Former basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has taken up a new career as a writer and activist, and he’s pretty good at it. Well, what I mean is that I often agree with what he says, like decrying the failure to call out anti-Semitism in sports. (“Calling out”, though, means just that; it doesn’t mean censorship.) And yet he’s also defended the violence accompanying this summer’s racial protests.
And yes, Abdul-Jabbar is also a bit woke, which isn’t too bad so long as he’s not calling for censorship or other authoritarian actions. Sadly, in his new column at The Hollywood Reporter, where he writes regularly, that’s exactly what he does. He thinks that social media companies should “slap warnings” not just on posts with false claims, but also on posts that “incite violence or are harmful to society.” Who, though, gets to decide what’s violent or harmful? Guess!
Click on the screenshot to read.
The Hollywood Reporter isn’t exactly a high-profile media site, but Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a high-profile person, so I’ll report briefly on his opinions.
He begins by noting that the public often feels Schadenfreude at the downfall of high-profile people, which is generally true. But then his examples include Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, who were rightfully excoriated (and imprisoned) for sexual assault. From them he segues into someone less criminal, Rudy Giuliani, who’s been brought low by his own stupidity, and then. . . . yes, he apparently puts J. K. Rowling in the same lineage:
Sadly, Giuliani is not alone in his stumble from grace. Few are more beloved than J.K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter books make up the best-selling series in history. Yet her anti-trans tweets may not only damage the Potter and Fantastic Beasts franchises, they could end up tainting her entire literary legacy. Even the stars of the movies — Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Eddie Redmayne — have spoken out against her position. John Cleese’s tone-deaf defense of Rowling left many fans bitterly disappointed, tarnishing his reputation.
Note the red flag of “tone deaf”, as sure a sign of Wokeness as the word “erasure”. Unfortunately, Rowling’s comments were not “anti-trans”, but against the notion that transsexual women were exactly identical in all respects to biological women. One can make a good argument, in fact, that Rowling is right in this claim, even though she showed immense empathy for the travails faced bu transsexual women. Just because a few of the woke stars in her movies have criticized her on the specious grounds that she was “transphobic” doesn’t mean that she is transphobic. In fact, she’s not. As for her destroying her own literary legacy, I wouldn’t count on it.
Abdul-Jabbar then goes on to defend “cancel culture” because it prevents harm to society.
It would be tempting to dismiss this self-mutilation as merely the triggering of overly sensitive “cancel culture.” But some of this public braying does immediate harm to the foundation of society. Giuliani’s attacks on the integrity of the 2020 elections, without any substantive evidence, has undermined the democratic process. A post-election poll indicated that 77 percent of Republicans think Joe Biden won because of fraud. Since no credible proof has ever been shown, this opinion can only be held because they practice flat-earther, anti-vaxxer cult-think: Someone in authority told me what I want to hear, so it must be true. Unfortunately, they include celebrities as “authorities.” (Yes, I’m aware that I am a sports celebrity, but I have been writing books and articles about history, culture and politics for 30 years to establish my credibility.)
And indeed, Giuliani’s criticism of the elections as phony (along with a gazillion Republicans), was stupid, and perhaps “harmful” in the sense that it buttressed those benighted folks who wanted Trump to win. But of course there was lots of counter-speech, too—largely by the media. Giuliani was shown up as a loudmouthed moron, and only Trump now seems to think that the elections were rigged. What Abdul-Jabbar is saying, of course, is trite; there’s really nothing new in the editorial except “some conservatives acted like morons and, I think, harmed society, so their speech should be flagged or censored.” As for the last humblebragging sentence, Abdul-Jabbar may indeed be a culture critic, but he’s no more qualified to defend “cancel culture” than anyone else. If he thinks that Rowling is a transphobe, he’s got some reading to do.
Abdul-Jabbar then proceeds to give a litany of conservative celebrities who have embarrassed themselves—at least to us on the Left—with conservative rants or posts: Roseanne Barr, James Woods, Jon Voigt, and so on. (He doesn’t mention, of course, Left-wing celebrities who have said stupid things, because Abdul-Jabbar is on the Left.)
