Bari Weiss slammed by censorious NYT colleagues for an innocuous tweet

February 15, 2018 • 11:45 am

I’ve long maintained that liberal media like the New York Times and the New Yorker are increasingly tilting toward the Regressive Left. The strongest proof of this is what just happened to New York Times columnist Bari Weiss. Weiss is a Left-wing progressive who’s repeatedly criticized the Authoritarian Left. She’s committed the ideological sins of criticizing cultural appropriation, of arguing that Aziz Ansari was sexually clueless but not a criminal, of calling out the Chicago Dyke March for banning the Jewish Pride flag, and of going after the entitled students of The Evergreen State College. (See my posts about her work here.)  Weiss is a Leftist but refuses to kowtow to the increasingly rigorous standards of purity demanded by the Intersectionalist Left.

And for that she just got excoriated. Apparently Weiss’s sins have been rankling her colleagues for some time, but they had no good reason to go after her. Then Weiss committed a really unpardonable sin. She tweeted this after American figure skater Mirai Nagasu landed a triple axel in the Olympics: the first American woman (and third woman in the world) to do so. Weiss immediately issued a tweet celebrating this achievement, paraphrasing a quote from the play Hamilton:

Well, Nagasu was born in America; it was her parents who were immigrants, and they’re not U.S citizens. Weiss was immediately corrected on this point, and agreed:

But that wasn’t good enough! She had engaged in sin of “othering”: of seeming to imply that Nagasu was herself an immigrant, and therefore somehow inferior. Weiss, of course, meant nothing of the sort. You really have to be poisoned by authoritarianism to read any malicious or bigoted intent into Weiss’s tweet.

Nevertheless, the Twitter Storm began, for social media likes nothing more than publicly shaming people who are make “errors” like this. To me, this was an innocuous tweet, meant to praise Nagasu and not to “other her.”

Indeed, the Women’s March tweeted something similar, but said that Nagasu was the “daughter of immigrants” instead of implying she was an immigrant. Huge difference, right? And look at their tweet. It says, “Immigrants make America great!” But Nagasu was NOT an immigrant! How is this materially different from what Weiss said? It goes without saying that nobody went after the Women’s March.

Since most New York Times writers aren’t allowed to use Twitter to express dissatisfaction with their colleagues, they took to a forum called “Slack”, a group chat site used by in-house media organizations. Then, of course, a NYT employee leaked the conversation to HuffPo (I’m just guessing here, but it’s pretty obvious). HuffPo would, of course, put the right spin on it: that Weiss had screwed up. The conversation calling out Weiss on Slack can be seen in the article below (click on screenshot), and it’s scary how authoritarian and censorious the Times writers were. Weiss’s failure to issue an immediate and abject apology made things worse. (Of course I don’t think she should have.) At least 13 NYT employees were involved in the conversation.

I’ve also archived the article here in case HuffPo takes it down out of the NYT’s concerns.

Just a few excerpts:

Person B: i guess it’s too much to even expect a “we’re sorry you’re offended” apology since asians don’t matter

Person C: (and she’s being untruthful about having misquoted the song)

Person B: i guess you get full twitter privileges at the nyt when you are consistently factually wrong

. . . Person B: here at the times, some people are allowed to make mistakes and offend. others are not ever afforded one chance.

i will no longer remain silent about our hostile work environment just so that it will be pleasant for others

if “interesting” could be used to describe flashbacks of internment of japanese americans

sorry, but I felt that tweet denied Mirai her full citizenship just as the internment did. and nothing will be done because no one was offended! (since we don’t count)

. . . Person J: thank you for bringing up this issue here! I had thought about posting about it yesterday but opted instead to vent privately to other AAPI/Asian-American colleagues because I didn’t know if I had the energy to address micro aggressions and /or defend my right to feel frustrated at something other people might look at as not a big deal. I’m glad you had the courage to mention this!

on a related note, given the heightened political discourse around “free speech” where many people on the receiving end of criticism complain about being silenced, I don’t think there’s enough thought given to the way institutions/organizations/communities

It goes on like this, and the impression it gives is that NYT writers and employees are like a bunch of spoiled and whiny—yet vicious!—Evergreen State brats, bent on forcing Weiss to apologize, on humiliating her, and perhaps even on getting her fired. All over an innocuous tweet! They were clearly spoiling for a fight,waiting to chew up someone who had violated their standards of “right thought”.

