Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
It’s a warm 62º F today (17º C) and sunny at Botany Pond. The drake Pushkin (now renamed from “Putin”) is waiting for the hour a day he gets with Dorothy when she comes down to feed and drink. He’s a mean drake, but a faithful one, and quacks mournfully in her absence.
Dorothy, meanwhile, is scratching around in her nest: I can hear her through the air-conditioner in my office.
And since the sun is out, so are the turtles, craning their necks to get a few rays:
Eric Protzer and Paul Summerville are coauthors of a recent book, Reclaiming Populism: How Economic Fairness Can Win Back Disenchanted Voters, and the Persuasion site we’re discussing today gives these IDs:
Eric Protzer is a Research Fellow at Harvard’s Growth Lab. Paul Summerville is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business.
The article below is clearly a summary of part of their book, and makes the point that it’s not income inequality that makes people so disaffected as much as “economic unfairness”: the sense that the deck isn’t stacked against you and that you, too, could have a shot at becoming a billionaire. Protzer and Summerville contend that if the Left is going to start winning elections, they have to enact policies that people see as fair. One of these is decent healthcare initiatives, another is ceasing the campaign to cancel all student loan debt. In the former case there’s a sense of fairness of everyone being able to get decent healthcare (even if the rich can get super-expensive health care); in the latter people grouse that others shouldn’t get their loans canceled if they themselves had to pay off.
This does seem to have some truth in it. Do Americans really want equal incomes or drastic income distribution, or do they just want to know that they can work hard and be able to live decently? I for one don’t find that the “eat the rich” rhetoric resonates, as the billionaires that people despise generally made their dosh by providing a good or service that people want. (Yes, I think there should be a graduated income tax, but not the kind of equity that “progressive” seem to call for. At any rate, I’m neither a political nor financial pundit, so read and decide for yourself (click screenshot below):
The distinction between economic unfairness and economic inequality:
The fundamental problem with the left’s political program, currently centered around identity-based social justice and economic redistribution, is that it misunderstands the causes of this populist frustration. As our new book demonstrates, the left would do well to reorient itself around the true wellspring of populist anger: a scarcely-understood phenomenon called economic unfairness.
Economic unfairness is distinct from what we typically think of as economic inequality. It is characterized by low social mobility rather than inequalities of income or wealth. It’s not that the rich have too much, it’s that success depends on family wealth and status, when it should depend on good ideas, effort, and merit. It’s anger at this rigged system, rather than anger at inequality, that drives contemporary populist movements.
Why it hurts Democrats to confuse these concepts:
Unfortunately, the global left remains deeply confused about the distinction between economic fairness and equality. Consider, for example, how Democrats have often found that healthcare reform is an enormously popular issue with swing voters. This in fact makes a lot of sense: medical debt is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S., and can unfairly shut down a person’s life chances regardless of how hard they’ve worked. Better, more affordable healthcare is a key missing input to equal opportunity in America. But the left flank tends to misinterpret this trend as a blanket indicator that “progressive policies do not hurt candidates,” including far more questionable measures to equalize outcomes.
Figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have vocally excoriated income and wealth inequality and promoted policies, such as a universal job guarantee and eliminating all student debt, that expressly aim to equalize outcomes instead. Republicans eagerly frame the entire Democratic message in this way, and even specifically referred to these politicians in advertisements during the 2020 Presidential Election. The electoral consequences have been devastating. Latino voters swung heavily toward Trump in 2020 on the fear that the Democratic equalization policies were “socialist,” and polling indicates a top concern among this segment of the electorate was that people would ultimately become “lazy and dependent on government.”
What’s more, Democrats have further alienated potentially-populist voters by embracing an identity-based approach to social justice that frequently dismisses the problem of economic unfairness. Too often, the social justice movement assumes that anyone who might consider voting for a right-wing populist must be motivated by spurious and malignant cultural concerns. It labels populist voters as racist and stupid, hoping that with enough condemnation or a resultant change in the political scene their views will somehow evaporate. This framing fails to acknowledge that when populist voters complain about a rigged system, they could actually have a point.
