or something like that. I'd say this back to you:

I don't share all of the same values with you. My sphere of deviancy is far broader, more curious, and relativist than yours.



And thankfully, they're broader than yours.

(BTW, I see no reason not to engage a conversation about Communism in the paper. I would not allow a conversation on ethnic cleansing or pedophilia because those are not actions involving consenting adults. I would not allow an argument in favor of racism because it would seek to prey upon another group and therefore be akin to ethnic cleansing. I would allow an argument in favor of prostitution. I'd allow an argument that suicide is sometimes not a terrible idea, as Camus explored in Sisyphus. I would not fear the exposition of any idea so long as the argument advocated something that would occur between or impact only consenting adults and adhered to logic and factual rigor. In this regard, I understand I am at the extreme.)

It's nice signing on here for the first time in a while and seeing nothing changes. I've got no clue what the Cotton story is, but are your really still shilling for Harris? Man, get a better pet pseudo-intellectual.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Are you familiar with the NYT op-ed page? On paper, it takes up two pages. That's enough room for, say, three editorials, some letters to the editor, two columns by regular columnists, and two guest pieces. It's hardly a brainstorm to point out that someone has to "make choices" about what will appear in that limited space. There has always been someone whose job it is to "make choices" about what appears in a newspaper. That person is typically called an "editor" because they "edit" the pieces before they appear, in the process, "making choices" about what is said. None of this is particular controversial to anyone who has, say, ever picked up a newspaper.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Bullshit.

And just so I'm clear, what part of how an op-ed page works do you think is "bullshit"?

[LessinSF]

For GGG and Adder - Another reasonable position by Trump - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/u...y-lawsuit.html

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I was saying he's the left wing analogue of a Fox News viewer. His politics are straight out of my sophomore year Poli Sci course. Almost universally in step with whatever the left holds as a sacred cow of the day.

He probably thinks Trump is responsible significantly for the racism that led to George Floyd's death. And if he understood even a shred of the economic causes behind that racism, he'd be left politically rootless, having found that the Democrats are as much if not more responsible than the GOP, or our current populist buffoon.

Speaking of sacred cows, Devin Nunes only recourse now is to go to his barns and interrogate each and every bovine there to figure out which one has been saying mean things about him on Twitter.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

It's nice signing on here for the first time in a while and seeing nothing changes. I've got no clue what the Cotton story is, but are your really still shilling for Harris? Man, get a better pet pseudo-intellectual.

This site be like:

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

Speaking of sacred cows, Devin Nunes only recourse now is to go to his barns and interrogate each and every bovine there to figure out which one has been saying mean things about him on Twitter.

Sounds like ICUs in Houston are getting busy. How's it looking from there?

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Happy to say that my Twitter feed has been full of progressives saying that what happened to Shor was wrong.

But are they saying it non-anonymously, or only through Twitter avatars? Are they publicly risking the wrath, opprobrium, shaming, and calls for their own expulsion or firing for defending Shor? Or are they afraid of their own?