But what to do? FLAG WHAT THEY SAY! And what do you flag? Stuff that, in most cases, is speech protected by the First Amendment, though of course social media sites need not adhere to that standard (though they should).
Social media companies have begun slapping warnings on some messages that are false, incite violence or cause harm to society. But this needs to be done with more consistency and vigilance. Studies indicate that when readers see these warnings, they are less likely to read or believe things. However, as another study showed, there can be a backfire effect in which content that isn’t flagged, even when inaccurate, is perceived as true.
God forbid that some people might like content that, to Abdul-Jabbar, “incites violence” or, worse, “causes harm to society”.
What, exactly, does Abdul-Jabbar mean by “harm”? Apparently it’s stuff like J. K. Rowling’s thoughts on transsexual women, or James Woods’s defenses of Donald Trump. As far as I can see, none of that stuff has either incited violence, and the harm to society that it’s caused, if any, is much less than the harm that would come if you give someone like Abdul-Jabbar the power to censor others, or to decide what speech is “harmful.” Frankly, though there was an outcry over Rowling’s remarks, did she really “harm” society with her thoughtful remarks on transsexuals? I don’t think so. What “harm” did Woods do? He gave conservatives a movie star who supported them. So what? What I really fear is people like Abdul-Jabbar getting their hands on the levers of censorship. And I bet he’s just itching to do so, for he could then, slap labels on all the conservatives or “transphobes” he doesn’t like. In a poorly written conclusion, that’s what he calls for:
Many Americans imbue stars with political and social intelligence they just don’t have. Great success in one field can lead to the delusion that all your thoughts are great. It doesn’t help to be surrounded by fawning people whose job it is to agree with everything you say. The irresponsibility of tweeting irrational and harmful opinions to millions, regardless of the damaging consequences to their country or people’s lives, proves that those stars deserve the harsh backlash. Unfortunately, the long-term result may be that their professional legacies could become brief footnotes to the memory of their collection of mason jars filled with their excreted opinions.
Mason jars? He needs an editor. . . .
Yes, by all means we should speak out against what we think is irrational and harmful. But it’s one thing to label tweets by the President of the United States, and another to do that with the likes of J. K. Rowling or James Woods. The “harm” that the latter folks do is, in the end, to offend Left-wingers like Abdul-Jabbar, who can’t stand the thought that a conservative movie star might actually influence somebody’s opinions.
And of course Facebook and Twitter are free to flag or censor what they want, but they’ve done a damn bad job of it. My view has always been that such platforms should use as light a hand as possible in dealing with speech.
On the topic of content warnings and censorship by social media, this is worth a read:
Instagram is Using False “Fact-Checking” to Protect Joe Biden’s Crime Record From Criticisms.
Good to see Glenn Greenwald got himself a sideline, something to keep him busy when he’s not being Vladimir Putin’s flunky.
🙂
Yeah. I found the Greenwald article interesting in the same way I found Rudy Giuliani’s claims about various election frauds interesting. Well, maybe not as bad as that, but similar.
I really only know Greenwald from the Edward Snowden stuff; he seemed OK back then though I’m happy to accept that he’s lost his way since.
Is Greenwald’s request for evidence disingenuous, inappropriate, illegitimate? Is there publicly published evidence? I’m glad to read it. I haven’t exhaustively searched. In a 12/16/20 NY Times “News Analysis” (where conjecture apparently is perfectly fine), there are “almost certainly” and “there is little doubt” statements by the reporters regarding Russian infiltration of U.S. gov’t computer systems. (I have little doubt that that is so, but it is not true just because the thought pops into my head.) I read through the article looking for examples of evidence supporting those statements. I saw none.
(One otherwise amusingly learns from the article that Biden told Putin in 2011, “I don’t think you have a soul.” Re: Dubya’s looking into Putin’s eyes. Also, that Trump did not do anything about the recent incursion [not illegal] of three Russian warships into open ocean American fishing waters off Alaska. What does the Times thinks a POTUS should do about that – start squeezing more U.S. warships through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, as the U.S. has done for decades? The Times manages not to mention that. I feel – perhaps “almost certainly” and with “little doubt” – that U.S. Black Sea incursions in part motivated the Russian Alaska incursion, though I have no evidence.)