HuffPo asked the NYT for a response, and it gave this boilerplate, which is okay, I guess:

The Times is deeply committed to a workplace that is reflective of the audience we serve. We view diversity – of gender, ethnicity, origin, thought and opinion, as critical to our work. And, we want The Times to be a safe and comfortable place to work for all. For that reason, we’ve prioritized training programs and forums to facilitate a constructive conversation around this very important issue.

Here’s Grania’s take, quoted with permission:

My thought is that Bari has set herself up as a major enemy because of her appearance on Bill Maher’s show the other night, as that elevated her voice above what a newspaper journalist typically is able to reach.

Her ideological opponents now must silence her or be forced to address her points; and as we all know, they don’t like to argue their points. They prefer to declare their opponents are toxic/evil/wrong/bad so that people will stop listening to them.

Grania on Weiss’s Offensive Tweet:

Anyone who isn’t seriously mentally incapacitated should understand that Bari’s tweet was one that endorsed immigration in a positive way as well as praised the skater. The attempt to pretend that it is in fact anti-immigrant and racist is blatantly dishonest, and anyone dogpiling on in agreement is basicially acknowledging that they are prepared to lie openly to achieve their goal: slurring Bari so badly that she becomes persona non grata both at her place of employment and as a talking head at large.

Basically, this is the liberal equivalent of lying for Jesus.

I hope Weiss doesn’t get into trouble. There were plenty of people defending her, and of course some were from the Right, as much of the Left simply wants to ruin Weiss’s reputation. That’s what you do these days when someone offends you.

Here are some supportive tweets:

https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status/963461661599436802

It’s this kind of Left-Wing Sturm und Drang about nothing that both amuses and motivates the Right, and I’m starting to think that this Outrage Culture really does drive people into the arms of Trump. If this keeps up, the Official Moron could be re-elected in three years. And nobody with brains wants that.

h/t: Eli, Grania

Michigan town will sell houses only to good churchgoing Christians

February 15, 2018 • 9:30 am

The Guardian recently had a piece on the extraordinary town of Bay View, Michigan, which is located here:

It’s a lovely, leafy town, full of big and expensive houses that look like this:

Source: Mike Barton Photography

The bizarre aspect of this town, unique in America so far as I know, is that only Christians who have a certificate of piety and regular churchgoing habits can buy homes there. And they can’t pass on their homes to anyone who’s not a Christian.

Bay View was originally a “Chautaqua town,” a place where a religious community would hold summer activities, camps, courses for adults, and so on. With the influx of people from other faiths to the US in the late 1940s (especially Jews), they introduced a regulation in 1947 banning the sale of homes to non-Christians and nonwhites (the nonwhite clause was later dropped). The non-Christian exclusion was strengthened in 1986. To qualify for buying a home, you have to give evidence of your piety by “providing among other things a letter from a Christian minister testifying to their active participation in a church.” Catholics were once excluded too, but now apparently qualify as Christians (!).

Further, if you own a home but are married to (horrors!) a Jew, you can’t pass on the house after death to your Jewish spouse, nor even to your kids, who are deemed to be of mixed faith. One homeowner in that situation reports his frustration in the article.

Now, however, a group of current and former Bay View homeowners are suing the community in federal court, claiming (correctly) that the restrictive sales policy violates the First Amendment, the federal Fair Housing Act, and other laws, all by discriminating against those of certain faiths. You can see the lawsuit at the first link below. The Guardian reports:

The lawsuit charges that Bay View Association, although private (some private entities including gentlemen’s clubs or the Boy Scouts, for example, historically have been able to discriminate), acts in effect as a governmental entity, endowed with the powers to police and enforce laws.

As such, the lawsuit claims, it is engaging in religious discrimination in violation of the US and Michigan constitutions, Michigan’s civil rights act and the Fair Housing Act.

Mike Steinberg, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, believes the lawsuit is an “open-and-shut case”.

