Jonathan Chait: Political Correctness Gone Mad OMG I’m Scared

Belle, I can’t smoke, so there’s a category of writing that makes me smile because it feels like someone had a victory smoke on my behalf. This is one of those.

I notice that in this ranting about the power of political correctness, Chait has precisely zero to say about the career of Steven Salaita. So much for the power of political correctness.

Ms. Waring, this was the funniest, most accurate piece I have read in years. So many nice touches it is impossible to pick a favorite, although the image of someone finding the perfect handkerchief to dab their eyes at the death of New Republic was very, very nice.

For people who feel that Chait’s article was an attack on their ideology and/or basic common decency, I have some suggestions: How about you go on over to tumblr, find the people who are talking about “truscum” and “transtrenders”, and try to negotiate between them.

Or a little closer to home for you left-oriented academics, maybe you can go over to twitter and have a little chat with Sarah Kendzior, Joshua Foust, Sarah Jeong and (if you’re especially confident) Suey Park. Ask them about that Jacobinghazi stuff, what was that all about? Try to negotiate between the parties in that old dispute. I’m sure a reasonable and no-nonsense person like you can do it in a heartbeat.

Maybe you can try googling the name of chait’s article + Chait. Unless Google is sadistically personalizing my search results, the second hit ought to be a blog giving a fairly moderate internet-flavored feminist response, summed up as “Jonathan Chait discusses how hard it is to be a white man these days.” Is there anything you disagree with there? The slightest thing? Try arguing it with the author.

Or oh, oh, I have another one! Maybe you’re familiar with Model View Culture, the progressive Silicon Valley publication? Try to interview the founder. Maybe you can do better than the last (extremely ideologically sympathetic) person who tried.

If you do that, and can still hold on to the idea that “political correctness” is mostly just about politeness, then I can take it seriously. Right now, this post is written from the perspective of someone who doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

I’m going to repeat a comment that I made at unfogged (not that it generated much response there, but it pleases me). My sense, not from reading Chait but from reading blog posts about his statement, is that he’s asking “Why don’t they love me, I’m a liberal?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLqKXrlD1TU

Shorter comment: there’s nothing new under the son, grasshopper.

My sense, not from reading Chait but from reading blog posts about his statement, is that he’s asking “Why don’t they love me, I’m a liberal?”

Well, that says a lot about the blogs you read. If you had gone one step out, and read only those writing blog posts based on the blog post, probably your sense would be that he’s saying “Why don’t you pity me I’m a white man!”. The further you get out, the more of a caricature you’re seeing – believe it or not marcel proust, but it isn’t just in the right-wing echo chamber that happens.

So this Chait guy is a right-winger is he? Or a fake liberal? That doesn’t matter. Henry Kissinger himself could have written this piece, and I’d still be glad he did, because the piece makes a good point.

>Sarah Kendzior, Joshua Foust, Sarah Jeong and (if you’re especially confident) Suey Park

Who are these people? What establishment do they represent? I am fine with not knowing wtf I’m talking about in regards to Kendzior, Foust, Jeong and Park.

The larger question seems to me:

Why should someone who was completely and aggressively wrong on the Iraq war be a major columnist today? Why should we listen to this stupid little twit at all? He should be stacking shelves at Walmart or something.

Modesto Kid: Where have you been? Suey Park maneuvers the strings from her secure location that govern everyone’s career, from tenure at Flyweight Elementary School to the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Most major publishers won’t move on a book unless they have her approval, and she can also break up your marriage if you cross her.

I found the piece by Chait quite interesting and have been chewing it over (even though I’m on vacation and really be out walking in the waves some more).

The thing is, he is right that there is a basic philosophical point at stake. Are “we” (however we describe ourselves, anybody even vaguely left of center) committed to free speech and free exchange of ideas, or are we committed to equality? Normally the answer is, of course, “both!” But then the radical critique hits home, that free speech in any real world context is always more free for some of us than others, and that existing power imbalances are (sometimes) reinforced rather than challenged when all are “free” to speak. And then we may have to think very carefully about where and when to take a stand, and on which side, and why.

The answer is very easy for Chait. It is much less so for me. But I do appreciate the force (if not always the good sense) with which he puts the question.

“So, I would say, we should be kinder to an enemy in order to become better ourselves, and to be kinder to people who we are talking to right now in some comments box at Slate”

You would argue that and Chait (and I) would agree that you are right and that certain things are better not said. But that is not at all what Chait was complaining about.

Personally, though, I would prefer that the kind of people who call Ann Coulter a ‘tranny’ (and I should confess I don’t know who Ann Coulter is) do it in front of me so I can see who they are. It is an example of what Kingsley Amis called a useful ‘wanker detector’.

“FFS: what happens when you are impolite? People criticize you and don’t invite you back for dinner.”

Life, most life, just isn’t like a dinner party. That is heartbreaking for some but a huge relief for others. Butwe are talking here not about ‘impolite’ in the way it is usually used, but ‘impolite’ as in ‘does not accept the truth of my argument or statement’.

Don’t be so passagg Victoria. It’s not good for you.

“Unfortunately we’ll never know how many “cis liberal white males” were afraid to speak up in defense of Mr. Chait because their voices have become too marginalized and they fear the reprocussions.”

Very few I am sure. But how many non-cis black men and women who agreed with Chait have felt unable to say so aloud for fear of the inevitable anathematisation? I know at least one.

“Yeah the acts of vandalism were legit. OK one full point.”

Way, WAY too generous. It happened once, was not part of any systematic program and it happened to pro life assholes. Fuck those guys anyway.

Chait’s essay suggests a lack of capacity on his part to imagine that the positions he rejects might at least be worth considering. For examplke, I don’t think The Vagina Monologues is transphobic either. That said, if a college theater group has some concern about that play, their expressing that concern doesn’t do me any harm, and perhaps their position has more merit than I suppose.

The catalogue of persons whose invitations to speak at colleges have been protested is likewise strange. I assume Chait agrees that there are at least some people who shouldn’t be invited to colleges to speak, including persons who are personally odious or have little of value to say or both. Is it so inconceivable to Chait that following the Iraq War, someone should object to Condoleezza Rice as a campus speaker? Chait also notes that “former Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau … was disqualified by an episode in which the school’s police used force against Occupy protesters”: the irony of that example in the context of this essay appears entirely lost on him.

For what it’s worth, I generally find Chait’s writing insightful and valuable, but someone should have talked him out of this one.

That aggressive enough for you minnow?

Minnow @16: “Some of us are used to the idea that we can express our opinions freely and without fear”

And as far as I know that is the case. But none of us are free to express our opinions without consequences. To extend Belle’s dinner party metaphor, if you said something rude at a party and was asked not to repeat it, and your response to that was to start railing about freedom of speech and how you would damn well say whatever you wished, I think the host and other guests would be perfectly within their rights to draw conclusions about the kind of person you are. Maybe you wouldn’t get invited to other parties.

What Chait is complaining about is the fact that he said things and people drew conclusions about him based on the things he said. Which is whiny in itself, but given that the consequences he experienced are impossibly mild – compare them with, say, Anita Sarkessian’s random sample of the violent tweets she receives – I don’t see any reason to take him seriously, much less embrace him as a standard-bearer for free speech.

AB @18: Yes, and there’s absolutely no difference between a person with less privilege breaking the standards of politeness imposed upon them by the more powerful class, and a person with the highest level of privilege complaining because those with less of it have criticized them.

“And as far as I know that is the case. But none of us are free to express our opinions without consequences. ”

Bingo. You are free to say something and other people are free to mock you for it. If you think they are wrong to mock you, then you are free to continue saying what you want.

Basically he is arguing that marginalized people now have TOO MUCH free speech.

“What Chait is complaining about is the fact that he said things and people drew conclusions about him based on the things he said.”

No, that really isn’t what he is complaining about. Really. You need to read the article or read it again. He is quite happy for people to argue with what he or anyone else has said.

And the dinner party analogy is still not doing anyone any favours. Political discourse just isn’t like a dinner party and, more importantly, shouldn’t be like a dinner party. What is it with dinner parties? Do people really still go to dinner parties? Did the 70s sneak back while I wasn’t looking?

“By the way, that wasn’t a pro life asshole guy, that was a pro life asshole gal. ”

Notice how you didn’t respond to my other points……

Interesting and revealing.

Belle, you make some good points and make them very well. I get the impression Chait made some good points poorly. These are issues that I don’t see any good solutions for yet.

…. Letting them talk just because of who they are. Letting queerness count for something. Letting being disabled count for something. Letting someone’s being politically weak and historically silenced be a reason for others on the left to react with, “hey, let’s be quiet for a minute and see what this person has to say.

Yes. I think it’s good to listen to everybody, particularly when they say something new.

But then if they say “You can’t disagree with me because I’m an oppressed minority” I start to wonder. Particularly when I suspect it might be a 30-year-old white-guy trolling from his mother’s basement. Everybody deserves a respectful hearing, and nobody deserves to shut up other people except the moderators.

Similarly with trigger warnings. It’s polite to warn people about things that might be unpleasant to them. It’s an unfair debating tactic to take something that is not in fact a trigger to you and use it to stop a discussion entirely and change it to one about what a no-good-shit your debating opponent is because he said something you couldn’t answer on its merits (but that you could accuse him of insensitivity about).

I’d prefer to avoid debates anyway. Better to explore issues and find out what we can about them. But bringing rational, polite, pleasant discourse to a debate is like bringing a handful of flowers to a gunfight. If the other guy has decided it’s a debate then you can leave or debate him (or find somebody else to talk with and ignore him).