What we can do about this? (By “we”, I mean liberals):
The left needs to decisively pivot away from its current political dead-end, and toward the real predictor of populist disruption: economic fairness. Rather than focusing on cutting down the successful, the left should ask how it can give more citizens a fair chance to get ahead. Instead of enlarging government in every possible respect, it should ask where the state can intervene to expand opportunity and where it must avoid meddling. How, then, can it realize this vision?
A handful of countries stand out as role models, with the highest rates of social mobility in the world—like Canada, Australia, and the Nordics. These countries pair strong state support for equal opportunity through public goods like education and healthcare with competitive private markets. These factors combine to create an economy where many people can get ahead in life with talent and hard work, regardless of family origins. In turn, this creates best-in-class social mobility, the perception of a meritocratic system, and high levels of trust. Thus when populists run for office, their claims that the system is rigged do not resonate with most voters.
If the left cannot reconfigure itself toward economic fairness it has no hope of winning back disenchanted populist voters. Social justice platforms of defunding the police, open borders, and enforced anti-racism indoctrination communicate condescension and dismissal to the very citizens who already feel unfairly treated. Proposals to unfairly equalize outcomes, so that people largely get the same reward regardless of how hard they work, are not just irrelevant but actually antithetical to what these voters want.
This is why the notion of “equity” bothers so many of us. It conveys the message that there must be equal outcomes—outcomes proportional to the distribution of groups in a population—rather than equal opportunities. Inequities need not reflect “structural bigotry” in the present.
Now I’ve discussed this at length, for some inequities do reflect historical lack of opportunity: racism against African-Americans is a lingering reason why they’re not represented in higher proportions in measures of “success”. (This is one reason I favor some affirmative action, as a form of present reparations.) But everyone knows that the ultimate solution is indeed equal opportunity beginning at birth. It’s just that that permanent solutions are lot harder than striving to achieve equity by dismantling traditional standards of merit or representation. It would take tremendous societal will and resources to eliminate inequality. A good society—a just society—would make those changes, as the societies listed above have tried (as well as Scandinavia).
But harping endlessly on “equity” also creates a sense of unfairness among voters: Asians who feel they’re discriminated against in college admissions and so on, and a disenchanted voter will vote for Republicans. To me, the solution is not to eliminate affirmative action (at least for a while), but to raise the bar to achieving so that at least people feel that it’s high enough to be fair (i.e., those who achieve are “qualified”), but still allows more equity than we have now. And that must be coupled with de-racializing rhetoric, realizing that it’s not just race that holds people back, and that we have to deal with issues like poverty and class. The desire for equity right now is intimately coupled with the dissolution of the meritocracy, as instantiated in getting rid of standardized tests and grades. But the meritocracy—the sense that if you have the right stuff and work hard, you can achieve—is intimately coupled with “the American dream.”
But I’ve said enough. The article speaks better than I on this topic, so do read it. It’s not very long. As you see, I’m concerned with things Democrats can do that are both acceptable and will help us in this fall’s election.
Paging James Carville! Here he talks about focusing on Dems’ economic accomplishments in fixing society—showing fairness towards “the little guy.”
The other day I posted a video in which a researcher claimed to have sighted an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the wet bottomlands of Louisiana. It didn’t prove to me that the bird still exists, but raised my Bayesian probability that it does.
One reason why researchers haven’t yet accepted the existence of the bird is that there are still no unequivocal identifying photos or videos of this bird in the wild. The more recent photos and videos are tantalizing, and make me think that it’s more probable than not that Campephilus principalis has not yet become an ex-species, singing with the Choir Invisible. But I’m still not convinced.
Yet over the last two days, a bunch of readers—seven, to be exact—have made comments asserting confidently that they have seen this bird. None of them have expressed doubt. My first response would be “No you haven’t: you’ve seen a Pileated Woodpecker”. If Ivorybills were that common, showing up in people’s backyards (!), then we would have good evidence by now.
So, go to the thread here; I’ve posted all the sightings that readers claim to have made. And feel free to answer those claims (or comment on them), but be polite. My response was “find a bird expert IMMEDIATELY, tell them, and get some good photos.” Birders can contact me if they want me to email the claimants telling them how they have to document the bird. Better yet, birders should VISIT all these people NOW.
