On "Cancel Culture"

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Tiassa, Jul 20, 2020.

  1. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    What worries me about "cancel culture" is the slippery slope. It seems like a good idea to "cancel" people who use various types of hate speech, for instance. However, I think that even for those people, there has to be some chance to be allowed back into civil society in the future. People can and do change. Cancel culture doesn't seem to allow much - if any - room for redemption.

    If the aim is to create "safe", "welcoming" environments in which nobody can ever be offended by somebody else's speech, it seems to me that the only way to do that is to censor and restrict certain types of speech. It is only possible to create a "welcoming" environment of this type by actively excluding some people and making sure that they are not welcome.

    Cancel culture might have, at one time, focused on excluding actual Nazis, for instance - that is, actual white supremacists who call for the extermination of Jews, homosexuals, people of colour etc. Are we now at the stage where using the word "fat", for example, means a person can be labelled a "Nazi" and treated with the same kind of contempt and exclusion that would be given to an actual Nazi?

    The end result of this process, if followed to its logical conclusion, is that nobody will be brave enough to say out loud what they actually think, unless what they think fits a well-defined mould of "acceptable" thoughts. This means we risk ending up with a monoculture in which some ideas are approved for discussion while others are forbidden. We can't punish thought crime yet, but what if that becomes possible in the future?

    It is not the case that all ideas and opinions are equally valid. Some ways of living our lives are demonstrably better than others, for everyone. But I am wary about people who are more interested in punishing others for having the "wrong" opinions than they are about having discussions in which somebody might just change their mind about something.

    One other thing: everybody makes mistakes, at some time or other. How should we deal with people who make mistakes? What about people who, through lack of knowledge or forethought, say something that offends others - perhaps deeply - but later are honestly sorry about what they said? Will the Twitter lynch mob be willing to forgive and forget? Or is it once cancelled, forever cancelled?
     
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  3. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Those are valid points, James - can you name one or two people (celebs, politicians, etc) for example, who've ''made mistakes'' and were ''canceled,'' yet (in your opinion) deserve a second chance?
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2022
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  5. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Sticking with calling a fat person fat what happened to the concept of "truth being a defence"?

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  7. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Cancel culture is why South Park is enjoyable.

    I posted the Wheel of Fortune episode somewhere but I'll just post it again.





    They're in season 26.

    What if we encounter an alien civilization? Whet if they're like a Honey Badger's personality? What if they have resources -this world revolves around money not a specific culture.
     
  8. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    In a world where everyone is home schooled or attends private schools, I wonder if any society is "welcoming" enough for such sensitivities?
     
  9. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    The simplicity dazzles. I honestly have no idea what that is supposed to mean, but something about its apparent parameters tells me more about how you view "cancel culture". That is, ¿Really? ¿"Fat"?

    Okay, then. The discourse on fatness I'm aware of is apparently something else. "The same kind of contempt and exclusion that would be given to an actual Nazi"? This means something to you.

    †​

    More generally, I sometimes wonder about the relationship of your rhetoric to what parts of reality inasmuch as it's all familiar rhetoric, but it doesn't necessarily seem to be attached to anything.

    For instance, you ask, "Or is it once cancelled, forever cancelled?" The thing is, the range of what passes for cancellation is so broad that, while I can't find the endpoint out in one direction, I will before reaching the other pass through, maybe it was Chappelle who had occasion, around the time of his new special being released, to comment on how well cancellation had treated him. In general, the wildly diverse result would indicate that no, it is not always forever. But that's the thing; we come back to what passes for cancellation. Educators driven out of their jobs for the sake of CRT-panic conspiracy theories, for instance, are a different question than a celebrity who doubles down. Nonetheless, "once cancelled, forever cancelled", seems a bit histrionic; your question can be answered by looking around.