“This is pure discrimination by a governmental entity. Bay View is clearly one and governmental entities cannot favor one religion over another, or religion over no religion.”

The federal lawsuit is only in its first steps, though, having failed in mediation at the end of January. And under the Trump presidency, with a rightwing-dominated supreme court sympathetic to religious arguments, times feel uncertain.

Well, this is not like refusing to make wedding cakes for gay marriages, which apparently was legally justified as a form of artistic expression that could not be forced. This is not artistic expression; it’s refusal to do business with somebody who’s not Christian, and it’s illegal. It is indeed an open and shut case, and I can’t believe that even under the religious-coddling Trump administration, the courts—even the Supreme Court—could somehow find a way to justify this discrimination. It cannot and will not stand.

As for those benighted residents who still defend Bay View’s policy, their response is basically twofold: you can convert to being a Christian, or if you don’t like the town’s policy, you can alway buy a home somewhere else. They justify the conversion thing by saying that it’s possible for anyone, in contrast to blacks, who can’t change their ethnicity.

Stay tuned.

More calls to ban Steve Bannon at my university

February 15, 2018 • 8:15 am

Posters like this one, or related ones, are now plastered all over campus, relating to the student and faculty movement to disinvite Steve Bannon from speaking at the University of Chicago this fall (see my earlier posts here). I photographed this one, put up by the UChicago Socialists, on a lightpost near the campus. Note that the meeting, which I thought about attending but didn’t, took place at the University Church (not part of the University) right off campus. I wanted to hear if they planned to disrupt his talk.

I’ll transcribe the words at lower left so you can see that this is really a call to deplatform him

The invitation of alt-right ideologue Steve Bannon to speak in our community is an insult to and attack on marginalized people. Does the University care more about the free-speech of bigots than it does about the lives of students, staff, faculty, and community members? Join the UChicago Socialists for a discussion on the intertwined issues of the campus free speech debate and confronting the far right.

Here we have all the familiar tropes of the censorious Left: the claim that his talk (and remember that it’s a debate) is an “attack on marginalized people”, even though we don’t yet know what Bannon will say. They’re objecting not to his speech, but to his presence and impure ideological views. Further they place free speech below “the lives of students, staff, faculty, and community members”, as if Bannon’s debate will somehow threaten the lives of individuals in those groups. Let’s get serious: it won’t. His debate may offend people, but it doesn’t threaten them.

Finally, the issues of free speech and “confronting the far right” aren’t, as the poster implies, alternatives that we must choose between. One can have free speech and also confront Bannon—through counter-speech and peaceful demonstrations.

But that’s not what these people want. They want him kicked off campus. Bannon’s view are odious, but so what? Free speech is for odious views as well as congenial ones, and the UChicago Socialists seem ignorant of the whole history of that idea.

I have to say that I have no patience for people who, when they get offended, act like bullies and retaliate by trying to shut down the offenders. These people are not only censorious, but ignorant. Who will protect them when the censors come for them?

The good news is that there is no way that the University will ban Bannon, for we have the most liberal free-speech policy of any American university—and I’m proud of that. Students are free to demonstrate and write against Bannon all they want, but if they try to block his speech, disrupt it, or shut it down, I hope the University will use the disciplinary regulations recently put in place, and teach them the meaning of the First Amendment.

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 15, 2018 • 7:30 am

My tank is about half full, so again, please send in your good wildlife photos!

I think the readers are getting spoiled with so many good photos each day, so today I’m putting you on a one-day diet. We have but three pictures, but they’re all good ones, and come from reader Mark Otten. His notes are indented; I’ve added the Latin binomials:

Here are a few bird photos.  Feel free to post any you feel are worthy. All of these were taken in various parks in the greater Cincinnati, Ohio area.
Ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris):
Willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii):
Red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus):

A correction

February 15, 2018 • 7:00 am

Yesterday I wrote about a talk at Cornell given by Middle East scholar Dr. Yunus Telliel. The report of his talk in the Cornell Sun was confusing, but could have been interpreted to say that Dr. Telliel endorsed the prescience of the Qur’an in predicting scientific advances to come. Telliel wrote me privately and told me this was not the case, and that the unfortunate Cornell Sun article has now been removed from their website. In the interest of accuracy, I asked him to write a correction to my piece, which you can see here. I apologize to the readers and Telliel for implying that he was endorsing superstition. In my defense, I have to say that the Cornell article did imply that, and that I did question its accuracy.