Here we go. The first one has my response:
Another:
But wait! There are several more!
This one gives a phone number. Ornithologists and birders—GET ON IT!
For others who want to claim they’ve seen the real Ivorybill, here’s how to tell it from the similar (but smaller) Pileated Woodpecker. Look for the white “saddle” formed by the folded wings, as well as the sexual dimorphism.
Here’s the real bird from an Audubon website:
Welcome to Thursday, April 21, 2020. I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon for Tenerife via Madrid, so don’t expect a slew of posts for two weeks. (I have more responsibility on this cruise than on my previous ones.) It’s National Chocolate-Covered Cashews Day (in my view, covering these delicious nuts with chocolate doesn’t enhance them), as well as International Pizza Cake Day (celebrating cakes that look like pizzas), National Ask an Atheist Day, (go ahead!), National Tea Day, Tuna Rights Day, Bulldogs are Beautiful Day (this smacks of special pleading), and Keep off the Grass Day.
For Rastafarians, it’s Grounation Day (see below under 1966)
Here’s a cake that looks like a pizza:
Stuff that happened on April 21 include:
Joos van Cleve was a contemporary of Henry VIII, and may have seen him, but this portrait painted in 1531 was probably not painted with Henry VIII posing for van Cleve:
Henry VIII is a king we should read more about, as he was somewhat of a Renaissance man, wrote music, jousted, and so on, but then there were all the wives he killed, and I can’t get this out of my mind, either (from Wikipedia):
Late in life, Henry became obese, with a waist measurement of 54 inches (140 cm), and had to be moved about with the help of mechanical devices. He was covered with painful, pus-filled boils and possibly suffered from gout. His obesity and other medical problems can be traced to the jousting accident in 1536 in which he suffered a leg wound. The accident reopened and aggravated an injury he had sustained years earlier, to the extent that his doctors found it difficult to treat. The chronic wound festered for the remainder of his life and became ulcerated, preventing him from maintaining the level of physical activity he had previously enjoyed. The jousting accident is also believed to have caused Henry’s mood swings, which may have had a dramatic effect on his personality and temperament.
Covered with pus-filled boils!
Houston (below) didn’t die at the Alamo, as many seem to think, but died of old age at 70 (is that old?). The image has been somewhat Photoshopped, as Wikipediia notes:
And not just in Norway; it was used by the U.S. Army as their standard rifle for 12 yrs, by South Africans in the Boer wars, and by the Danish Army. It was a repeating-action bolt rifle, and a lovely thing (if you like guns. Here’s a prototype, the “försöksmodell 1892”.
See below for the remains of his plane. Richthofen was only 25 when he died.
Here’s that damn photo, which is a fake I’ve seen a gazillion times. It was a toy submarine on which had been fastened a head and neck made of putty. [GCM: see this for earlier treatment of the photo here at WEIT.]
I never understand why the capital was moved to the planned city of Brasilia, located exactly in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps a Brazilian can explain this to me.
He should have come a day early: on 4/20. Haile Selassie was in Jamaica for just one day, but the Rastas, who regard him as a god, were Haile delighted. They’ve been celebrating Groundation Day ever since. Read about the confusion attending his arrival by plane; he refused to walk on the red carpet:
He wound up with 341. He wasn’t much as a starter, but excelled as a closer, once winning the Cy Young Award (best pitcher, not often given to a relief pitcher). Here are some career highlights (I saw him play).
Remember “Tank Man,” the Chinese protestor who temporarily stopped four Chinese tanks in the Square on June 5 of that year? We still have no idea who he was/is, but this photo has made him immortal
Notables born on this day include:
Here’s her most famous work, Jane Eyre (1847), a first edition and first printing in three good-condition volumes. It’s a bargain at just $65,000. It was subtitled an “autobiography” and Brontë used the pseudonym “Currer Bell”:
We don’t talk about M**r any more, but here’s a good photo of him:
My favorite line from Anthony Quinn as Auda abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia. “I AM A RIVER TO MY PEOPLE”! For years afterwards, my friends and I would say that to each other.
The Queen is 96 today!