My understanding is that both the governmental and private entities hacked have identified the hacks as bearing the specific earmarks of the Russian intelligence agency SVR. See this WaPo piece. I don’t think the hacked entities can disclose the actual underlying evidence without further jeopardizing their security.
Glenn Greenwald has a long history of carrying water for Vladimir Putin.
Sec. State Pompeo is now acknowledging that the cyber attacks were carried out by Russia, though Dear Leader is insisting it was probably ‘Gyna:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1340333618691002368
Heaven forfend Trump should say a disparaging word about Putin before leaving office.
I love J.K. Rowling’s books, and I’m saddened by the way the SJWs have labeled her a transphobe and cast her into the outer darkness. I have read her open letter, and while I did not agree with all of it, I did not see it in any way transphobic. Her haters seem unable to distinguish between “Biologically male trans women are predators!” and “If we allow anyone to self-identify as a woman, some biologically male predators may take advantage of this by falsely identifying as trans women in order to gain access to victims.” Also, what makes me sad is that, being in academia, I could never openly say what I just wrote here without being accused of erasing people’s lived experience, making people unsafe, etc. Sigh.
I’d wager that most of Twitter noise brigade haven’t read Rowling’s post in response to being labeled a transphobe. They simply take it as received wisdom and accepted fact that she’s a transphobe and there’s no argument one can make to the contrary.
The dogmatism is frightening.
Is there any other marginalized group which considers people “phobic” and “hateful” if they disagree with a proposed explanation for why they exist? I can’t think of any. And yet that’s the real crime presumably committed by Rowling. She does not accept the existence of an innate gender identity.
Yes exactly.
And yet the woke themselves do not accept the existence of an innate racial identity. Here in Canada, one can have a feeling of belonging to an indigenous group, but if you become just a little bit famous and claim to be indigenous then other indigenous people will ask to see your papers. And who knows – maybe that’s a good thing? Protecting the brand etc.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/michelle-latimer-kitigan-zibi-indigenous-identity-1.5845310
I think it’s more that she doesn’t accept the erasure of a biological sex?
They’re connected, in that gender identity is supposed to replace sex as a class, and protected characteristic.
Gays. It’s PC to believe that they are caused by adaptive genes, because this does imply their sexual behavior is no choice and no mental illness.
Yes sure it’s PC but not just PC. There is a lot of observation of same-sex attraction and same-sex sexual activity in other primates and in other animals, so variation in same- versus opposite-sex attraction in humans seems to be a typical and real feature of human sexual behaviour shared with other species.
OTOH, there is no evidence that any other species includes individuals with an innate gender identity that’s different from the biological sex of the individual. There could be trans chimps or bonobos (or other species), but there’s no evidence for it. That evidence is limited to humans. So that seems to leave open the possibility that the existence of a trans identity is not an evolved trait in humans and is instead something else. Lots of possibilities for what that “something else” might be. I’m agnostic about the mental illness hypothesis.
I am aware that homosexuality exists in other species too. But (for humans) its low heritability suggests that it is mostly caused by something in the prenatal environment. And some genetic evidence indicates that it correlates with higher mutational load:
> At one point, he flashed a chart showing an overlap between genes associated with same-sex encounters and those linked to mental health conditions, including depression and schizophrenia. https://www.wired.com/story/how-earnest-research-into-gay-genetics-went-wrong/
This is no subject you can freely investigate at a place like Harvard. Too much politics involved. Channeling my inner James Watson, I do wonder what would happen if a medical treatment could prevent homosexuality. Would there be attempts to outlaw it?
I do not view trans identity as all too different from same-sex attraction. It’s more rare, for sure. But neither does require a purpose to exist (anymore than the ~10% of Westerners who are sterile) and whether one labels them as mental illness depends on one’s values.