 

Thursday: Hili dialogue

February 15, 2018 • 6:29 am

It’s now Thursday, February 15, 2018, and National Gumdrop Day. I like only the fruit-flavored ones, and abhor the “spicy” ones. And on Vanatu it’s John Frum Day, honoring the Cargo Cult figure who, sadly, has never returned to the islands.

The death toll in the Florida school shooting remains at 17 but could rise; and the accused killer, a former student expelled for bringing knives to school, is in custody. This tweet from Grania shows the sad history of Trump and his cronies in bed with the gun lobby:

Here’s the New York Times’s graphic, divided by months, of school shootings in the U.S. over the past four years. Light dots are the injured, dark ones the dead (click to enlarge):

 

On this day in 1898, the battleship USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor, Cuba, killing 274 people and precipitating the Spanish-American War.  On February 15, 1923, Greece became the last country in Europe to adopt the Gregorian calendar.  And February 15, 1925, in the famous serum run to Nome (Alaska) a group of dogsled mushers brought a second batch of diphtheria toxin to that afflicted city, covering 674 miles (1085 km) in only five and a half days and staving off an epidemic.  The 20 mushers and 100 dogs who brought the serum—the only way to get to Nome in those pre-bushplane days—were heroes. (Read the link!)  On this day in 1942, Singapore surrendered to the Japanese, with 80,000 Indian, UK, and Australians soldiers becoming prisoners of war. In 1965, the flag of Canada was changed on this day from the “Red Ensign” to the Maple Leaf Banner, and that’s why today is “National Canada Flag Day”. Here are the old and new flags (I definitely like the new one better, and it doesn’t contain the Union Jack):

On this day in 1992, Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to life in prison. Two years later he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate.  Finally, on this day in 2001, the first draft of the human genome was published in Nature (as I recall, Ventner’s team published in Science at the same time, but I can’t be arsed to look it up).

Notables born on this day include Galileo Galilei (1564), Susan B. Anthony (1820), Ernest Shackleton (1874), Art Spiegelman (1948), and Matt Groening (1954). Those who died on February 15 include Nat King Cole (1965), Ethel Merman (1984), and Richard Feynman (1988).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is up to cat mischief:

Hili: Which dust cloth shall I throw down first?
A: None of them.
Hili: You must be joking.
In Polish:
Hili: Którą ścierkę zrzucić najpierw?
Ja: Żadną.
Hili: Chyba żartujesz.

 

Up in Winnipeg, Gus got a special treat yesterday. Staff Taskin reports:

Gus got some shrimp treats for his special Valentine present. They are his favourites!

Reader Barry found a cat who doesn’t want anyone to touch its Valentine candy:

https://twitter.com/marienassar_/status/963633681138176000

From Grania: a cat sets a jailed d*g free:

A funny zoo sign. Is that a llama?

The kedis of Turkey:

From Matthew, a distressing case of cervid appropriation. This must be an elk (Cervus canadensis) rather than the Scottish red deer (Cervus elpaphus), though they’ve been considered members of the same species.

The collateral damage of winter:

You call that a paw? Now THIS is a paw!

Finally, one from reader Blue, showing a well trained moggie:

https://twitter.com/StefanodocSM/status/963671231005384706

Another school shooting in Florida: At least 17 dead

February 14, 2018 • 5:39 pm

I’ve just heard on the news that at least 17 people (CNN says 16, but another has died) have been killed in a school in Parkland, Florida: the shooter was a former student who has apparently been taken into custody.

What can one say when school shootings like this become an everyday affair in America? (This is the 18th school shooting this year, and it’s only mid-February.) I can’t wish for the dead to come back. All I can do is hope for fewer guns in America, and express deep sorrow to the families, friends, and loved ones of those who were taken too soon.

UPDATE: CNN adds this:

The suspect, 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz, is in custody, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. The sheriff said he was expelled for unspecified disciplinary reasons.