A relevant tweet sent by Dr. Cobb:
Iggy Pop 75! pic.twitter.com/xLzPKKhz57
— Maartje Jansma 🎧 (@maartjejan) April 21, 2022
Those who were judged by St. Peter on April 21 include:
Shot to death in the air, and then his plane crashed. Here’s a photo labeled by Wikipedia, “Australian airmen with Richthofen’s triplane 425/17 after it was looted by souvenir hunters”:
Allthough Simone didn’t write this song, it’s her favorite of mine. I love the walking piano and the laid-back singing. I first heard in as the background music in a Chanel #5 commercial and thought to myself “What IS that song?” It didn’t take me long to find out.
I’ve only recently begun to appreciate Prince’s guitar work. Here he is with a smoking solo in an all-star performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”:
News:
*Here’s the upper-left headline from today’s New York Times (click to read):
And the headlines (2000 fighters remain in the steel plant):
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said he was giving Ukrainians holed up in a steel plant in the besieged city of Mariupol a chance to surrender, after his defense minister said at a televised meeting that Russia had “liberated” the city.
Mr. Putin sought to claim that Russia had fully taken the port city, in a strategically critical location for Moscow’s fight for control of the eastern Donbas region and its aim to build a land bridge to Crimea. Troops have been fighting for weeks for control of the city, and the last remaining Ukrainian defenders and some civilians have been holding out at the Azovstal Iron and Steel works plant.
Mr. Putin instructed his military to blockade the plant and demand the Ukrainians surrender.
It’s all over for those soldiers (there are civilians and children inside, too). The only question is whether they’ll surrender or fight to the death.
*Here’s another NYT piece, this time about Biden’s infrastructure and social-relief spending (click to read):
The Dems can’t get credit for anything!
Unlike the New Deal, however, this $1.9 trillion federal investment in American communities has barely registered with voters. Rather than a trophy for Mr. Biden and his party, the program has become a case study in how easily voters can overlook even a lavishly funded government initiative delivering benefits close to home.
Mr. Biden’s popularity has declined in polls over the past year, and voters are giving him less credit for the country’s economic recovery than his advisers had anticipated. In Virginia, Democrats got shellacked in the 2021 off-year elections amid the country’s halting emergence from the depths of the pandemic.
Ambivalence among voters stems partly from the fact that many of the projects being funded are, for now, invisible.
I’m no pundit, but perhaps Biden should be calling attention to this stuff. I am worried about November. What if the GOP controls the House, Senate, and Supreme Court? Time to lock ourselves inside with food and a good book!
*Perry Bacon at the Washington Post notes that liberal venues CNN and the NYT (for reasons unknown; perhaps because of centrist pushback) have decided to cover the news more “objectively”—a “both sides” stance. Bacon doesn’t like that, as it seems to conjure up Trump’s hamhanded remarks about the “fine” white supremacists in Charlottesville. He wants the media to be accounted to social media:
Being independent, not doing advocacy, covering hard news and not being overly obsessed with Twitter all sound like generic, noncontroversial notions. But in the context of U.S. news and politics today, these comments have unstated but important meanings. Twitter has become code for “the cultural left” or “highly-educated liberals.” Baquet and Licht want to make clear that their news outlets are not captured by those mind-sets.
Disavowing Twitter is a mistake. The platform has empowered people and ideas that couldn’t previously get much traction on CNN, the Times and other mainstream media outlets, which tend to unconsciously promote a “don’t change the status quo too much” centrist approach that is roughly the ideological range between Hillary Clinton on the left and Jeb Bush on the right. Twitter was essential to the rise of Black Lives Matter — and also was a useful platform for former president Donald Trump. Trump is now off Twitter, but it remains a powerful tool for movements and activists, particularly on the left and outside both parties’ establishments.
*The Carroll County (Maryland) school board is debating whether ideological or political symbols can be displayed on school grounds. (h/t Bat)
Community members and schools Superintendent Steven Lockard said that the Pride flags are used to show support for LGBTQ students, but school board members said they believe the flags are political symbols and displaying them in schools goes against the recently revised political neutrality policy of the school system. That policy requires employees to “remain neutral on political issues, parties, and candidates during classroom instruction” and avoid discussing such issues unless they are “aligned with the approved curriculum.”