I just don’t have it worked out. People deserve special privileges for being unprivileged, but they don’t necessarily deserve every privilege they demand, particularly when they have done nothing to show they are actually unprivileged. It’s polite to provide trigger warnings and it’s rude to castigate people at length when they fail to do so to your satisfaction.

If we were all reasonable people we could work this stuff out, but it seems to be the most unreasonable people who game the system to get outcomes that would be harder for them to achieve otherwise….

@44: And the dinner party analogy is still not doing anyone any favours. Political discourse just isn’t like a dinner party and, more importantly, shouldn’t be like a dinner party.

Relative to Kristallnacht or the bridge at Selma, I for one would prefer that political discourse be more like a dinner party.

Oh for crying out loud. I should be asleep but people are being wrong on the Internet again. Belle’s explained it but just to try a little more, let me get to specifics. So – the example Chait starts with. The guy in question didn’t write a gentle Charlie Brown type satire of people who take offence too easily, as Chait says. He wrote a really stupid article making fun of feminism. That’s what it actually is. So Chait is being dishonest right from the start.

Then four – presumably – radical feminist students retaliate by scribbling rude things on his article and leaving it on his door step, and possibly, although this is a little unclear, throwing eggs at his door and “posting” a picture of a demon (?what) (through the letter box? Pinning it to the door? Not clear). These four later transmute into angry mobs, etc, but this is enough for the time being.

Now I’m not defending throwing eggs at people’s doors, etc, but the whole thing sounds like an undergraduate battle to me, rather than some whole social movement of political correctness warriors persecuting some innocent Charlie Brown. And possibly some people commenting here have been living in a hole in the ground for the last decade, and aren’t aware that there are whole hordes of people who write endless inane boring articles and comments about how wrong feminists all are, but take it from me, there are, and sometimes you just get fed up.

I’m sure everyone here is aware that feminism is an important social movement that has made enormous contributions to the way we live and think now, but you know there are seriously thousands – probably millions – of men (and some women) out there who just know that all feminists are wrong and stupid and should be ridiculed on all possible occasions (and I’m not even talking about the vile threats and abuse some feminists receive). And again, I’m not saying eggs etc is right, but maybe try to offset these crazed mobs of people (ie feminists) who are trying to police what people think – in Chait’s mind – against the reality that there are actual mobs of people threatening and making fun of feminists (and sometimes just women) every day on the Internet, and you might see that Chait’s ideas about political correctness are just a little bit dishonest.

I’m not trying to comment about people of colour, but you know I hope someone else might do a demolition job on Chait’s position – or maybe people could just have enough sense to weigh “political correctness” against hundreds of years of oppression, slavery etc. Yeah, people get steamed up about stuff, they argue, they take offence. It’s not a big deal. You could even say it’s part of free speech, if you weren’t the kind of person who thinks free speech means you being able to insult others with impunity, and them just having to suck it up, because you’re privileged and they’re upstarts.

I mean–my grandfather used to make ‘dumb Polack’ jokes when I was a kid. When was the last time anyone heard anything like that?

I thought some of them were funny when I was a kid. Kind of mean, but mean jokes can be funny.

Here, I’ll tell the best one now since it’s probably been a long time since you’ve heard it.

This polish man was talking to his grandmother, who had finally come to the USA, and she asked him about Polack jokes. He was embarrassed but she insisted that he tell her one, and finally he did. She laughed and made him tell her another one. She laughed again, and said, “I’ve probably heard all of those. At home we call them Ukrainian jokes.”

Chait is boring, and good riddance to TNR (if it’s gone). PC is in fact all about free speech: it’s the principle that the feelings of some people trump the rights of others (presumably more advantaged). A recent very obvious example is defense of the Charlie Hebdo attack because they shouldn’t have run those insulting cartoons. The appeal to “manners,” I think, is a copout; my southern relatives would have considered it rude, in 1965, to invite them to share a swimming pool with black people.

There’s a tremendous amount of deliberate misreading of Chait going on here… (1) Everyone’s acting like his handful of examples are the sum total of all the cases of left-censorship going on. They’re not. They’re just notable examples. (2) His own personal experience of being censored is not part of his complaint. He’s not complaining that he, a cis-blah-blah-blah guy can’t say what he wants. That would have been colossally stupid.

His largest objection to the left-language-police is at the end of the article, and it’s this: politics is about creating change, and you don’t create positive change by bludgeoning your potential allies into fearful silence. You create change with a coalition of like-minded people who are prepared to collaborate and to compromise with each other to work towards shared goals. The left-language-police isn’t bad because people’s feelings have been hurt. It’s bad because it makes it harder for the left to accomplish its goals. Unless the real goal is just dominance in the insular social hierarchy.

“And you didn’t address any of my points at all. What should I read into that? What does it reveal about you?”

Evasive. I remain unimpressed.

So what is your response to this?

” Yeah, people get steamed up about stuff, they argue, they take offence. It’s not a big deal. You could even say it’s part of free speech, if you weren’t the kind of person who thinks free speech means you being able to insult others with impunity, and them just having to suck it up, because you’re privileged and they’re upstarts.”

I believe it is the key part of this issue.

“So what is your response to this?”

My response was the one I posted. I wanted to know if s/he would feel the same way if the masked strangers throwing eggs and posting pictures of demons through the door were attacking a woman feminist rather than a man satirist. The answer to that makes all the difference to the point.

“The left-language-police isn’t bad because people’s feelings have been hurt. It’s bad because it makes it harder for the left to accomplish its goals. ”

Nope. By using more inclusive language the left actually becomes better at building solidarity not worse. Why would a gay man want to be part of a movement that regularly refers to homosexuals as “faggots”?

Also I really would ask people here to remember that LGBTQ people/PoC/Women are much more likely to be bullied, discriminated against or be silenced then rich white male authors. Here are some cold hard facts:

– An Ontario-based study of trans people found that 20 per cent had experienced physical or sexual assault due to their identity, and that 34 per cent were subjected to verbal threats or harassment
– Trans people in both Canada and the US report high levels of violence, harassment, and discrimination when seeking stable housing, employment, health or social services
– LGBT youth face approximately 14 times the risk of suicide and substance abuse than heterosexual peers
– 77% of trans respondents in an Ontario-based survey had seriously considered suicide and 45% had attempted suicide

So why the fuck are we worried about someone saying mean things about Chait on twitter? Why aren’t we worried about how we have created a culture so toxic to LGBTQ people that kids are being driven to suicide?

“So why the fuck are we worried about someone saying mean things about Chait on twitter? ”

We’re not, that isn’t the subject anyone is discussing. People should be free to say what they like about Chait or any of us.

“Why aren’t we worried about how we have created a culture so toxic to LGBTQ people that kids are being driven to suicide?”

I think everyone here is concerned about the problems faced by (for example) LGBTQQI people and I know Chait is from his journalism. I don’t think that you characterise the situation accurately though, the position of LGBTQQI people is massively better now than it was only a few years ago and seems to me to be improving all the time.

“Not.”

Way.

“Way.”

Not. (!)

“We’re not, that isn’t the subject anyone is discussing.”

Please. That is exactly what Chait is complaining about! Go back and read the article.

“People should be free to say what they like about Chait or any of us.”
True. I believe in free speech and in consequences.

“I think everyone here is concerned about the problems faced by (for example) LGBTQQI people and I know Chait is from his journalism.”
Apparently he is concerned about their challenges right up to the point where someone might say something mean about someone else on twitter.

” I don’t think that you characterise the situation accurately though, the position of LGBTQQI people is massively better now than it was only a few years ago and seems to me to be improving all the time.”

I supplied cold hard fact. Seems accurate to me. The situation, though better, is still pretty fucking dire. And how come it is improving? Because groups of people made the effort to change our culture. No it is not okay to call a teenage gay male a “faggot” or a “Fairy”. And if you do, people will come down on you like a ton of bricks. As they should.

“And how come it is improving? Because groups of people made the effort to change our culture. No it is not okay to call a teenage gay male a “faggot” or a “Fairy”. And if you do, people will come down on you like a ton of bricks. As they should.”

It is changing because it was argued for, long and hard, and arguments change minds. As for the rude words, they have lost their sting as the fight for real change has been won.

All this makes me sad for the loss of face to face discussion (confrontation, if needed) with the confronting and confronted forced to take clear responsibility for their words, and add whatever they need to be clear, even if the disagreement is more intense afterwards. Disagreement is good, name calling isn’t. But we live in a society of tools, like twitter, which eliminate both accountability and reflection. When was the last time you or anyone you know, asked a question, responded “Give me a couple of days, I have to think about that.”

JG

“Why would any reasonable person care whether you are impressed? In my time here you have revealed yourself as a little bundle of judgements and prejudices, and you have mostly not revealed anything else.”

And you believe in conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers….

‘Are losing their sting’ would be more accurate. Of course there are still many obstacles faced by LGBTQQI people and especially the you often face emotional battles that can be horrible. But I would say, and I think that this would be Chait’s position, that we should work with like-minded people to improve things rather than waste our energies fighting battles over terminologies and ever-finer ideological boundaries. For example, you forgot, or didn’t know, to designate this group as ‘LGBTQQI or LGBTQI but used the outdated ‘LGBTQ’ designation instead. There are many people who would consider this an act of aggression and label you a bigot because of it. Your ignorance (if that is what you want to plead) would be no defence. It is easy to imagine the situation when, if you had any public profile at all, this would be escalate into a Twitter storm and worse with your reputation smeared as a person who despises the intersex community and seeks to eliminate them from view, to literally erase them from debate as you erased the ‘I’ from LGBTQI. Your only hope would be an abject, public and fulsome apology, probably admitting your subconscious bigotry. . That is not remotely far-fetched (look up Jacobinghazi as recommended upthread). But it would be stupid and a waste of time and energy. Which is Chait’s point. Better we keep arguing the substantive stuff.