    The Twitter lynch mob? That's a wildly diverse question. Two ends of a weird range: Was the Slate Star implosion a matter of cancellation, silencing, &c.? It's a complicated mess, to be certain, but the political undercurrents of what led to what otherwise looks like a self-inflicted silencing only become important because of what they weren't. On the other end, a notorious website might well have met its end in recent days, but inasmuch as the danger its community posed to others was something the site knowingly accommodated, that is a fairly straightforward self-infliction.

    I don't recall everything on the table in the SSC implosion because I picked it up after the fact. But part of what goes on in the cancel culture discussion is that some people have occasion to express an outlook that includes or implies a harmful circumstance for others, and those others, or their friends and allies, might object. There is also what we might call a complicating detail. When Slate Star Codex imploded by its creator's hand, the problem turned out to be that some of his clients who might become aware of his publicly-known nom de plume, and that could complicate and even ruin their professional relationship; it's both complicated and stupidly straightforward.

    This is almost akin to a case you noted last year, the sad tale of Justine Sacco↑, and Bells↑ already made the point, so on that count you are answered: Clearly not forever. But the really weird thing the whole cancel culture debate seems to overlook is a question of general and particular. The Washington Post op-ed↱ Bells cited described Sacco as "a communications professional whose career (briefly) unraveled thanks to what they view as an idiotic mistake that anybody – including themselves – could make"; the column also describes her as a "public relations executive".

    It's a term you used↑, as well; she was "a PR executive", and you even added a parenthetic note highighting that she had "no special public profile". But what you and the op-ed author, Blanchfield, both overlook is something far more obvious.

    Justine Sacco was a public relations executive.

    Blanchfield is not entirely wrong to read the symbols as he does, but more than her symbolic value within a projected empowerment framework, Justine Sacco was a public relations executive.

    Comparison: George Rekers is a psychologist of much controversy; his theses and methods are pseudoscience known to be dangerous to the clients. He even went so far as to start a political organization for health professionals who wanted to deviate from particular parts of science. As far as I know, he was never actually discredited, and remains in good standing as a psychologist. What actually destroyed him, so that we haven't heard much from him in over a decade, was a spectre of homosexuality. But before anyone rushes to his sympathetic defense, remember that it's not a question of being gay, or even hiring a sex worker. Rather, what destroyed the psychologist whose practice sought to disrupt and even quash homosexuality, who started a political organization for health professionals who wanted to help, was being all that and a virulently anti-gay Southern Baptist preacher who hired a rentboy for his European vacation. It's not because he might be gay, or hired a rentboy; it is in particular because he was a homophobic Southern Baptist preacher who used his professional credential as a psychologist to harm his clients, would go on to hire a gay sex worker. It is a particular alignment of factors that discredits him. Compared to any generic discussion of homosexuality or sex work, what harmed and apparently cancelled Rekers was the particular point that such behavior violated any number of particular standards about his particular credential and credibility. The people who wouldn't work with him, before, still won't work with him; what happened is that Rekers lost credibility with, and to some degree even humiliated, the people who would otherwise support and work with him.

    Sacco's might be the sort of mistake that a proverbial anybody could make, but Blanchfield's hint toward accusing hypocrisy overlooks that the proverbial anybody is generally not going to be a public relations executive.

    A certain phrase in common use is to read the room. Justine Sacco was an executive in public relations whose job is to read the room. Inasmuch as Blanchfield considers an idiotic mistake that anybody could make, Justine Sacco's job was to know better than making such idiotic mistakes.

    Oh, and besides, Blanchfield's hint of accusation wasn't really about a proverbial anybody; he was suggesting and mitigating the sort of mistake that particular other people who also ought to know better, i.e., "media types", might make.

    The SSC implosion was the result of the author dealing with a major newspaper as his star rose. It's hard to tell if he just didn't think it through, but he is a mental health professional who spoke roughly of people in general in such ways that might rattle some of his clients. Having his name attached to those writings would, in his calculation, damage his credibility as a mental health professional, and it's simply true that his circumstance did not qualify for anonymity at the New York Times.