Much as I support LGBTQ causes, this would open the door to all kinds of political statements, and quell the speech of young folk who disagree. I think Carroll County made the right decision, even if it was out of kindness and support: they’ve enacted a kind of secondary-school Kalven Report.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is jealous:
Szaron: Your Whiskas is better than mine.Hili: Yours is from the same box.Szaron: Anyhow yours is better.
Szaron: Twoje chrupki są lepsze niż moje.Hili: Twoje są z tego samego pudełka.Szaron: I tak twoje są lepsze.
Here’s Karolina on the windowsill with Kulka.
Caption: Never-ending dialogues with cats:
From Not Another Science Cat Page:
From Facebook (a statement with which I agree):
From Facebook:
Lagniappe: 
HappyPassover!
News
God is not saying “no” to drugs:
Happy 4/20!
Here's a little ditty I wrote in honor of the occasion.https://t.co/AnxPgsw1wv
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) April 20, 2022
From my Magical Twitter feed. Yes, this deer is indeed pronking (or stotting), seemingly for joy:
Happy deer.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/ceFgJ3xX4K
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden_) April 11, 2022
From Simon. I don’t know who this joker is (yes, he’s joking), but he puts on a good rant.
✈️Wheels up for Jesus✈️ pic.twitter.com/A45EjWYhEN
— Brent Terhune (@BrentTerhune) April 19, 2022
From Ginger K. This is one way of looking at wokeness:
Wokeness: forcing the majority to conform to a tiny minority instead of helping the tiny minority to cope with the world.
— Seerut K. Chawla (@seerutkchawla) April 5, 2022
Tweets from Matthew. He’s big on this upcoming series; as he says, “You’ll have to pay to watch the series, but it does look extraordinary. Lots of good paleo folk have been involved in it.” Looks good to me!
Official Trailer – Prehistoric Planet
Experience the world’s most extraordinary creatures like you’ve never seen them before in this five-night documentary event. #PrehistoricPlanet streams May 23 on Apple TV+ https://t.co/A4u7K75heM pic.twitter.com/sB71tNZYhc
— Apple TV+ (@AppleTVPlus) April 20, 2022
I’ve never heard of this drug, but Matthew notes, “Jebus, the trips recounted in this thread! ‘The walls are fucking brown; has nothing on these 5 min experiences!” Remember, the brown wall comment was a profound insight I had when on acid in college, which I wrote down so I could remember later.
I give one tweet about an experience on this stuff. There are more in the thread.
got 5 minutes? wanna experience 80 years as a sentient DVD, imprisoned in an evil dimension of cold geometric chaos and fluctuating gravity, filled with malevolent entities? boy do i have a substance for you!
— special agent mike hunt (@olivesagan) April 7, 2022
Speaking of 4/20:
Medieval marijuana, from a 12th-century medical and herbal collection: https://t.co/MUpkIW7lqH
The Latin at the bottom reads: "Grows but in waste places, and at roadsides, and along hedges. The very best medicine for healing."#Happy420 #fourtwenty #420day pic.twitter.com/D9xIiqfyne
— Public Domain Review (@PublicDomainRev) April 20, 2022
You call that a good mother duck? Honey sat on SEVENTEEN three years ago: (her brood plus the brood she swiped from Dorothy.
Well, Dorothy the mallard hen is well into the nesting phase, having unfortunately built this year’s nest on the windowsill right under the air conditioner in my office and right above the breezeway roof. This poses substantial logistical problems for getting her ducklings to the pond (see here).
Nesting hens sit pretty tight for several weeks, incubating their eggs, but they’ll fly down to the pond once every few days for a snack and a drink. (Dorothy seems to fly down every day, which may be suboptimal for incubation.) She stays down for an hour or so, and I am usually around to feed her pellets and mealworms. A healthy hen makes for a happy and productive mother.
I took two short videos on my iPhone (the first I’ve put up on this site) showing Dorothy’s behavior when she’s had enough food, water, and preening and is ready to go back to the windowsill. She walks up the steps toward her nest (accompanied by her mate Pushkin, who’s been renamed from “Putin”), and then stands there for a while, bobbing her head all around as if checking the area. I’m not sure exactly why she does this, but she may indeed want to know that everything’s kosher before she gets back to the job of propagating her genes.