Maybe you shouldn’t make them i mean

/My kingdom for a copy editor!

MPAVictoria, I’d address your points if I saw any. But it looks like you are busy knocking down strawmen and smashing open already open doors. I’m not calling anyone trannies or cocksuckers, and I don’t think “minorities have too much free speech”. Neither does Chait as far as I can see.

But you obviously think that”pro-life activists have too much free speech, if you just gloat and say “fuck them” when people try to shut them up with force.

I’m not defending Chait. I’m defending Chait’s argument as I best can understand it, which is something else.

If you wish, you can restate whatever your point is with regard to Chait’s article. Or you can explain why I’m reading him wrong, or why anything else I’ve said is wrong. I’ll do my best to not evade.

“Yes, plenty. No one invites you ?”

Ha!

“Yes, plenty. No one invites you ?”

No. And no I realise I am missing out on all those cheese boards, I feel desolate.

“No. And no I realise I am missing out on all those cheese boards, I feel desolate.”

“cheese boards” ? It’s confirmed then, no one invites you.

Coming in very late, but this seems like a good time to say I like this piece very much, and also and particularly belle’s follow-up about politeness @18.

The only other thing I’d say is that when people complain about the decline of civility, or respect, or standards of argument, what they’re generally worried about is losing control of what can be argued about and it what terms. And I think it’s this, even more than not being listened to, that worries Chait.

“cheese boards” ? It’s confirmed then, no one invites you.”

No one invites me, no. The straw of comfort I cling to is that most of my acquaintance seem to be wide awake and thoroughly pre-senile, so they are able to leave the house once in a while for other kinds of entertainment. Now, where did I put those after dinner mints?

“Dudes like this whining about PC want something very particular indeed: not just the right to say things others find offensive but the right to say offensive things and then not be criticized for saying them.”

Exactly.

94: Nah, both Chait and most in this thread want the default criteria for manners to be global, universal and ahistorical cause you’re all liberals. You just have different rules.

It has its points but it tends to erase and weaken local, particular, and historical power positions that may actually have utility for those (even those we empathize with!) holding them and we may not really be in the best position to decide that they are regressive, useless, and immoral.

And, fwiw, I am just multi-cultural enough to agree (for the most part) with bob mcmanus’s points about locality and a-historicality when it comes to these issues.

Minnow @ 53
Your example doesn’t work. Meaningful analogies might be: a straight person writes an article ridiculing gays; a white person writes an article ridiculing people of colour.

The so-called innocent Charlie Brown of Chait’s imagination is not actually an innocent individual making a harmless joke, but one example of much broader patterns of discrimination and ridicule. That’s what the ridiculed groups are objecting to. Whether or not you agree with their methods of protesting, you can’t ignore the systemic discrimination and ridicule they are exposed to. The fact that you don’t understand this, or won’t acknowledge it, is your problem.

In fact one of the things I frequently find surprising in these discussions is that you rarely see – or I don’t – articles and comments ridiculing gays or people of colour outright these days. But you frequently see articles and comments ridiculing feminists. Why is that, I wonder? Why are feminists considered fair game?

Well – answering my own question – I suppose, Gerda Lerner, whom I am currently reading, seems to suggest that oppression of women is the original form of oppression on which all other forms of systemic oppression were modelled. So by that token I guess it will be the last to disappear.

@63: “Nope. By using more inclusive language the left actually becomes better at building solidarity not worse. Why would a gay man want to be part of a movement that regularly refers to homosexuals as “faggots”?”

I don’t think the left-language-police of 2015 is concerned about people using the word “faggot”. That battle was fought and won 25 years ago. The word is manifestly a slur, and everyone understands that using it is impolite or worse. But what about using “disabled” or failing to use “zhe”? The left-language-police stands ready to bust you instantly for such errors, which seems completely idiotic to the 99% of the population that isn’t part of this circular firing squad. So my response to your “nope” is “yup”, this is exactly how the left loses its ability to make and keep allies.

#76 MPAV

“In my time here you have revealed yourself as a little bundle of judgements and prejudices, and you have mostly not revealed anything else.”

And you believe in conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers….

See, you set fire to this strawman over again no matter how many times I correct you. You don’t read.

I repeat, I have not seen any conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers that I thought were worth much. If you have any evidence about Jewish bankers then show me, I’ll decide whether I believe it. I won’t decide what’s true or false based on what stupid people believe. People who believe conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers with no evidence are being stupid. People who believe there is no conspiracy of Jewish bankers based on no evidence are just as stupid.

You however appear to be so stupid that you can’t tell the difference between “I haven’t seen it disproven” and “I believe it”. You have repeatedly used the approach “Bad people believe X, therefore X is not true”. It bugs me. I hate to see people do this variety of stupid, which you repeat often. I want to believe that you are not actually this stupid but that you think you are cleverly manipulating stupid people by repeating it. But I have seen no evidence of that. If you are that sort of person you have maintained the disguise so cleverly that I have never been able to find the slightest evidence that you are a mean clever person disguised as a stupid person, and not a genuine stupid person yourself. It bothers me.

I will repeat a basic logic lesson. When asked a yes-or-no question, there are four different answers which work even without conditional probabilities.

1. I believe X is true.
2. I believe X is false.
3. I don’t know about X.
4. Somehow when I look at it one way I am sure X is true, but when I look at it another way I am sure X is false. Something is wrong somewhere in what I think, and I can’t trust my judgement until I find out what.

When you say “Unless you agree with me that X is false, it must be that you believe that X is true and I will tell the world that you proclaim that X is true!” you are being stupid and malicious.

Stop lying about me. It is rude. It makes you look bad to anybody who notices.

J Thomas @ 106
“People who believe conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers with no evidence are being stupid. People who believe there is no conspiracy of Jewish bankers based on no evidence are just as stupid.”

I’m sorry to say that a lot of the time I just don’t read what you write. But sometimes it just gets to me. I guess I’m just not able to sleep and therefore in a mood to start correcting random people on the Internet, but tell me, can you honestly not see what is wrong with that statement?

107: I think most might agree that if Chait showed up in this comment thread, he would not exactly be the most powerful and privileged commenter here, say relative to Waring.

This is where social media is qualitatively different from the earlier blogosphere: the definition of “here” is less clear. Back around 2008 I discovered Shakesville (still called Shakespeare’s Sister back then I believe) and concluded after a month or so that it was a bizarre fever swamp, with the result that I haven’t visited there since Obama was elected.

Because twitter is crap at allowing you to filter your interactions (as gamergate is demonstrating), febrile environments like that can follow you around if you post on certain topics.

queer latino most marginalized ?

come on, you can do better then that:
two NAMBLA members who get a sex change and are in a gay S and M relationship 3some with young women….
now thats marginalized

#104 Foster Boondoggle

…. The word is manifestly a slur, and everyone understands that using it is impolite or worse. But what about using “disabled” or failing to use “zhe”? The left-language-police stands ready to bust you instantly for such errors, which seems completely idiotic to the 99% of the population that isn’t part of this circular firing squad. So my response to your “nope” is “yup”, this is exactly how the left loses its ability to make and keep allies.

Yes, but you’re talking about a fringe group. If there’s 1% of the population, more like 1% of the left that does that to such an extreme, OK they make it harder for anybody else to be their allies. But then when it comes to elections or whatever they can decide which way to vote and be somebody else’s ally whether that somebody else wants them or not.

If somebody came on to Crooked Timber and insisted on ridiculous PC language they would get laughed at, right? If they aren’t strong enough to shut down the substantive discussion, why should they be an issue? Chait doesn’t need to argue with them, you and I don’t need to argue with them. Let them have their circular firing squad all by themselves, they’re pretty much harmless.

And it’s true that we don’t suffer from that here, right? We have our substantive discussions about the issues, and we don’t get sidetracked by arguments about who used the wrong word or expressed the wrong concept. When somebody appears to channel bad people we don’t vilify them, right?

Like when dsquared recently described the greek situation from the point of view of a german banker, we didn’t get off on telling him he was an evil person for understanding their point of view. And earlier, when Belle talked about her experience in the Far East where a modest dollar income could afford servants, we didn’t vilify her for exploiting poor people to be personal servants instead of just giving them the money. Because we don’t vilify people like that. It’s only a tiny fraction of the Left that vilifies people for saying unPC things. An utterly unimportant fraction that the Right uses for propaganda.

Val: There’s also the thing that skin color and orientation are things outside your control, whereas the ideological labels you apply to yourself are not.

But whatever the reason it happens, I’m not out to do it. I do not have a beef with feminism. I may not even have a beef with political correctness, depending on what you put into it. But the attitude Chait describes, and the attitude of “fuck our political opponents, their rights don’t matter”, that I have a beef with, whatever you label it.

By the way, it is probably a function of age, but I don’t do Twitter or other social media, I don’t know how to do Twitter or other social media, and no one has explained to my satisfaction what they are supposed to accomplish or why I should give a shit.
And get off of my lawn, while you’re at it.

#43 Harald K

And she wasn’t the only target of vandalism and reprisals Chait mentioned, there was also the Muslim satirist, and a feminist who had the temerity to be SW-positive, to name a few.

I have trouble keeping up. What is SW-positive? When I did a search on it the main thing I found was Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support which I can see could be controversial but I completely missed the controversy until now.

#108 Val

I’m sorry to say that a lot of the time I just don’t read what you write.

My curiousity acted up — why did you say it?

I’m sure you’re here for enjoyment and you don’t have time to read everything, of course you’d try to cut out things that are less likely to be funny etc, it’s perfectly understandable…. But why say it and why be sorry to say it?