    The apparent destruction of KF is in part a result of twittery, but also social media and other comms software, in general. The membership of a website behaved dangerously, got called out, and chose to escalate in response; site ownership, administration, and moderation did not disrupt the dangerous behavior, and is accused of facilitating the problem. The site became too dangerous even for Cloudflare to host, and has been losing its international domains; in at least one loss, a national government has seized the domain.

    It's a broad range, I suppose, and that's part of the point. A theme of self-infliction is important as well. There is an idea that goes, approximately, "Could you please not?" What it means is best understood by considering the idea that "everybody makes mistakes, at some time or other": As we watch what happens next, as someone is called out, it might occur that we say, 「Yes, we understand that you are not [___], but as the question is afoot, could you please not behave the [___s] do, and say what they say?」

    So: "Are we now at the stage where using the word 'fat', for example, means a person can be labelled a 'Nazi' and treated with the same kind of contempt and exclusion that would be given to an actual Nazi?"

    Compared to the fat guy who uses the word "fat" in both work and casual discussion, and also advocates for fat acceptance in society, the idea that "using the word 'fat'", in and of itself, leads to someone being "labelled a 'Nazi' and treated with the same kind of contempt and exclusion that would be given to an actual Nazi", is really, really weird. That is: Compared to the discourse around me, there must be more to it.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Blanchfield, Patrick. "Twitter’s outrage machine should be stopped. But Justine Sacco is the wrong poster child." The Washington Post. 24 Ferbruary 2015. WashingtonPost.com. 13 September 2022. https://wapo.st/3xniMI2
     
  10. LaurieAG Registered Senior Member

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    Like people who don't fit the caveats, 'fat guy' and 'advocates for fat acceptance' that you have specified?
     
  11. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Okay, I tried, but, no, I'm sorry: What?
     
  12. LaurieAG Registered Senior Member

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    Tiassa, in my last two posts (in the past 2 pages) I have identified 2 of your most recent posts where you have either removed text from James quotes and claimed bewilderment or added extra caveats to what James posted and also claimed bewilderment!

    You are obviously an intelligent person so it ill behooves you to continue to use these means, that appear to be at the least concocted straw men or at worst pure sophistry, in this thread to reach ends which appear to be 'win at any cost'.
     
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  13. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Okay, so ....

    Can you tell me what said excerpt has to do with James R's inquiry about "the connection between a certain group of people wanting to burn books and 'cancel culture'"?

    Meanwhile—

    —this just doesn't make any sense. Perhaps it makes sense to you, but—

    —it's also possible that making sense was not among your priorities.

    So, please, take a few minutes with #238↑ and see if you can explain to me what the text you provided has to do with James R's inquiry about "the connection between a certain group of people wanting to burn books and 'cancel culture'", and the prospect of a short answer made long by trying to guess—i.e. "trying to account for"—what part of a very straightforward and obvious point he missed.

    Vis à vis #247↑, I could point you to the fat guy in question, and tell you to take it up with him, but I don't actually think that's what you mean.

    So, who do you think James R is describing in #241↑? What people or circumstance is he referring to, and I mean that isn't completely make-believe, or some sort of discrediting exaggeration, &c.? When he asks, "Are we now at the stage where using the word 'fat', for example, means a person can be labelled a 'Nazi' and treated with the same kind of contempt and exclusion that would be given to an actual Nazi?" do you actually have any idea what he is referring to? As I said, the simplicity of it dazzles, and I'm sure it means something to him, but compared to the discourse around me, there must be something more to it.

    The immediate obvious answer to his inquiry is that, barring evidence to the other, the answer is no. In fact, it is such an obvious answer that we might wonder what he is referring to.