“Male sexual orientation is moderately heritable (30~40%), but is multifactorial, with evidence of multiple genetic and environmental contributions, via family studies6,7,8,9,10,11, twin studies4,12,13,14,15,16, and segregation analyses8,10,11,17.”
Sanders, A.R., Beecham, G.W., Guo, S. et al. Genome-Wide Association Study of Male Sexual Orientation. Sci Rep 7, 16950 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-15736-4
Heritability of 0.3 to 0.4 is not low; few traits so closely associated with fitness show such high heritability.
Sanders is at the University of Chicago, so not Harvard but considered pretty good around these parts. I didn’t look up the other authors.
I think there is a spectrum of sexual preference, but where one fits on that spectrum is largely determined genetically (and, perhaps to a lesser extent, by environment) — which is to say they have no more “choice” about the matter than anyone does about anything in a deterministic universe.
Are you suggesting that gay people ARE mentally ill?
Yes, but if someone had no problem with people being gay, thought there was nothing wrong about it, showed no hostility — yet wasn’t convinced it was genetic, believed it was environmental or a matter of preference or choice — they wouldn’t be considered homophobic.
People would of course argue that they’re mistaken in their conclusion, but I don’t think they’d assume they were consumed by irrational hatred and fear.
Recently, the boss of the UK’s Football Association had to resign after saying this about soccer players coming out as gay:
“The real issue is once you run out in front of 60,000 people and you decided on Monday that you wanted to disclose your sexuality – and I would never pressure anybody to disclose their sexuality – what I would want to do is to know that anybody who runs out onto the pitch and says, ‘I’m gay. I’m proud of it and I’m happy. It’s a life choice, and I’ve made it because my life is a better place’, I’d like to believe and I do believe they would have the support of their mates in the changing room.”
In a sane society that would be considered to be supportive remarks. It was instead regarded as “homophobic”.
Interesting.
I suspect, though, that gay men themselves would have more diverse opinions on that. That’s partly because being gay is defined as same-sex attraction. It isn’t defined as “same-sex attraction caused by genetics.” Any cause X could be put there and the core definition stands. Whether someone hates or fears same-sex attraction is going to indicate homophobia.
They’re more likely I think to worry that the UK boss’ belief will give fuel to actual homophobes and inspire conversion therapy than they are to consider the UK boss himself to be homophobic. Therefore, I’d predict split opinions.
With transgenderism, however, the modern version which collapses the theory of why Trans people are trans into the definition of transgender makes a disagreement on cause (that it’s not innate and genetic but rather socially or psychologically constructed) an automatic rejection of the people. TRAs will almost uniformly view someones belief that a transwoman is a perfectly fine example of a male who defies the imposed restrictions of gender and deserves all human rights as transphobic: irrational fear and hatred of a group, one that rises to the level of a phobia.
Giuliani didn’t do “harm” to the nation with his ridiculous suits; at best, ginning up a fake legal case in order to throw red meat to the base is merely unethical. Trump did (an AFAIK, is still doing) harm to the nation by not sharing information and coordinating with the incoming Biden administration, because that has an actual impact on the incoming administration’s ability to hit the ground running on a variety of issues, not just (but maybe most importantly) the pandemic.
The issue of private-but-so-popular-they-are-practically-public data streams, such as facebook and twitter and the like, is one I think we’re really going to be grappling with for the next decade or so. There are many complicating factors – private corporate right to manage their own content, the potential for skew and misinformation – both accidental and intentional – questions about when something becomes a public forum even if that is unintended, what it means for the 1st amendment when most of our speech and political discussion is not happening in technically public fora, etc. I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m pretty sure giving private corporations the exclusive, arbitrary, and unregulated right to censor speech on their platforms is probably not the best one.
If anything, the lawsuits have helped reassure people that the legal system still works, and we can point to their near-100% failure as evidence that this alleged fraud didn’t occur. Not that evidence sways the Trump cult, but it will at least be part of the historical record.
Even those in the Trump cult who are aware of the court cases just think that means the judges are part of the Deep State arrayed against their Dear Leader.