J Thomas:
Anyone who wants to can go back and read your comments and then decide if I am lying about you or not.

Harald K:
I was semi kidding with my comment @34. I know, intellectually, that what happened is “bad”. I just can’t get that worked up over pro-forced birth people complaining about others using force on them when they literally want to force women to give birth. I mean talk about throwing rocks in glass houses. But yes that it happened is wrong.

“Belle writes one of her typically brilliant posts about (mainly) gender relations and the usual MRAish suspects come a-crawling out of the woodwork.

Predictable and sad.”

+1

JT 114: “Like when dsquared recently described the greek situation from the point of view of a german banker, we didn’t get off on telling him he was an evil person for understanding their point of view. And earlier, when Belle talked about her experience in the Far East where a modest dollar income could afford servants, we didn’t vilify her for exploiting poor people to be personal servants instead of just giving them the money.”

I guess I’ll have to bite. I don’t remember Belle being “vilified” for her remark about servants although I do remember some polite criticism (I didn’t follow the whole discussion and maybe I missed what you are referring to). And for the record (and here I’m sure I haven’t missed anything): nobody “vilified” DD for presenting his view (or the view of German bankers, channeled as if it were his) on the Greek situation, although there was some heated and mostly on-topic disagreement. Your examples of “PC police” misdeeds on CT are laughable and most tellingly you omitted to mention that the esteemed host DD banned no fewer than four commenters from his thread (although he didn’t actually enforce all of the bans), none of whom had violated CT’s code of conduct, merely for disagreeing with him. And yet it is the critics who supposedly are the PC police, endangering sacred free speech rights by insisting that victim-blaming is not ok. Your PC police fairy tale is exactly as fact-based and consistent as the old self-serving right-wing BS.

@119, J Thomas
SW=Sex work? Haven’t read Chait, just guessing.

Amanda Marcotte nails it:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/jonathan-chait-pc-thought-police-irony

“While the article purports to be a lambasting of “the culture of taking offense” and censorious attitudes, it quickly becomes clear that the only speech Chait is interested in protecting is conservative or contrarian. When it comes to people saying uncomfortable or provocative things from the left, Chait comes across as just as censorious and silencing as any of the leftist prigs he attempts to criticize.

To be clear, Chait has plenty of examples of what has become a genuinely serious problem of liberals who react to uncomfortable ideas by turning to censorship: Harassment campaigns against conservatives, canceling plays or art shows because of political incorrectness, tearing down anti-choice posters.

But outside of those few examples, most of Chait’s article is not a defense of rowdy public discourse at all, but the opposite: Most of the piece is little more than demands that liberals silence certain forms of discourse that make Chait uncomfortable. For a piece that mocks the use of “trigger warnings” to alert people about disturbing content, it sure seems Chait has no problem trying to silence anyone who says something that might hurt his feelings.

The list of ideas and articles Chait thinks should disappear is dizzying. “A year ago, for instance, a photographer compiled images of Fordham students displaying signs recounting ‘an instance of racial microaggression they have faced,’” he writes contemptuously. “BuzzFeed published part of her project, and it has since received more than 2 million views. This is not an anomaly.” Chait doesn’t explain why we should be offended that Buzzfeed gave voice to people explaining their experiences. Perhaps Buzzfeed should put a trigger warning on the next article they run about subtle racism, so that easily offended people like Chait know to steer clear.”

* * *

“The irony begins to collapse in on itself and form a black hole from which no self-awareness can escape with this sentence: “It is likewise taboo to request that the accusation be rendered in a less hostile manner. This is called ‘tone policing.’” Got it. Demanding that someone adopt more P.C. language to step around the sensitivities of liberals is unconscionable, but demanding that lefties on Twitter adopt a softened tone to step around the sensitivities of Jonathan Chait is just good sense.”

The left-language-police isn’t bad because people’s feelings have been hurt. It’s bad because it makes it harder for the left to accomplish its goals. Unless the real goal is just dominance in the insular social hierarchy.

This is irrelevant. Chait isn’t interested in the left accomplishing its goals, not in the sense that he shares their goals and whinily feels that they’re keeping him out of the club. Chait, at best, sees his role as a gatekeeper. The next wave of left-progressives has to persuade him–as a designated TNR-trained guardian of the neoliberal–that they might have some small good points. He might take them on as his own, maybe continuing to pretend they have nothing in common–or he might stick to his guns until the day he gets knocked off his pedestal (or voluntarily retires). He doesn’t think the left might expand or have allies: he thinks they might hone their argument so as to appeal more effectively to Jonathan Chait, himself.

I like Popehat’s discussion of related issues better than Chait’s.

He brought up, though he did not name, Shanley Kane, founder of Model View Culture

You mean co-founder of MVC.

The article is actually about how his feelings got hurt by people who say mean things on the internet

As with John and his deep personal knowledge of the motives of any and all men who sit with their knees apart on public transit, you have a remarkable knowledge of what Chait was really thinking. This is a common rhetorical dodge: don’t address the particular arguments or examples, attack unstated motives that you impute. Even Greenwald, who says that he is concerned with issues and not individuals (and generally is), does a similar thing for Chait’s post.

Amanda Marcotte has made a career of this kind of dishonesty: for example, “Comment 171” wasn’t a description of a troubled adolescence; what Scot was really thinking was “Having to explain my suffering to women when they should already be there, mopping my brow and offering me beers and blow jobs, is so tiresome.”

Other shitty rhetoric, visible here and elsewhere:

“If someone is my group is doxxed or seriously threatened, they are immune to criticism, and anybody who criticizes them is in league with their attackers. When my group doxxes or threatens, it’s only righteous justice.”

“If someone in the “other” group is criticized in hundreds of tweets, that’s just righteous free speech, and saying otherwise is tone-trolling. If someone in my group is criticized in hundreds of tweets, that’s stalking and harassment”.

“The “other” group is identical to its worst elements and actions. My group is a set of individuals, and anything wrong a member does is an isolated incident”.

“Your group’s problems are not important compared to my group’s problems, and therefore not even really problems. My group’s problems may be unimportant compared to other problems, but that doesn’t matter, because reasons.”

#127 TM

JT 114: “Like when dsquared recently described the greek situation from the point of view of a german banker, we didn’t get off on telling him he was an evil person for understanding their point of view. And earlier, when Belle talked about her experience in the Far East where a modest dollar income could afford servants, we didn’t vilify her for exploiting poor people to be personal servants instead of just giving them the money.”

I guess I’ll have to bite. I don’t remember Belle being “vilified” for her remark about servants …. And for the record (and here I’m sure I haven’t missed anything): nobody “vilified” DD for presenting his view ….

You are agreeing with me. Good. I agree too.

#130 Val

SW positive is sex work positive, they see it as a legitimate occupation and form of work for women rather than as degrading/ patriarchal oppression. (I think both sides of that particular argument are right).

I agree with you. Done well, it’s a legitimate occupation for women who do not feel degraded by it. Done badly it is degrading. Forcing women (or men) into it is oppression and could often be patriarchal oppression. So it depends.

Re Jewish bankers – there is a whole context around this which you should be aware of particularly at present because there have been two posts about International Holocaust Day recently.

I cannot take responsibility for MPAV slandering me about that today. That is MPAV’s insensitivity.

If “bad people” are promoting a particular message, it is relevant and you need to take it into consideration.

If bad people provide true evidence, then I will disregard the source. If I suspect they might falsify their evidence then I will look harder than usual for that. How else should it go?

No one has to believe or disbelieve assertions such as ‘there is a conspiracy of x persons’ if there is no evidence one way or the other.

That’s what I say. I said I have not evidence that it is true or false. MPAV repeats that I believe it’s true. MPAV has repeatedly libelled me about this and I am getting tired of it.

“MPAV has repeatedly libelled me about this and I am getting tired of it.”

Again, anyone can go back and view J. Thomas’s posts on this and see if I have libeled him.

People who believe in the existence of unicorns without any evidence are stupid. People who believe in the nonexistence of unicorns without any evidence are also stupid!

Fuck! Couldn’t help myself, sorry.

Back on topic: I really don’t anything needs to be added to Belle’s piece (which—I just reread it—is so excellent), but if I were to pick a few sentences from elsewhere, I would go with the last paragrph of Pareene’s piece:

In Chait’s narrative, left-wing political correctness threatened American democracy once before, in the 1980s. But it was vanquished by a brave man from a place called Hope:

Bill Clinton’s campaign frontally attacked left-wing racial politics, famously using inflammatory comments by Sister Souljah to distance him from Jesse Jackson.

That Chait, in 2015, is still praising Clinton’s “Sister Souljah moment” as a heroic victory in the war against political correctness is telling. What was that moment but the drawing of a party line against expression deemed offensive? Bill Clinton attacked Souljah for her speech. He performed outrage for the sake of identity politics. The attack on a rapper most Americans had no familiarity with was simply part of Clinton’s cynical scheme to signal to aggrieved whites that he was not beholden to the black community. The culmination of that scheme was the execution of mentally impaired black man named Rickey Ray Rector. If that’s the variety of American liberalism that political correctness threatens, please direct me to the local thought police recruitment center.

How about you go on over to tumblr, find the people who are talking about “truscum” and “transtrenders”, and try to negotiate between them.

This is an excellent example of people who have an outsized effect on the landscape of American free speech and politics. Will Hillary Clinton’s campaign survive it? I await Chait’s next article.

148: “she IS,” duh. #whereisthefuckingeditbutton

#138 Lenoxus

Well, here’s the thing. It’s not aways like that. You’re not going to find enlightenment and then be One of the Good Guys and you’re done. It’s an everyday struggle. Good guy today, bad guy tomorrow. It involves a core insight, one that you will still fight even after accepting it, amounting to: Suck it up. My privilege can take it. Just suck it up.