    Similarly, the most obvious answer to mind about your inquiry about "people who don't fit the caveats" is to observe that Nazi suggestions might come up if someone does a bit about fat extermination, but that would be more than simply "using the word 'fat'". Thus, compared to the fat people talking about fatness, including the actual fat acceptance advocates, what James describes is not observable. I'm not going to say that nobody ever accuses Nazi-grade offense, but between johnny serial number reciting an offensive trope and master mgtow taking the time to tell a woman what is wrong with women, well, it's not merely about the word "fat", and it's easy to overvalue the behavioral econ of social media. Or undervalue it, as such; that might be a difference of vantage and perspective. Still, though, compared to simply "using the word 'fat'", there will be something more to it.

    Beyond that, it's true we might pick our way thrugh a question about the lament of the one word. It has a particular history around here, and part of the answer is that it isn't really about one word; there is always something more to it. James is familiar with the lament of the one word, and his inquiry is a specific iteration of the general complaint. Indeed, his inquiry seems fallacious.
     
  14. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Does Cancel Culture *silence* it's target, or simply depower it?

    Like deploying all the fenders on a racing sailboat - it kills the unfettered inertia but doesn't really stop the boat.

    Then again, I may not have a nuanced grasp of C.C...
     
  15. LaurieAG Registered Senior Member

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    Tiassa, lets just say that you reveal much more about yourself and your causes by how you say things, not what you actually say.
     
  16. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Tiassa:

    Congratulations. You managed to post a lengthy response that almost completely failed to engage with any of the main points that I raised in my previous two posts above.

    You honestly have no idea what I was talking about in those posts? Okay, then. Never mind. Perhaps you'll get it at some later time. Meanwhile, maybe you should just observe proceedings from the sidelines rather than attempting to take part in a conversation that, by your own admission, you don't understand.

    Regarding the example with "fat", there was a whole post on that which I wrote and you either skipped or ignored. Maybe reading it might be a good start for you.

    I don't know what you are referring to with respect to Chapelle or the Slate Star. I didn't mention either of those, and you haven't explained what relevance you think they have.

    Regarding Justine Sacco, it is clear that you are not ready to forgive her any time soon for her off-the-cuff tweet that went unexpectedly viral due to some twitter mobster noticing it. Clearly you think that, because of the job she has, she has no excuse and isn't allowed to make those kinds of mistakes. I get it. But we've already been through that case, haven't we? Do you think you're adding anything useful by expressing your personal opinion about it yet again?

    I'm not sure why you brought up George Rekers either - that's another name that's completely new to me. Is he an example of cancel culture at work? It sounds like you think he isn't. If that's the case, what's the relevance?

    Perhaps you're thinking that you can tar Sacco with Reker's brush, so to speak? He deserved what he got (you seem to be saying), so therefore Sacco deserves what she got, too? Because ... there's some kind of parallel between the two? Or is Sacco actually more deserving of censure than this Reker guy, because PR executive? Is that what you're arguing for?
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    We all do this and always have. Your example of not accepting Nazis is one. Simpler examples of not telling someone they look fat in those jeans, or not telling someone they are ugly, are another. Often those are lumped under the umbrella of common courtesy.

    As society changes more things are acceptable. It is now no longer OK to use the term"n*gger" as a slur. More recently words like "faggot" and "trannie" have been added to that. This overall is a good thing I think. Those are changing because we are starting to understand that black people (and gay people, and trans people) exist and have the same rights as anyone else. In addition, now that it's more OK to be black/gay/trans, more people are getting to know those people in their circle of friends, and thus calling someone a "faggot" becomes more personal to everyone - because it's no longer insulting some carciature of a child-preying pervert, it's Keith or Vicki.

    That being said, I agree that both sides go overboard with this at times. Witness the attempt to cancel Disney because a movie showed two women kissing, or the ban on math books in Florida because they are "woke" or the firing of Gina Carano for posting inflammatory political content on social media.

    But those are the extremes. The more moderate "cancellations" where no one shows up for a speech by a white supremacist are, I think, examples of freedom of speech in BOTH directions. Freedom for the white supremacist to talk, and the freedom of his intended audience to refuse to listen. That's the sort of "cancellation" I support, where both sides are free to do what they want.
     