I agree about the complicated issues around “private-but-so-popular-they-are-practically-public data streams”. That’s a good way to describe big social media companies.
I’ve come to think of “skew and misinformation” as a kind of public nuisance, like a factory that makes useful things to sell but also lets its production trash spill out into the street. Forcing the factory to limits its impact on the public square is not censorship, it’s just insisting that having a public discussion about what’s useful and what’s waste is inherently part of having both private production of goods and a public space in which people can enjoy those goods.
Reasonable people can discuss where to draw that line, and government can set policies that distinguish product from trash, without infringing on anyone’s individual rights to expression. If an individual doesn’t like that Facebook is limiting his ability to throw QAnon trash into the street, that individual can move his QAnon production into his own garage at home instead of insisting that the Facebook factory must give him a facility to generate that trash and then help him spread it all around town on his behalf.
Sorry if that seems like a strained metaphor. I’ve been thinking about factories since the post earlier this week about Drosophila experimental genetics and the Robert Kohler book. That post reminded me about the old factory metaphor about the different approaches of biochemists versus geneticists to understand organisms & how they work. Jerry has probably posted it in the past. There are versions of the story all over the internet, this is just one link
http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/~smaloy/MicrobialGenetics/topics/genetics/doug.html
The original is by William Sullivan, from the Genetics Society of America Newsletter, April 30 1993.
Trigger warning: all the characters are men, their names imply they are white, one of them is wealthy; also some scenes of mild bondage.
“…and only Trump now seems to think that the elections were rigged.”–Sadly, a number of Americans also think the elections were rigged, and that is very dangerous to our nation. No amount of evidence, or lack of evidence, will sway people like that.
Angry, shouting armed supporters are storming their local state capitals and election offices demanding Trmp should just win. The reason doesn’t really matter. And he doesn’t even have to be involved in his own coup, he has people for that.
I definitely get the vibe from Trump that the coup wouldn’t interest him nearly as much if it didn’t involve making GOP politicians bend the knee. He doesn’t want to, say, declare martial law himself but he’d be completely behind someone else doing it.
I guess on a counting scheme of “one, two, three, many” part of that claim might be technically correct.
I can’t see Cleese giving a flying dead parrot about what any of these people say who think he’s tarnished his reputation. He’d probably just fart in their general direction and then taunt them a second time.
😅
Exactly. Cleese’s most recent one-man show was titled “Why There is No Hope.”His most regular targets on Twitter are Trump, the British press, and the woke.
As he said recently, “should we be constructing ethics about what can be said and what cannot be said judged by the standards of the most touchy, fragile and least robust people in society?”
I feel that I can safely assure the ex-basketball player that people will be admiring Cleese & cronies’ insights into human nature and behavior long, long, loooong after his entirely derivative stint as a cultural windsock has been forgotten.
Kareem knows not of what he speaks. He wants censorship by the platforms in completely the wrong way. He does not seem to know the difference between truly harmful propaganda on the internet and just someone’s opinions. And in some cases he even gets that wrong. The Facebooks of the world need regulation to eliminate damage to society such as massive messaging by foreign actors into our election. Opinions by celebs is not part of the real problem. In some ways Kareem is similar on a smaller scale to what Lindbergh did prior to WWII. He became an anti-war person and also, because he got to see first hand, what the Nazis were doing with industries and airplanes in Germany he was sure that the west did not stand a chance. Then his really big mistake was making speeches about it. The mistake increased when he thought is was a good idea to speak out on who he blamed for the let’s go to war crowd. Like Kareem, Lindbergh would have been well served to keep his mouth shut and learn. The celebrity overtakes these people and they think they know what they are talking about when they do not.
Kareem should have written a shorter article:
It’s a shame that Kareem used his achievements in one area to spread ignorance in another.
“Great success in one field can lead to the delusion that all your thoughts are great.”
Guess who wrote that? Kareem.
Right. Censor half the country? He forgot to ban books and make blacklists. Oh, someone else is doing that for him. And what happens if you succeed in officially silencing half the people?
Boxed out of the system, are they going to behave? Not likely.