This isn’t like salvation/damnation. It’s more like the Kobiyashi Maru.

So why the hullabaloo about using this word or that one? (By the way, I’m pretty sure Foster Boondoggle is wrong about “disabled” — is usually preferred by disabled people themselves, and phrases like “differently abled”, which does indeed come out of PC, are often seen as condescending.) How can that be a dealbreaker, at least for some liberals?

If your church goes in for intensive self-criticism meetings, that’s fine for you. You can show each other how your enlightenment has farther to go all year, and I won’t mind at all.

But when you choose random commenters on public blogs and treat them like they are members of your church who should know better than to believe what they believe, that’s rude.

I figure it’s fine for you to proselytize particularly when people have shown some interest. And particularly if you stop bothering individuals who say they aren’t interested.

But if you get all upset about people for being themselves, what good is that? Maybe some of them will come into the fold but probably more will prefer not to.

Matty Y gets it:

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/29/7945119/all-politics-is-identity-politics

“The truth is that almost all politics is, on some level, about identity. But those with the right identities have the privilege of simply calling it politics while labeling other people’s agendas “identity.””

“But if you get all upset about people for being themselves, what good is that? ”

Shorter J: “Don’t get upset at a commenter for being himself. His racist, homophobic, sexist self.”

/Oh I think I will J. I think I will.

I think it’s interesting how frequently the point that Chait is a straight white male crying about the arrows shot his way when 1) at no point in the article does he make that case, or even anything close to it 2) would the legitimacy of his case be different if he was a trans black woman? If you yes the point number 2, I think that is getting us somewhere about how we ought to disentangle the arguments and how we ought to evaluate them and what the core of the difference between Chait’s worldview and his critics are. Note: this is not about perception of experience, where that stuff does matter (obviously) but about what the effects of the norms of argument culture are.

Ok, attacks on strawman arguments aside, the other important aspect to Chait’s case concerns whether the (sometimes physical) attacks on protestors and controversial writers are really all that prevalent. I don’t know, I suspect not. But what the article shows that is of concern to me is how these were *defended* by members of the left using second grade French postcolonial theory.

I think this comment by Frederik deBoer is on point about the prevalence, and having been in higher education in America for 10+ years, I recognize this. Maybe others don’t, but I think dismissing it is counterproductive and perhaps intellectually dishonest.

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/

Leaving aside the question of Chait’s motives, I think the issues with his actual argument can be summed up as follows, and I think the summary is pretty damning:

1) He never actually offers up an explicit definition of “political correctness”. In fact, he explicitly admits that the term has become so diffuse as to have lost most of its meaning.

2) Nevertheless, he is very confident that all of the phenomena he criticizes are examples of “political correctness” and suffice to define it implicitly. He feels no need to actually defend this, of course.

3) Furthermore, he is very confident that “political correctness”, whatever it is, is always and everywhere a “system of repression” that has no part in any authentic liberalism. This isn’t just implied, it’s explicitly stated – complete with red-baiting explanations of how “political correctness” derives from the academic critiques of “the Marxist left”, which have infected the authentic liberal tradition like some sort of virus.

4) Chait sees himself as a part of this authentic tradition, which according to Chait can pretty much be defined as “everything that’s good in American history, and nothing that’s bad”:

The historical record of political movements that sought to expand freedom for the oppressed by eliminating it for their enemies is dismal. The historical record of American liberalism, which has extended social freedoms to blacks, Jews, gays, and women, is glorious. And that glory rests in its confidence in the ultimate power of reason, not coercion, to triumph.

In an essay full of dubious points, I think this one may be the most shocking. Any man who has been as many rounds with Coates as Chait has ought to know better than to write this sort of Whiggish nonsense, and yet there it is. It’s like he’s learned nothing at all.

“I don’t think the left-language-police of 2015 is concerned about people using the word “faggot”. That battle was fought and won 25 years ago.”

Hahahahahahahahahah.

/Sob

I stand by what I said and I encourage anyone with questions to go back and look at J Thomas’s past comments on the issue.

However, if you want to tell me J that you do NOT believe that there is some sort of conspiracy of Jewish Bankers then I will apologize, chalk it down to some sort of misunderstanding and drop the issue.

*Note, this offer is not valid if you say that “Hey, I am just raising the issue, maybe their is a conspiracy, maybe their isn’t. It would be irresponsible not to pose the question”

Chait brings the hot take: “Under p.c. culture, the same idea can be expressed identically by two people but received differently depending on the race and sex of the individuals doing the expressing.” Yes. That’s correct, Jon. Can we help you out any more here? I’m sorry your point maps so perfectly onto mysteriously huffy conservative complaints about ‘why can black people say nigger and I can’t? No fair,

Chait’s point doesn’t seem to map perfectly to me, because in my experience conservatives who complain about why black people can say “nigger” and conservatives cannot do not typically want to use “nigger” to express the same idea that black people who say “nigger” use it to express.

J Thomas #106: “People who believe there is no conspiracy of Jewish bankers based on no evidence are … stupid.”

I believe, based on no evidence, that J Thomas does not engage in sexual congress with goats. Does that make me “stupid”?

re the Freddie de Boer link. I have to disagree with his take, and don’t want to be overly nasty, but ….it’s a little overwrought. Does it matter that a group of people in their late teens early twenties are a little dogmatic in their politics ? I don’t see why. It’s built into that time in your life. You’re finding yourself etc
My only problem is with what I will vaguely call the twitter/DC mafia, professional blaggards and miscreants who signal their tribal loyalties through shaming rituals and public denunciations.
But I will leave it vague on the specifics. For effect. And to make my argument stronger.

Could one of the moderators please create a post just for J. Thomas and MPAVictoria, so that they can sort out their tiresome little tussle once and for all in its comments section and won’t pollute other parts of CT any further. Thank you.

Because I went to and taught at the University of Michigan – Back In The Day, long before Chait attended, which was in turn long before the current kerfluffle – I tried to sort out the Omar Mahmood incident(s) a bit, which turned out to be a bit more complicated than I thought.

The Michigan Daily is an independent student-run newspapers that has been around forever; it is generally perceived to be left-leaning, but more accurately seen as simply inconsistent (which student papers, with their regular staff turnover, tend to be, and more power to them). Some twenty-odd years ago rightists established the Michigan Review as an (independent) counter to the MD; fair enough. (Curiously, Chait does not mention the MR by name, which contributed to my confusion.)

Mahmood wrote for the Daily, but in this case the article that got him in trouble was published in the Review. It caught a lot of flak – a bit much, for my taste, but then I’m old and YMMV. One aspect of this was the vandalism and verbal abuse from unknown perpetrators: reprehensible, but not way out of line of campus exuberance, I fear. Far more damage is done in general after a big football win. At about the same time the Daily called Mahmood in, and, as we have the (incomplete?) story, fired him when he refused to apologize. They cited a bylaw (“obscure,” say his defenders, but that’s probably redundant, since most bylaws are obscure) prohibiting anyone writing for both publications at the same time. My guess – and it is purely that, I stress – is that either the editors of the Daily didn’t know he was also writing for the Review, or didn’t think it was a big deal until he made it a big deal by his provocative essay.

All of which, IMHO, makes him much less of a martyr than he has been portrayed in some quarters. He wrote a piece that made some people unhappy, and they “criticized” him forcefully (and presumably illegally, but not dangerously). He also called attention to the fact he was straddling two camps, against the rules (the obscure bylaw), and lost his place in one camp because of that. The University, as such, does not seem to have played any part in this; we cannot rule out the Hidden Hand of Devious Deans, but the Daily has such a reputation for outspokenness over the many years that I can’t believe in any larger conspiracy remaining hidden.

So – he offended people, and suffered the consequences from his peers: some excessive, some just in the way the world turns. (Surely many of us have lost assignments or possibilities – it wasn’t like an actual “job” – for as little reason.)

Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.

@dn

“Find someone of actual influence who expresses such a position, and argue it against them. Attack an actual argument, not an ill-defined social “phenomenon”.”

But he does! Over and over again. MacKinnon is just one such example when he quotes her as saying freedom of speech is zero-sum and political opponents of the left should not have freedom of speech. You can say the phenomenon of policing politically incorrect speech is ill-defined, I think it is very, very clear in the article from the examples he cites and quotations he draws from what he means.

Again, none of these are arguments in response to his central thesis, none of the stuff in this thread is. Chait is a straight white male, Chait was wrong about Iraq, Chait complains too much, Chait advocates censorship of the far left, etc. All of this is either completely wrong or totally irrelevant. Why not engage with the substance of his argument?

“the point is that Chait’s “argument” here is mere red-baiting: he attacks not the critique itself, but its source.”

No, he actually gives warranted arguments (that you may disagree with) about why the phenomenon he describes is detrimental to a public argument culture. He then describes a parallel between the two treatments of political opponents (Marxists and “the modern far left”). He then cites advocates making that plain. He doesn’t even say they are the same, and even if he did, he most certainly warrants the argument he is making in ways that are completely unconnected to that.

127: most tellingly you omitted to mention that the esteemed host DD banned no fewer than four commenters from his thread (although he didn’t actually enforce all of the bans), none of whom had violated CT’s code of conduct, merely for disagreeing with him

Since this is being repeated enough to become history, for the record and I was involved in that thread each of these comments contained something more than disagreement but something that could be construed as a personal attack on DD. I paid attention because I wanted to participate and believe DD might ban me for saying “boo.” Or not, sometimes I think I have been grandfathered in at CT as house crank.