  18. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    I'm already drunk. And trying to get stoned.

    This is something I'm not particular with.
     
  19. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    I thank the term "cancel culture" shoud be canceled an then we coud get back to discussin issues case by case like the good old days.!!!
     
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  20. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I thank U R write.
     
  21. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    That kind of noise is meaningless.

    Let's just get this part clear, then: At what point in those posts were you referring to something real? What I see in #239↑ is speculation and projection about something that isn't real. But, still, let's take a look at a basic comparison:

    If it was something more than projection and fearmongering, then #239 would be something more than projection and fearmongering. Try it this way: You're up to three posts, now, in which you haven't told us what real thing you're talking about.

    Maybe making sense would be a good start.

    Of courese you don't.

    I thought it was pretty straightforward:

    • Nonetheless, "once cancelled, forever cancelled", seems a bit histrionic; your question can be answered by looking around.

    i.e., Answer was known before you asked, see Chapelle, Sacco.​

    Was the Slate Star implosion a matter of cancellation, silencing, &c.? It's a complicated mess, to be certain, but the political undercurrents of what led to what otherwise looks like a self-inflicted silencing.

    i.e., Another example of self-infliction; like Sacco, we will eventually run into the question of why he didn't know better.​

    When you say those things, do you say them because you think they sound good, or do you actually think it through? After all, you did want Sacco's circumstance considered, and I don't see an expiration date on the post. What, is it somehow too late, and you somehow decided that what you had to say doesn't matter, anymore? Or are you just upset because someone disagreed with you? The important, i.e., "useful", point at hand has to do with circumstance and self-infliction; it is not really a question of forgiving her. Your complaints and concerns are so generally stated it's hard to know what to address.

    Do you think what people say occurs in some sort of circumstantial vacuum? Justine Sacco failed at her expertise; that's the issue. And while the Slate Star debacle wasn't quite the same sort of failure, it is a similar consideration of circumstance and self-infliction. When he took his site down, he was correct about one thing: If a psych's patients find out he's badmouthing them or their circumstance online, it would harm his credibility with those clients, as well as the larger network that refers those clients to him.

    Or Sacco: Imagine pitching to a client, "We are public relations firm of great expertise who do not know what is going on in the marketplace."

    In a way, the more fascinating question is, How do you not get this?

    Or we might consider your words: That I "almost completely failed to engage with any of the main points that I raised in my previous two posts above" reads a little bit like make-believe because I really would think the part about how there must be something more to it is kind of obvious. And when you ask, "Do you think you're adding anything useful by expressing your personal opinion about it yet again?" perhaps I might stop and wonder at the words, "yet again", while looking around for my previous remarks on Justine Sacco, so if you already know the occasion prior to #246↑ above, please do point me to them. Still, that seems the smaller detail.

    • What you and the op-ed author overlook is something far more obvious.

    • Sacco's might be the sort of mistake that a proverbial anybody could make, but the proverbial anybody is generally not going to be a public relations executive.

    Yes, James, it might be important to consider that when an executive becomes a liability by doing something that her job requires she know better than, the the first, most obvious business decision that a public relations firm, whose business is to know better, can make is to sever ties with that executive.

    Had she said it in private, James, how many of her fellow executives would have chuckled along with it? Would we ever have heard of it? It's a slender maybe. But part of her job is to know better than to commit acts of bad public relations; given the importance of social media, even in 2014, it is reasonably arguable that she also should have known better than to commit that act of bad public relations via Twitter. Her ouster was a business decision, James, and one of the most straightforward we might imagine. It wasn't just a public gaffe, but one that struck at the heart of what the business did. How do you not understand that part?

    Toward Twitter mobs, see the summary per Spiers↑, with attention to certain distinctions; when she says there is no systemic overreaction, attend the word "systemic". When she suggest inconsistency, attend the words, "regularly and universally". Twitter mobs happen; it's also a business decision to encourage this kind of behavior. Similarly, you might say↑, "vote with your wallet", but might also want to clarify what you mean about that.