Think about the end results of your line of thinking before you advocate for it.
Bring people into the discussion. Don’t push them out.
It’s hard not to like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a person. He seems like a really nice guy and has accomplished a lot in his life. Still, he has always come across to me as an intellectual lightweight. He’s more touchy feely than deep thinker. He says:
Someone needs to tell him that there’s no way anyone would have given his books and articles a second glance without him first being an adored sports star.
“…only Trump now seems to think that the elections were rigged.”
Ah, if this were only true, but it is not the case. One could argue that most of those Republican state attorney generals and the more than half of the Republican caucus in the House that agreed with the Texas suit against some blue states that the Supreme Court rejected did so to placate Trump rather than actually believe that the elections were rigged. Even if this is true, some do believe it and those who don’t represent a threat to democracy, particularly the bedrock of a democracy – free and fair elections.
But what about the Republican masses? A recent article states: “More than half of Republican voters either believe President Donald Trump actually won the 2020 race or aren’t entirely sure who did win, according to a new survey by researchers from Northeastern, Harvard, Northwestern, and Rutgers.”
So, if only Trump believes that the elections were rigged, he could be ignored as the raving lunatic that he is. But, his sycophants and his cult either repeat or believe every one of his lies. This is the most insidious of the many Trump legacies that our country may take decades to overcome.
https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/12/11/who-won-the-2020-presidential-election-joe-biden-or-donald-trump-depends-whom-you-ask/
Difficult subject . I do not know if this is a personal issue or a reliable representative sample, but I am surrounded by a lot of people who believe anti-vaccination theories.A very big problem.To a large extent.
I believe this is the dark reverse of freedom of speech on the Internet.Which attracts lunatics and pseudo-scientific shamans.
Another problem is deliberately created conspiracy theories to exercise power such as QAnon.
It’s good that there is no real double circulation of information on earth, it’s good that there are no taboos in science because it would be very dangerous on a larger scale.
For example, I imagined people who absolutely must take advantage of anti-gravity (which is obviously a fictional force) (but let’s assume it’s real for a while), but they can’t, don’t develop, don’t know ,as a result of a political taboo. What means everyone dies because they cannot leave their planet..Such a planet, such forms of government was crazy in some respects.Fortunately, this is not our problem. Reliable information can always be found if you want to.Sorry it’s a little off topic.My God ( by the way)how good it is that there are still movie forums where, after all, there is only a discussion about tastes.
Ps.Sorry for my horrible English and slightly chaotic form (tiredness)
He’s the guy who was in Airplane wasn’t he?
So that’s what he did before and what he’s being doing since.
.. been doing …
Yes, he was the co-pilot in Airplane. My favorite line of his was when he told the little boy who knew who he really was:
“I’m out there busting my buns every night. Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes.”
And of course, he was in the Bruce Lee movie Game of Death, in which Kareem and Lee smack each other around.
Remember the GIGANTIC footprint on Bruce’s chest?
LOL. Yep, ridiculously huge feet.
Unless you’re enthusiastically signal boosting whatever the radical idea of the month is, you’re actively causing harm.
We shall see about the “less criminal” part, I suppose. Giuliani is reportedly angling for one of the perhaps scores of pardons Donald Trump is considering handing out before he leaves office. And Rudy needs it, too, given that he’s under criminal investigation in the SDNY, by the same US Attorney’s Office he headed up once upon a time back the 1980s, for his hijinks in Ukraine with his two meatball bagmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.
As for the Hollywood Reporter piece under consideration here, I agree with many of his premises, but his conclusion regarding a remedy leaves me the most disappointed I’ve been in Kareem since 1968 when his name was still Lew Alcindor and he got outplayed by the University of Houston’s Elvin Hayes in the so-called “Game of Century” at a new joint called “the Astrodome,” bringing to an end John Wooten’s 47-game winning streak at UCLA.
Please, Ken. In Ukraine, meatball bagmen are known as kotlety bagmen.
Hey, Ken, question for ya: can you explain how a former US DA doesn’t even know what strict scrutiny means? Is the man senile, or is it possible to hold such a position and not know something that any 1L would?