John Halasz ended his comment:”I’d rather take my commentary on Greece’s economic condition from Yanis Varoufakis, who likely got elected yesterday, than from Daniel Davies.” and got banned. The other banned commenters were worse.
So no, I would not say “banned for disagreeing.” I leave other things I could say unsaid.

And the Tiger Beatdown discussion linked at 132 is very instructive and recommended.

Can we use “call out culture” instead of “Political Correctness” for the remainder of the thread? It would make it more relevant and I hate nostalgia.

“Find someone of actual influence who expresses such a position, and argue it against them. Attack an actual argument, not an ill-defined social “phenomenon”.”

But he does! Over and over again. MacKinnon is just one such example when he quotes her as saying freedom of speech is zero-sum and political opponents of the left should not have freedom of speech.

Can you do me a favour and list the persons in their order of influence? Is MacKinnon at the top of the heap?

dn:

PC is a commie idea, with intellectual roots among the enemies of “liberalism” (another ill-defined term), therefore it is incompatible with “liberalism” and hence illegitimate.

One funny thing about this argument is that among liberals, Marxists and their kin are esepcially likely to deride “identity politics” (which is usually a key part of PC, if anything is) as a distraction from the important causes that should unite the proletariat. There’s an insult for them, crafted by more identity-minded liberals: “brosocialists.” (As in, frat boys are “bros”.)

J Thomas:

But when you choose random commenters on public blogs and treat them like they are members of your church who should know better than to believe what they believe, that’s rude.

As long as we stick with the church analogy: Maybe the so-called PC attitude which is said to be so off-putting should be understood as a core doctrine of sorts. One can negotiate some things but not others; Paul took circumcision out of Christianity mainly to get more converts, but he wouldn’t have dropped to monotheism requirement so that polytheists could comfortably join. (Of course, there are plenty of polytheist Christians and there are plenty of liberals who think PC is a bunch of baloney, but this doesn’t mean gatekeeping is inherently bad.)

And the truth is, way more of us do approach conversations in good faith. Heck, that Cumberbatch example mentioned by Cian has a perfectly happy ending: He apologized reasonably well and that’s it. He’s not consigned to months in Thought Police Prison. Should no one have said anything about it in the first place? Just let it hang in the air? That would be unfair to him, like not alerting him to a smudge on his forehead.

Howeer, people just get tired by the same repeated bad-faith (or more often, totally-uncaring) lines of argument about this stuff, so sometimes they vent. And those of us without privilege (which doesn’t really include white male me) are especially entitled to that venting.

The seeming damned-if-you-do-or-if-you-don’t phenomenon I’m describing, which looks so unfair to someone on the brunt of wrong-language-policing? That’s what it can be like to live in an underprivileged group. Whether it’s women are told to blame their lower income on insufficient aggressiveness and then to blame their lack of promotion on being pushy, or black men who are shot for not complying with police or for complying too quickly, or trans people who have to either conform perfectly as their assigned gender, or pass perfectly as their true gender, no in-between allowed.

And don’t just say that’s life. Yes, everyone has to balance things, but the need to do so is not remotely evenly distributed.

bob 176, this is just grotesque. You are seriously saying that “I trust A more than X as an authority on the topic of Y” constitutes an impermissible personal attack on X? And then there are people here complaining about the “PC police”. Can it get any more grotesque? Also, you are free to explain how I “personally attacked” DD.

The comment didn’t really warrant a reply but it’s actually on topic. Witness the work being done by the wording “could be construed as a personal attack” . That is precisely the point – it apparently doesn’t matter whether there was in fact a personal attack, nor does it matter who attacked whom (for example is the attacker powerful enough to actually harm the attacked). Now the beauty of the PC meme is that when women and minority people make that kind of argument – certain speech isn’t legitimate disagreement, it’s an attack on the dignity of actual people who tend to be on the low end of the social power spectrum – then that is derided as PC run amok. But then Chait et al. turn around to claim that the PC discourse (“public shaming” etc.) itself is impermissible. So from the premise that “they try to suppress speech” Chait et al. manage to get to actually calling for suppressing speech. But the illiberals are always the others.

No, they really don’t.

Because coalitional purity > political power. Ralph Nader 2016!

Well, just to expand a little, when “Freddy the Bore” is being cited as a worthy source, we know the shark hath truly been jumped.

All Bob is saying is they were banned for slightly aggressive/confrontational tones, and were rude. To a point. Which is correct.
He’s not adopting any position on the rights or wrongs of the banning. Afaict.

Flemming: No he doesn’t. He names MacKinnon, yes, but he doesn’t argue against her. He merely offers a few selected, decontextualized quotes of hers (which appear to say nothing I would disagree with), mentions some actions taken by a few of her students (with no evidence that she ever told them to do so or was associated with their actions in any way other than being their teacher), mentions that she taught at a university that tried to implement a speech code more than 20 years ago (again, with no mention of any actual specific role she took in support of this) and acts as though this suffices as a refutation. It does not. It’s guilt-by-association at best, and it’s bullshit.

By the way, since we’re talking about Freddie DeBoer, I would just mention that the classic DeBoer vs. Sady Doyle exchange from a few years back makes an excellent case study on precisely this issue. Doyle was extremely cruel to Freddie, and said a lot of things I would never endorse – nevertheless, if you ignore all the nasty jokes and invective and focus on her actual substantive critique, I think any honest observer familiar with DeBoer’s online record would find little to disagree with. The lesson: “being right” and “behaving appropriately” are two different things. People should strive to do both. But people should also strive to recognize that failing at one doesn’t say anything about your success at the other.

#181 Lenoxus

Maybe the so-called PC attitude which is said to be so off-putting should be understood as a core doctrine of sorts.

Yes, I think so. If you’re having a service in your church and somebody barges in and starts saying that obviously there are many gods, it makes sense to show him the door.

But if you’re trying to get signatures for a political petition in public — say about net neutrality — and you won’t talk to him until he agrees that polytheism is only for poopyheads, that’s one signature you probably won’t get. Maybe there will be a separate petition for polytheists.

The time to enforce public PC standards is after you have more than 90% support. Then you can just sort of loom over people and they’ll get the idea. When you don’t have a solid majority, then you mostly just reduce the number of people who’re willing to talk to you. Which doesn’t help you get to 90%.

Anderson, Adam, William, Temporary Name, thanks for the compliments. I kind of think Val @ 5 is the best comment in the thread though.

including some of the commenters here

Maybe (I’m sure it might describe a lot of people, in one way or another, but I’m not certain which ones here you have in mind. Anyway, it wasn’t my intention.

#192 DN

The lesson: “being right” and “behaving appropriately” are two different things. People should strive to do both. But people should also strive to recognize that failing at one doesn’t say anything about your success at the other.

“It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.” Niels Bohr

Ronann 190: “All Bob is saying is they were banned for slightly aggressive/confrontational tones”

No, that’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying what I quoted, do I need to quote it again? What for? We wouldn’t have to discuss this if it weren’t for Bob himself bringing it up but if we do have to discuss it, can we at least discuss what is being claimed and not something else.

#202 b mcm: Qwertyist.

Flemming at 175 asks us to engage with the arguments. How about we engage with empirical reality? For example, from Flemming:

“[Catharine] MacKinnon is just one such example when he quotes her as saying freedom of speech is zero-sum and political opponents of the left should not have freedom of speech. You can say the phenomenon of policing politically incorrect speech is ill-defined, I think it is very, very clear in the article from the examples he cites and quotations he draws from what he means.”

So here’s reality. Catharine MacKinnon is a tenured professor at Michigan. Interestingly enough, one of her fiercest opponents over the years, Gayle Rubin is…wait for it…a tenured professor at Michigan. They’ve said harsh things about each other over the years, but apparently they can’t prevent each other from getting really good jobs.

If Chait is claiming that leftist/feminist call out culture is silencing other leftists and feminists, preventing them from expressing themselves, he is, by and large, with some notable and lamentable exceptions, wrong. Whether he’s wrong because he doesn’t move in those circles, or because he’s lying, or for some other reason is immaterial. What he says about the observable world is not true. (Personally, I think he’s engaging in bullshit, and he doesn’t really care whether what he says is true or not as long as it satisfies his sense of grievance and gets clicks, but I can’t see into his heart.)

I’m a 61 year old white middle class guy from stinking rich stock who hangs out with younger campus feminists working on some problems we care about. There are a couple of of the young people who love calling people out. But most people roll their eyes and get back to work, trying to make things better for women, gays, trans people and others around here. My admittedly limited experience tells me that what Chait says is a major problem is not a major problem, and not nearly as big a problem as, say, liberals whining about not being able to say things like, “Charles Murray is onto something, don’t you think, Ta-Nehisi?”

Bob at 202’s quote is spot on. It’s narcissistic posturing, but very damaging nonetheless.

bianca @197:

Sorry, I didn’t mean to impute any particular intention on your part. That was just an observation I happen to think is incidentally true.

To bob mcm @202 in re Freddie de Boer:

Not on my part, really. The guy just gives me the fantods, so-to-speak. Was only having a bit of fun.

#205 PatrickinIowa

If Chait is claiming that leftist/feminist call out culture is silencing other leftists and feminists, preventing them from expressing themselves, he is, by and large, with some notable and lamentable exceptions, wrong.

How could you know?

How can you know who is intimidated into silence?

On any side?

@200 – Bianca

Well if there’s a cult I’m not part of it. I read him because I often disagree with him, and he occasionally forces me to examine my beliefs. I get why people dislike him, but the exaggerated hate seems ridiculous.