    Consider that when Christians voted with their wallets, we didn't call it "cancel culture"; we called it "censorship"; still, the business executives, many of whom were themselves at least nominally Christian, made business decisions to constrain media distribution or restrict sales platform availability, because they were afraid of a large-scale boycott by Christians. It wasn't simply an individual choice to vote with one's own wallet; it was also an individual choice to encourage similar behavior in others, and, moreover occurring within a context of behavioral cult¹, i.e., propagating an obligation. And if that was, say, forty years ago, the period since has seen increased efforts and apparent decreasing empowerment, and the Christianists take every loss of authority over other people's rights as an infringement of their own.²

    I thought the part that said, "Comparison", was pretty straightforward.

    It's been a while↗; it's okay if you don't remember↗.

    I thought the part explaining, "what harmed and apparently cancelled Rekers was the particular point that such behavior violated any number of particular standards about his particular credential and credibility", was pretty straightforward. Same with the part that went, "what happened is that Rekers lost credibility with, and to some degree even humiliated, the people who would otherwise support and work with him". Like Sacco, his gaffe struck at the heart of his enterprise and its credibility. I would have thought that basic relevance pretty straightforward.

    How is this so confusing for you, James?
    ____________________

    Notes:

    ¹ This context of cult is a component of what makes a religion; it is worth noting that the punch and judy colloquial expectation of behavioral compliance appeals to the code component of what makes a religion, which in turn is justified by the creed component, or, more directly, the word "systemic" is at least in play.

    ² This and similar losses of empowerment are integral to the historical arc complaining of political correctness, callouts, shaming, silencing, and, yes, deplatforming—i.e., actual cancellation in particular contexts. But demonetizing a YouTube stream, or eventually banishing that streamer from the platform, was at least as much as a business decision as when they were promoting rightism algorithmically.​
     
  22. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Michael Harriot↱ jests:

    What kind of world do we live in when a global corporation whose goal is to make a $ decides to end a relationship with a partner just because he’s bringing worldwide negative attention to their brand while accounting for <1% of gross revenue?

    This cancel culture has to stop

    Still, the fall of Kanye West is as tragic as it is stupid as it is grotesque.

    I never did finish my notes from earlier in the month, but we got interrupted along the way, and as it happens, looking back, it is true I did not expect the whole episode would go so badly.

    The unfinished post, such as it is ....

    ‡​

    On Yeezy Ye and "Death Con 3"

    A selection of an algorithmically diverse sampling in re Ye on Jewish people:

    Braden↱, who declares himself "based", "occasionally funny", and a "dirtbag leftist", wryly observes, "Kanye's gotta be the first man in history to announce his bid for presidency and then publicly threaten Jewish people within 24 hours".

    Australian satirist Tom Tanuki↱ dryly offered, "can't believe the White Lives Matter guy also hates Jewish people, wow this has never happened before".

    Polysexual author Aaron Apollo Camp↱ suggests, "Barack Obama was right when he called Kanye West a jackass."

    Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY15)↱ scolds, "if you see yourself at war with Jewish people, then you are, by definition, Antisemitic", and shames "enablers like Tucker Carlson".

    Columnist Eric Michael Garcia reminds↱: "Two things can be true at once: Kanye clearly needs people in his life who care about him to help him deal with his mental health. And his tweets about Jewish people are wholly unacceptable."

    Political junkie and jalapeño ranch connoiseur Hadley Sheley↱ considers "Ye apologists" trying to write off "going death con 3" on Jewish people as "just a 'mental health issue'", and resolves, "Fuck all the way off. Bipolar doesn’t make you tweet antisemitic death threats, being an antisemite does."

    Moreover, as Los Angeles-based activist Lady Star Gem↱ pointed out, "just when you think he's done he doubles down & suggests Jewish people invented cancel culture".