Rudy? (A District Attorney, or “DA,” is what the head prosecutor is called in state systems such as NY; the federal counterpart is a “United States Attorney”).
Giuliani has hardly ever tried a case, or argued an appeal, himself, and what little courtroom experience he’s had was a half-century ago. He’s been an administrator and politician for nearly his entire career, first as a Deputy AG with Main Justice in Washington, DC, then as US Attorney for the SDNY, then as mayor of NYC, then as whatever the hell it is he claims to be doing now. He’s never familiarized himself with any more legal doctrine than he’s had to, which has been damn little. His career has consisted almost entirely of giving orders and rubbing elbows with patrons and donors.
And now the lion in winter has gone and made a damfool of himself trying to litigate these meritless election-fraud cases on behalf of Donald Trump.
OK, but…none of that explains how a man who was in such a high position doesn’t remember what the words “strict scrutiny” mean, or even seem to remember the term. I…that just doesn’t make any sense. A lawyer who hasn’t practiced for 30 years would still remember THAT.
Wooden!
Yes, “Wooden.” My apologies for the misspelling to the late, great Wizard of Westwood.
‘ . . . got outplayed by the University of Houston’s Elvin Hayes in the so-called “Game of Century” at a new joint called “the Astrodome,” bringing to an end John Wooten’s 47-game winning streak at UCLA.’
I watched that game. IIRC, Houston won by two points (71-69? 69-67?), and a few months later UCLA routed Houston by many points in the NCAA tournament.
Yeah, I watched the game live, too. There’s no question but that Elvin Hayes outplayed Lew Alcindor that day. Hayes scored 39 points; Alcindor, who was coming off an eye injury, scored 15, making just four of 18 shots from the field.
I remember the rematch a few months later, too. Matter of fact, it seemed to me that throughout their respective professional careers, whenever their teams met face-to-face, Kareem always got extra psyched up to outplay Hayes — in part, I think, to avenge his off performance in that one streak-ending college game, played by two undefeated teams before 50,000+ fans, and a live national tv audience, in the Astrodome.
“… a litany of conservative celebrities who have embarrassed themselves…with conservative rants or posts: Roseanne Barr, James Woods, Jon Voigt,” Conservative celebrity Roseanne Barr was an active
candidate for the Green Party’s presidential nomination in 2012, losing to Jill Stein, then she became presidential candidate of California’s Peace and Freedom Party, with Cindy Sheehan as vice-president candidate. The Party’s 2008 pres candidate had been Ralph Nader. Perhaps “conservative celebrity” should be replaced by “celebrity celebrity” in the case of Ms.Barr, and in many others as well.
“Abdul-Jabbar then goes on to defend “cancel culture” because it prevents harm to society.”
A logical error here, unless Abdul-Jabbar is asserting that society should be made up of only people he approves of. Sound a little totalitarian to me.
Of course, there should be content warnings above articles about BLM after the 2016 shooting of Dallas police officers and the George Floyd riots. Any summary of a social psychology study should include a warning about its lack of reliability given how badly the replication crisis has exposed the social sciences. No one should be allowed to watch movies as racist as Borat or Black Panther. And TV shows like SNL who spread fake news should be flagged.
Everyone has the right to say whatever they want to say, however stupid. & the rest of us have to right to ignore them. If that is “cancel culture”, then so what. Tomorrow I am sure it will be called something else.
If I am offended by something, it’s up to me to deal with it, not demand that the culture change to please my sensibilities. We live in a very infantile time.
“Unfortunately, the long-term result may be that their professional legacies could become brief footnotes to the memory of their collection of mason jars filled with their excreted opinions.” – Yes, it’s very poorly written, but I think mason jars is a good metaphor. Mason jars were used to pickle or preserve fruits, vegetables and meats, then stored out of sight in a cool cellar until needed. They were sometimes not needed or simply forgotten there, so that collections have been found long past their use by dates. So bad opinions will be preserved, while good performances become little noted. Many writing, few editing.