Many left-liberal activists have sought (not entirely without success) to create a climate in which certain views, and those who have ever promoted them, are excluded from the public sphere and decent society. They are subject to no platform policies, should not be employed by universities or newspapers, etc. Possibly a good idea. BUT: if this is to be the case, it does follow that calling somebody a homophobe/transphobe/racist is not a piece of “tough criticism” like any other. If the accusation is true, columns must be pulled, speeches cancelled, tenure lost. So it is disingenuous to say we are not silencing anybody, this is just free speech, cis-white-man can dish it out but he can’t take it. It is more akin to an accusation of a crime. There is a good reason that people are more afraid of their article being accused of racism than of Maoism or imperialism or neo-conservatism. Only one of these sticks indelibly to the person, as a taint for which they must be cast out and silenced.

AB, this is a great comment and spot on. As you imply, it also relates to why Chait’s article isn’t all that great — it conflates 1990s ‘PC’, which really didn’t do this to nearly the same extent, with contemporary internet identity politics which from what I can tell is considerably more toxic and different from PC in all kinds of ways. I think a lot of the things that Belle is saying regarding civility and so forth apply better in the 1990s PC case.

PGD @ 208
If you honestly think that article isn’t a stupid attempt to ridicule feminism (aka “womyn’s studies”) and intersectionality, then there’s nothing much I can do for you. Like he’s having swipes at people of colour (I guess it would be, he’s a person of colour but not one of those silly ones who cares about womyn’s studies and intersectionality and is always getting offended) and disability, but the basic conceptual framework is “womyn’s studies”, hence “left handydness”.

It wasn’t funny when he wrote it! It’s excruciatingly painful when I have to explain it to you!

bob, Cian, I’m certainly not asking for anything that would mean I have to read him. But I don’t think it’s “hate”–much less some kind of continuing hate campaign–to say something mildly negative about a person who’s been praised very frequently here on CT and never, that I can recall, spoken of critically to any real degree. (If there’s some kind of social media thing going on, I’m tempted to suggest that he could avoid it by being nicer to the commenters at his own blog.)

Many left-liberal activists have sought (not entirely without success) to create a climate in which certain views, and those who have ever promoted them, are excluded from the public sphere and decent society.

Could we have, like, one example? Or is that too much to ask?

DN@214: in any sort of real-world case, the only people who genuinely “really don’t know better” are children, teenagers, and particularly naïve or otherwise-unusual young adults. And, yeah, they get treated pretty politely, as you’d see.

But, y’know? If you don’t know that, say, members of the [ethnic] community dislike being called [epithet] … well, no. You aren’t a real person, you’re a figment of a fever-dream.

People claim to genuinely not know, but, y’know? They’re lying.

[I expect that variations on the phrase “how can people be expected to know what other people are thinking” will get banded around, btw.]

@217 Val –

It’s a pretty awful piece of satire, but his targets all seemed like fair game to me. Certainly the reaction was a bit over the top – though no worse than anything else that goes on most campuses.

js@221: see e.g. http://dailynous.com/2015/01/28/students-protest-job-candidate-for-offensive-views/#comments

agreed that this is somewhat of a fringe thing at the moment but it is the direction things seem to be going.

PDG @226: All I’m going to say is this: Charles Schulz never punched down.

@224 dn
You may have a point. I don’t know much about this Chait fellow. And being a Brit living in Europe, I had forgotten about the strength of the paranoid anti-marxist tradition in American conservatism.
But there is a distinction betwen seeking to exclude *an idea* by association, and the exclusion of *an individual* because of something they once said.

@221 js
Are you seriously asking for an example of an indiviual who has lost their job or media platform due to having expressed a racist opinion? I didn’t cite examples because I didn’t think it was controversial, and I’m not against it.

@val
“Or is it that some men get so defensive about this stuff that they actually are incapable of reading and understanding what I’m saying?”

I’m gonna go with….yes.

Some smart men become unbelievably stupid when the topic of feminism arises (esp in all male company, or on anonymous comment boards.) There’s a lovely moment in “Scenes from a Marriage” when the husband, who is otherwise not unintelligent in his pompous way, suddenly starts ranting about the folly of feminists, all the worst cliches and slurs, “imagine an orchestra all on their periods trying to play brahms”. His wife glances up at him with a look of almost tender condescension. “I’m so glad nobody can hear you,” she says.

The only line in the ‘satire’ I thought was funny and hit the mark was the bit about seeing the white-mans-burden look of condescension the kid’s face. It captures well the self-absorbtion of a certain sort of rich adolescent whose first reaction to reading Edward Said is “poor me”.

AB@231: Racism, too, is an idea.

As for Chait’s red-baiting, it’s right there in the Chait piece under discussion if you read it carefully:

The right wing in the United States is unusually strong compared with other industrialized democracies, and it has spent two generations turning “liberal” into a feared buzzword with radical connotations. This long propaganda campaign has implanted the misperception — not only among conservatives but even many liberals — that liberals and “the left” stand for the same things.

It is true that liberals and leftists both want to make society more economically and socially egalitarian. But liberals still hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition that cherishes individuals rights, freedom of expression, and the protection of a kind of free political marketplace. (So, for that matter, do most conservatives.)

The Marxist left has always dismissed liberalism’s commitment to protecting the rights of its political opponents — you know, the old line often misattributed to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” — as hopelessly naïve. If you maintain equal political rights for the oppressive capitalists and their proletarian victims, this will simply keep in place society’s unequal power relations. Why respect the rights of the class whose power you’re trying to smash? And so, according to Marxist thinking, your political rights depend entirely on what class you belong to.

The modern far left has borrowed the Marxist critique of liberalism and substituted race and gender identities for economic ones. “The liberal view,” wrote MacKinnon 30 years ago, “is that abstract categories — like speech or equality — define systems. Every time you strengthen free speech in one place, you strengthen it everywhere. Strengthening the free speech of the Klan strengthens the free speech of Blacks.” She deemed this nonsensical: “It equates substantive powerlessness with substantive power and calls treating these the same, ‘equality.’ ”

Political correctness appeals to liberals because it claims to represent a more authentic and strident opposition to their shared enemy of race and gender bias. And of course liberals are correct not only to oppose racism and sexism but to grasp (in a way conservatives generally do not) that these biases cast a nefarious and continuing shadow over nearly every facet of American life. Since race and gender biases are embedded in our social and familial habits, our economic patterns, and even our subconscious minds, they need to be fought with some level of consciousness. The mere absence of overt discrimination will not do.

Liberals believe (or ought to believe) that social progress can continue while we maintain our traditional ideal of a free political marketplace where we can reason together as individuals. Political correctness challenges that bedrock liberal ideal. While politically less threatening than conservatism (the far right still commands far more power in American life), the p.c. left is actually more philosophically threatening. It is an undemocratic creed.

To summarize: Chait begins by distinguishing “liberals” from “the left”, which is more or less correct as a matter of history. But then the problems start. He associates “liberals” (his team) with the “Enlightenment” defense of free speech, leaving the reader to conclude that those to his left are anti-Enlightenment. He shifts from “the left” to “the Marxist left” – a rhetorical sleight-of-hand that elides the real history of “the left” in America (MLK, for one, was neither a “liberal” nor a Marxist), but has the convenient effect of conjuring up the ghosts of 1968, Vietnam, etc. He then points out that the anti-“Enlightenment” views of the Marxists have been taken over and extended by PC defenders. The cumulative point is to suggest that taking PC ideas seriously makes a person not a liberal, but a dirty pinko. Classic US-liberal red-baiting.

@236 – Telling that he professes to have more in common with the right than the left on free speech, though.

he shouldn’t expect people to throw rose petals on him from the side of the ship as he departs

1) He certainly doesn’t.

2) It’s really sad to see the left just openly resorting to, ‘Well, what side is he on, anyway?’

PatrickinIowa

So your view is that the fact that one tenured UM professor was unable to impede the career of another academic that ended up having the chops to also become a tenured UM by itself defines the “reality” of the extent to which “leftist/feminist call out culture [may or may not be] silencing other leftists and feminists, preventing them from expressing themselves”? Because one particular professor who you don’t offer evidence actually sought to silence anyone didn’t in fact do so in the case of one particular other academic?

Notwithstanding testimony from prominent feminist authors that they feel increasingly reticent to speak in a variety of fora.

Sure, there might be “some” “notable and lamentable exceptions.”

Hell, there might be tons! But who cares! It wouldn’t matter! He’s wrong because MacKinnon and Rubin!

Are you seriously asking for an example of an indiviual who has lost their job or media platform due to having expressed a racist opinion?

No. I’m asking you for instances of people who were “excluded from the public sphere and decent society” (your words), for saying some non-PC thing

The white men in the article have bigger concerns than being silenced – like not being hit by flying objects as they get the mail and keeping their jobs.

Once again. Call me simple minded, but I’d like the small courtesy of having one or two actual examples. (I mean, don’t get me wrong. Most of my friends are white dudes, and I do see just how difficult life is for them.)

Some people would question that Hanna Rosin is a feminist in any meaningful sense of the word. Her calling herself that is analogous to the TNR calling itself liberal.

The callout culture debate didn’t start with Chait, nor will it end here. But I think it’s as good startging point as any to identify that there is a structural problem inherent in the design of Internet-based communication platforms to date. Namely, the many ways in which it is possible to rally a large amount of vicious, threatening and overall hostile commenters on any particular topic, and the inadequate ways a target for such an attack can defend itself against it. This isn’t something that’s inherent in any particular ideological corner of the Internet. Rather, it’s a weapon that can be wielded by any group for any reason. A lot of text written on this subject takes the form of “aftermath reports” that catalogue horrible things done to the target of a particular attack (such as the Anita Sarkeesian death threats). Usually, such texts by necessity focus on the details of the attack in question, ignoring instances where “our side” engaged in similar attacks, thus leaving the field open for the opponents to claim “well they’re doing it too”. It seems regulations are in order for governing the use of this weapon. When is it OK to rally an “Internet mob” (as much as I am loathe to use the term, it’s the most common one) to harass, defame or vandalize a target? What kind of targets are valid? How do you minimize collateral damage? These are issues that need to be addressed, otherwise it seems the obvious endpoint is, at best, mutually assured destruction where the only individuals that can have public opinions online are those that can mobilize mobs of followers to defend them, or, at worst, a “post-nuclear war” scenario where people just decide the whole thing isnt’ worth the effort and go silent.