    Software engineer Brianna Wu↱ pleads, "Also, please don't blame Kanye's antisemitism on a bipolar disorder. Mental illness does not make you hate Jewish people. It's amplifying views he already holds. Let's not lump people with mental illness in with this jackass."

    By way of counterpoint, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita↱ complains of media hypocrisy: "They have now gone after Kanye for his new fashion line, his independent thinking, & for having opposing thoughts from the norm of Hollywood."

    And MommyBigDick↱ (a.k.a., TwinkDemolisher) raves, "'I'm going death con 3 . . . On JEWISH PEOPLE' gotta be one of funniest things ever tweeted".

    To the other, it is actually true there are people calling for his career. It is hard to say what the end of Kanye West's career would look like, but someone close to him needs to intervene, because, no, Jews and their friends are not obliged to be nice to people who need everyone else to just put up with this and move on. The thing about anti-Semitism is that its targets, its victims, are not allowed to move on. This is an enduring threat, a daily consideration, in American Jewish communities.

    We've seen this before; the failure to confront particular behavior for fear of disrupting a cash cow will only further erode and injure the Yeezy one.

    †​

    Of poets, okay, sure, there might an Ezra Pound joke that goes here. In politics, it might be a Zell Miller joke. They are different arrangements of circumstance, but underlying comparisons of produce to the condition of its production are essentially the same point. There is, of course, a third variation on the theme, which in turn is its own discussion.

    Nonetheless, even if for no one else, won't somebody think of Yeezy? If we are to worry about his mental health, then we might wonder at how the rest of his life spent in infamy as a noncompetent toady who betrayed his community affect his psychological circumstance.

    We shouldn't have to wait until a Jew bleeds for the fact, or even imagining, of Ye's tears. Besides, nobody likes being reminded that they were already told, so we can't expect the totally not anti-Semitic enablers to give any better a damn than being offended that some snotty effete reminded that they were already told.

    And remember, if this was some two-bit punk pizza driver out in BFN, people might not care. But a megaselling pop star is a different question; a lot of people aren't going to like the public discourse around why anyone would keep supporting such infamy, and mostly because they don't like feeling challenged in that way.

    For the record, Defense Condition 3, or "DefCon 3" (see what he did, there?) is advanced readiness, fifteen minutes to mobilization.

    [(end fragment)]
     
  23. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    At the Intersection of What and Not

    Will Sommer↱ tries to explain:

    Kanye has stormed out of his Tim Pool interview tonight after just 20 minutes, after Pool offered him the slightest pushback to his anti-Semitism.

    With Nick Fuentes, Milo, and Kanye calling off the interview and leaving the studio, Tim Pool is left to consider the ruins of his much-hyped show tonight: "It was all hype, and then all nothing.”

    A Tim Pool associate comes on camera to confirm that Milo, Fuentes, and Kanye have left the Pool compound for good. She says Kanye was complaining that he didn't get to talk enough.

    Tim Pool's entourage may lack the ideological nuance required to understand what just happened. After a Pool crony was dispatched to Kanye's waiting car and failed to win him back, they're accusing Kanye of using left-wing rhetoric—Pool says he's deploying "Woke BS."

    So, maybe not quite "Death Con 3"↱, but, still, the summary is that right-wing troll podcaster Tim Pool invited the fabulously white supremacist trio of Nick Fuentes, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Kanye West onto his show, Nick and Milo backed out, and then Kanye walked out after Camp mentioned his antisemitic remarks, so Pool accused Kanye of being woke.

    Remember this, next ye find yeself at such crossroads as Wokeness and Cancel Culture: There's probably a right-winger nearby, and this is what anybody gets for feeding the trolls.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    @willsommer. "Kanye has stormed out of his Tim Pool interview tonight after just 20 minutes, after Pool offered him the slightest pushback to his anti-Semitism." (thread) Twitter. 28 November 2022. Twitter.com. 28 November 2022. http://bit.ly/3Vg0e6F
     

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