Here are two 30-second videos of Dorothy (and Pushkin) getting ready to fly. In the first she walks up the steps underneath her nest and stands there, looking all around with the faithful drake standing by. Enlarge the video (and the next) to see her bobbing her head about.
Here she finally takes off, and look how well she flies right into the gap under the A/C unit, where her nest is. Note too that Pushkin flies part way up with her, and then veers off. He goes back to the pond and settles down, occasionally quacking forlornly for Dorothy. He gets about an hour a day of quality time with her. Little does he know that she’s cooking up their offspring!
Whether you think “Cancel Culture” is real depends, of course, on your definition of the term. In this article from The Nation, writer and critic Katha Pollitt, a Leftist and also a distinguished poet, defines “cancel culture” this way:
Cancel culture—which I’m loosely defining here as a climate that encourages disproportionate social and/or work-related punishment for speech. . . .
I think this is pretty accurate: it’s an attempt to smear people’s reputations disproportionately or to cause them to lose their jobs for things that they say. Of course what’s “disproportional” is subjective, but surely trying to get someone fired falls into that class, as does calling them names like “racist” or “transphobe” in an attempt to ruin their credibility instead of using counterspeech. To me, deplatforming someone, trying to get their scheduled speeches shut down, or shouting them down (see FIRE’s “disinvitation database”) are actions also falling into the “cancel culture” class, and this class is growing (follow the number of deplatformings over the years).
As you probably know, there’s a lot of denial that such a culture exists—in spite of the manifest evidence for it. When the Harper’s Letter came out criticizing cancel culture (see my posts here), it was widely criticized by those on the Left for many reasons, and those are the same reasons used to deny Cancel Culture. The denialists are mostly from the Left as well.
Pollitt summarizes the arguments against Cancel Culture:
Well, OK, it exists on the right: Look at what happened to the Dixie Chicks and Colin Kaepernick and that assistant principal in Mississippi who read the picture book I Need a New Butt to his students. Conservatives are always canceling people. But on the left? That’s just people holding you accountable for some awful thing you said. What could be wrong with that? Besides, no one is seriously, irreparably hurt. Look at J.K. Rowling: Despite the best efforts of Twitter, she’s still a billionaire and one of the most popular writers ever.
Those who argue that cancel culture is a myth claim that no one has really been injured by it. A few people might lose their jobs, but they get new ones. Bari Weiss claimed she was bullied out of The New York Times, and now she’s the Queen of Substack. The columnist Suzanne Moore, who left The Guardian after 338 of her colleagues signed a letter clearly aimed at her, accusing the paper of producing “transphobic content,” soon surfaced at The Telegraph. Yes, someone might lose a prize or an opportunity to give a talk or be on a panel, but no one has a right to those things. After the lesbian memoirist Lauren Hough praised her friend’s forthcoming novel, which some tweeters accused of transphobia, and then got into an expletive-filled Twitter fight about it, she was either not nominated or de-nominated for a Lambda Award. But hey, she can always write another book.
The journalist Adam Davidson responded to a rather woolly New York Times editorial decrying cancel culture: “Can one of you believers in cancel culture just write one piece that gives evidence and doesn’t just speak to a feeling you have? Maybe some data that helps your readers know the size and scale of this problem? Also, some examples of people actually fired?”
Here’s Davidson’s tweet:
I hate the NYT Op-ed on cancel culture so so much.
Just one thing: if you are going to confidently assert that cancel culture is a real problem, point to a single example. Then, maybe, another one. And, if you really want people to believe you, a third example!!!!