#251 areanimator

But I think it’s as good startging point as any to identify that there is a structural problem inherent in the design of Internet-based communication platforms to date. Namely, the many ways in which it is possible to rally a large amount of vicious, threatening and overall hostile commenters on any particular topic, and the inadequate ways a target for such an attack can defend itself against it.

So the problem is that you want to have a conversation, and at any time your conversation can be disrupted by a bunch of basicly spammers chanting DOWN WITH X!. They have the right to free speech in public, and on a private blog it’s a great big effort to stop them while not stopping interesting newbies at the same time.

There are a spectrum of methods here.

1. DDOS attack. With a large botnet, spam them until they can’t function.

2. Spam attack. With scripts to deliver a variety of messages that more-or-less make sense, publish hundreds or thousands of angry comments that bury any real comments.

3. Manual labor attack. With hundreds or thousands of humans who feel self-justified, imitate the spam attack except by hand.

I can’t imagine any way to stop that. You can slow it down by requiring commenters to register. If they have to register some way that discriminates against bots, that will help with #2 but not #3. If it takes a day or two before the registration completes, that helps with #3 (where people are likely to get bored and not bother to come back the next day) but not with #2. (Because bots have infinite patience.)

Any method that prevents random strangers from piling on, will tend to turn it into a closed conversation that can easily turn into another echo chamber.

Didn’t chatrooms come up with something that sort of applies? Something like, you start out with a public chat that anybody can join. Then if you feel like it, you create an offshoot private chat that’s invitation-only, where the members can explore the issues they want to. You could give other people read-only access to that or not.

For something like that on a blog, you could start with an OP who sets up an interesting topic. Then it starts to spin off discussions where some commenters are excluded, and discussions where only a list of commenters are included. Others can follow whichever discussions they want, and can set up their own discussions where they comment on discussions they are excluded from. When it fragments too much, shut the whole thing down and they’ll wander off to other topics.

Similarly, you could have individual spam filters that let readers filter the comments. So you could filter me so my comments are invisible to you. Of course, that means I get to deliver crushing rebuttals to your claims and you don’t notice but proceed as if you think your argument hasn’t been demolished. (Hey, wait a minute, that already happens a lot! Hmmm.)

About the time the blog gets hit by a whole lot of drive-by disrupters, you have the option to switch to filtering out everybody who hadn’t commented before the disruption, and you can continue.

There’s no real solution though. If you make it private the discussion gets incestuous and inbred, and if you make it public then hordes of locusts can wander in.

I seem to be landing in moderation ,even having comments deleted I think. Is there any reason? Have I broken any rules?

247, 248: So far, one alleged example. Chait’s own examples are weak at best. Given how assiduously the anti-PC-police is watching out for PC police misdeeds, one would think that it shouldn’t be that hard to come up with actual verifiable examples of the actual harm done by PC. In the real world, it is far easier to find examples of conservatives (or even liberals, in the TNR sense of “even liberals”) trying to silence leftists than the other way round. (See Salaita, Nadia Abu El Hadj, and by googling I just came across another potential case, Samer Shehata (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/06/14/prominent-arab-studies-scholar-challenges-georgetown-tenure-decision). The El Hadj case is of course dated and she ultimately won but it is a rigorously documented case of right-wing interests openly crusading to have a reputed scholar fired based purely on her views. To my knowledge no “PC police” equivalent to any of these cases exist, not even remotely. At least not in the real world.

Perhaps slightly off-topic but people wondering whether or not academia is dominated by leftist/PC bias might be interested in this portrait of a University of Arkansas professor, Robert Maranto. You are unlikely to have heard of him. He is professor in a department (Department of Education Reform) that was created with Walmart money specifically to hire right-wing academics in order to attack public education (the Walton millions doesn’t mean it’s not also financed with public subsidies though). Maranto’s own quote: “Without the Walton money, I’m not sure the people on the far right would be here.” No definitely not. Affirmative Action for right-wing academics is increasingly common.

Let’s take your own example of using the word “retarded” in your past. Clearly, you’ve since adapted your language to be more polite and considerate. The premise of Chait’s piece (as I read it) is not that you should go ahead and keep using the word “retarded” because eff all who may take offense. The entire point is that if you stopped using it, it’s likely because someone or some people kindly and maturely let you know that it was hurtful, and they explained to you why. And that allowed you to absorb and reflect and then alter your behavior in a seemingly minor but meaningful way. Maybe I’m wrong, but I hope you weren’t made to feel like an awful, worthless human being at your core because of a word you used. I hope you weren’t driven out of a classroom for it, taunted, or humiliated online. Hopefully nobody attacked you personally and maliciously the way you did Chait in the piece above. Because that is exactly the type of reaction, Chait is arguing, gets us nowhere.

“Seriously, fuck right the fuck off, Chait” — that sure sounds like dinner party politeness to me, Belle, LOL, certainly not an obnoxious declaration of political triumphalism. Anyway, who can imagine Belle attending a dinner party, anyway?

Jonathan Chait, a supporter of the Jonathan Gruber-engineered Obamacare, likely deserves whatever he gets for trying to reason with anyone from the left but his point that political correctness, which is not about “politeness” (as the quote above by Belle shows) but as Chait put it “a system of left-wing ideological repression” is of course entirely correct.

I am proud to call myself transphobic if that means disagreeing with the notion that birth certificates should be rewritten to reflect gender dysphoria decades later, or, in a larger sense, that a miniscule percentage of the overall population (LGBTQ) get to define the vernacular and the social mores that the general public must abide by, under the yoke of academic, mainstream media, Hollywood and blue state Democratic Party reactionaries.

To J Thomas 211: I’m in a lot better to see what goes on than Chait is. Or you, I’ll bet. I don’t see people trying to shut people up in the way alleged.

You’re right, though. I don’t know that it’s never happened. I’m sure it has. But the idea that a person cannot make honest mistakes, or voice dissenting positions while talking to leftists or feminists without being bullied, shamed and expelled is not the predominant idea on the campus I work on. This I know, because I’ve seen people disagree, like,…well…adults.

But no, you’re right, I’m sure it’s happened somewhere. Perhaps in the coven with the unicorns. I don’t think there’s one of those, but I can’t know.

My feminist friends will be delighted to know you’re helping protect them from themselves.

Just want to say, for the record, that I found Brett Bellmore@252 to be succinct and actually somewhat witty, which I’ve never said before. Well done, Brett. (Well done, me, for admitting it.)

Let’s take your own example of using the word “retarded” in your past. Clearly, you’ve since adapted your language to be more polite and considerate. The premise of Chait’s piece (as I read it) is not that you should go ahead and keep using the word “retarded” because eff all who may take offense. The entire point is that if you stopped using it, it’s likely because someone or some people kindly and maturely let you know that it was hurtful, and they explained to you why. And that allowed you to absorb and reflect and then alter your behavior in a seemingly minor but meaningful way. Maybe I’m wrong, but I hope you weren’t made to feel like an awful, worthless human being at your core because of a word you used. I hope you weren’t driven out of a classroom for it, taunted, or humiliated online. Hopefully nobody attacked you personally and maliciously the way you did Chait in the piece above. Because that is exactly the type of reaction, Chait is arguing, gets us nowhere.

@Robert Sieger: When you’ve learned to spell “minuscule” you will be more successful at pretending to be an intellectual.

I think one thing is clear: No matter what Chait and some others may think, Chait is not “…a truly chivalrous knight — who with his steed and single lance and tireless quest for justice and noble action” defends the powerless liberal (potential) allies from evil pc identity-mongers.

That’s one mythological fantasy we’re way better off without.

“I hang with feminists and academics, most of whom aren’t SF fans, online or off, so I can’t comment on whether occurrences in SF map onto occurrences among activists. Having been a fan of SF for a long time, I imagine they produce very different dynamics, but that’s probably because I engaged with SF when I was a nerdy middle-school boy, and I was a different person–and I hope, smarter–when I engaged with activism.”

Well I am a SF fan and you can count me as someone who thinks that the recent changes in the community to become more welcoming to fans who are not white, heterosexual males is a very good thing.

#275 Patrick

No matter what Chait and some others may think, Chait is not “…a truly chivalrous knight — who with his steed and single lance and tireless quest for justice and noble action” defends the powerless liberal (potential) allies from evil pc identity-mongers.

Yes, 100% agreed! Chait is like the boy who cries wolf all the time, who wouldn’t know a real wolf until it ate him.

“Totally agree.”

I totally assumed that you did Patrick as you seem from your comments here to be pretty awesome.

“MPAVictoria, what about what J. Thomas just said???”

Who?

We used to call it “margin envy.”

@Robert Sieger I really shouldn’t, but I figure nobody else is looking at this thread any more (I clicked the “notify me of follow-up comments” box). Your comment has nothing to address. You speculate for no reason and on no basis on Belle Waring’s social life, suggest that those of us who support the Affordable Care Act should not criticize Jonathan Chait’s pronouncements on any issue because he has supported the ACA too, claim irrelevantly and falsely that Jonathan Gruber “engineered” the ACA, and announce your “pride” in suffering from a phobia, which is a matter for you and your therapist. You’re right that I shouldn’t have accused you of pretending to be an intellectual, I should have said pretending to be something other than a troll.