— Adam Davidson (@adamdavidson) March 18, 2022
And so Pollitt describes six examples of real people (not millionaires) being canceled for what they said, a in these cases the people were either fired or cast into limbo. I’ll just list the people and reprise in my words why they were canceled. (Quotes from Pollitt are indented.
a.) Don McNeil, former science writer for the NYT. McNeil used the “n-word” didactically in a discussion with students on an overseas educational trip. He simply asked if that was the word that was used by someone else. For this he was hounded and ultimately fired by the FORMER NYT editor, Dean Baquet. The NYT editorialized that “intent doesn’t matter”: that if someone is offended by even a didactic usage, the user has to go. McNeil no longer has a regular job.
b.) Gilliam Philip, children’s book writer. Her sin was to put #Istandwithjkrowling on her Twitter biography. That was all it took for the social-media tsunami to drown her: she was fired by her publisher.
c.) Don Share
Don Share, the editor of Poetry magazine, made its prestigious pages more inclusive and diverse. But that didn’t help in 2020, when he was attacked for publishing a long poem by Matthew Dickman that included a racial slur uttered by the poet’s demented grandmother. (That pesky use/mention distinction again!) Share issued a self-abasing apology and left. I’ve been unable to find out what he’s doing now.
d.) Gary Garrels, formerly top curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. When he sold a Rothko to finance the acquisition of art by women and minorities, he also said these fatal words: “Don’t worry, we will definitely still continue to collect white artists”, adding that to not collect work by white men would be “reverse discrimination.” Garrels was fired and is now working as an independent curator.
e.) David Edelstein, a film critic with NPR’s Fresh Air. Pollitt says this:
[He] was fired from his longtime job with NPR’s Fresh Air after he made a tasteless joke on his Facebook page referring to the butter scene in Last Tango in Paris. Furloughed by New York magazine at the start of the pandemic, he is now a freelancer.
You can see the joke at the link, and it is tasteless if you know about the history of that scene. However, Edelstein apologized, not knowing Maria Schneider’s subsequent statements about the scene.
This is the only case which could possibly justify firing, but if the person apologizes, I think the bar for firing them should be pretty high. It’s up to you whether you think Edelstein went too far to stay in his job. Remember, social-media was relentless in going after him, but should NPR always truckle to social media? Let us know what you think.
f.) April Powers, a management specialist. This is the case I find the most odious because she didn’t offend anyone directly, and her “sin” was one of omission. Powers was the director of equity and inclusion at the Society for Children’s Book Writers, and issued a statement condemning anti-Semitism. She resigned after being “furiously attacked” because she didn’t condemn Islamophobia as well. Can you imagine? Would she have gotten attacked if she had condemned Islamophobia but not anti-Semitism? Give me a break. A few Jews might have groused, but there would have been no social-media attack, and you know why.
The attacks on these people came from the Left–my side–and a side that’s supposed to meet speech with counter-speech. You can even call people idiots (I prefer “misguided”), but these social-media mobs went further. They want to damage someone, not argue with him. And, as I wrote the other day, it is the most extreme people on both Left and Right that are also the most vocal. Of these six, only Edelstein comes even close to deserving the opprobrium he got.
Now we all know of other cases like these; I write about them all the time. These are just some obvious examples, and show that yes, Virginia, there is a Cancel Culture. Pollitt ends her piece like this:
You can say these people—and there are many more like them—got what was coming to them. You can say, and many do, that a cancellation was a convenient opportunity to get rid of a problematic boss or colleague. You can say it was a proxy for other problems in the institution: underpaid young staffers, overprivileged higher-ups, hidebound ideas and practices, racism. You can say these incidents are part of a general social transformation that will leave us better off in the long run, and that might even be true.
What you can’t say is that no lasting, measurable damage was done to individuals. You can argue that the damage is worth it, but you should at least admit it’s there.
That “general social transformation”, I think, will leave us worse off in the long run, but it creates an authoritarian atmosphere in which dissent is squelched out of fear, thus stifling free speech. And this transformation, as John Haidt wrote in the Atlantic, is picking up speed. “Cancel Culture” is an attempt to shut up those who disagree with you not by arguing with them, but trying to take them out of action by hurting them professionally or getting them fired.
h/t: Greg
In today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “match”, the Divine Duo take each other on. And guess what—Jesus wins the wrestling match!
Now I’m not surprised. Mo is only a prophet, while Jesus is both part God and also a prophet. It’s the “god” bit that gives Jesus his omnipotence and his ability to take down Mo.
The strip came with a note:
The same thing happened to Mo 16 years ago. Clearly an incident which he tried successfully to forget.
