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ArguingWAristotleTiffJune 24, 2018 at 13:58#1908490 likes
In the middle of a live, heated debate on one of the morning programs, one man arguing against the absurdity of the rhetoric calling was engaged when he said "You have got to be out of your cotton pickin mind to equate the two" (detention centers to the Nazi concentration camps) to his opponent whom is a black American. Needless to say that the connotation was not lost on the man and he kept repeating "Really? Out of my 'cotton pickin mind?"
I realize the emotion connected to the phrase so I ask do you believe it is something to be outraged over?
It's remotely possible that the guy is just so folksy that the term "cotton pickin" is just an innocuous way of saying "dang" or "dadgum" to him. More likely he was waiting to say it to create some controversy.
Do I think it's something to get outraged over? I won't tell an African American how he ought react. I do remember though when the good Jesse Jackson called NYC Hymie Town and when Andrew Young called Mondale's aides smart ass white boys. I was insulted neither time. It just lets me know their real opinions, as if I didn't already know.
Reply to Hanover You have to take setting into consideration tho, don't you? Like: if you know what you're doing, like you say he probably did, and you say that to someone's face on live tv and its during a debate about emotionally-charged issues - that feels less like a general provocation and more like baring your teeth openly in active confrontation.
I'm impressed, naturally, that you read about Andrew Young slamming Mondale aides and didn't call out of work to nurse your rage. But what's the point of that anecdote? Do you think its a scenario roughly equivalent to one tiff mentioned - only you reacted better? If not, then what's your point?
Reply to Hanover Another way to put this - I"ve seen people shit on poor working-class people all my life, in print, online, in movies. Not a big deal.
But one time, long ago, my high-school girlfriend got accepted, from bumfuck maine, to Columbia, in NYC.
I followed her out there, nothing to my name. Went to a party in manhattan and someone there, comfortably new-yorked, sized me up and let loose the same poor-maine stuff I'd read without ever blinking an eye. It was different then. I got mad. And he, in retrospect, won. He held his ground. I looked foolish.
He had the power, he was in his element - it was up to me to hold my ground in the face of that. He didn't have to defend shit. You can see how it's a different thing. Words aren't just words, depending on where you're at.
I'm impressed, naturally, that you read about Andrew Young slamming Mondale aides and didn't call out of work to nurse your rage. But what's the point of that anecdote? Do you think its a scenario roughly equivalent to one tiff mentioned - only you reacted better? If not, then what's your point?
My point was (1) that I don't stand in the shoes of an African American so I won't begin to tell him how he ought to react, and (2) I've not found being outraged, offended, and insulted particularly useful in responding to morons, but, like you said, it's often difficult to control one's reactions to attacks. I also believe that some feign outrage as an effective tactic against outrageous conduct and it's just sort of an outrage game people play. Is that what happened in Tiff's example? I really don't know.
My point was (1) that I don't stand in the shoes of an African American so I won't begin to tell him how he ought to react,
But that wasn't the question. The question was whether it is something to be outraged over, not whether it is something an African American should be outraged over, nor whether we should tell him how he ought to react.
If you're suggesting, as it seems, something along the lines that only an African American can rightly have an opinion on this, then I would find that ludicrous, and unlike your usual levelheaded judgement.
(2) I've not found being outraged, offended, and insulted particularly useful in responding to morons, but, like you said, it's often difficult to control one's reactions to attacks. I also believe that some feign outrage as an effective tactic against outrageous conduct and it's just sort of an outrage game people play. Is that what happened in Tiff's example? I really don't know.
What's useful and what feels right or wrong are two separate things. I took it as an ethical question rather than a question about what would be practical.
Watching that clip caused some degree of outrage in me. I think that what he said was wrong. And even if he said it unthinkingly, and didn't mean to cause offence, I still don't think that that would get him off the hook. People should be held responsible for the stupid and offensive shit they say. Trump should be held responsible. Roseanne should be held responsible. This bloke on Fox News should be held responsible.
I, of course, am an exception. If the day ever comes when I say something stupid and offensive, blame Hanover.
If you're suggesting, as it seems, something along the lines that only an African American can rightly have an opinion on this, then I would find that ludicrous, and unlike your usual levelheaded judgement.
I'm not saying that only an African American can have an opinion on this. In fact, I provided my opinion for whatever it was worth. The question is whether it's right for someone to be outraged, and it'd be very difficult for me to say that a black person is wrong to be outraged at certain comments, as if I know what emotion he feels. It's sort of like if I joked about fucking your mother, I can't really say it'd be wrong for you to be outraged, although if you said the same of mine, I wouldn't be outraged. Maybe you're from a particularly close family and greatly religious and such comments are just not funny to you. I really don't know what you've been through, so I do stand by what I said when I say that it's hard for me to condemn a black guy for being insulted about something I really don't think much about.
Judging the legitimacy of your emotive response requires that I be in your head and weigh your response against what a reasonable person would do given your experience.
And stop accusing me of levelheadedness. It will do nothing other than to curb my more entertaining opinions. Quoting Sapientia
Watching that clip caused some degree of outrage in me. I think that what he said was wrong. And even if he said it unthinkingly, and didn't mean to cause offence, I still don't think that that would get him off the hook. People should be held responsible for the stupid and offensive shit they say. Trump should be held responsible. Roseanne should be held responsible. This bloke on Fox News should be held responsible.
I actually take a different approach. I think we ought stop disposing of people who cross these boundaries we set. People should be allowed to be more crass and vulgar without being completely ostracized. These rules we impose so harshly have not made the world the better place they've intended to. It's made the world harsher, meaner, unforgiving, and critical. I'm not saying we can just let everything go without responding, but I don't think Roseanne needed to be thrown in the garbage for her comments. No one is better off for that.
I actually take a different approach. I think we ought stop disposing of people who cross these boundaries we set. People should be allowed to be more crass and vulgar without being completely ostracized.
I don't think Roseanne needed to be thrown in the garbage for her comments. No one is better off for that.
No, not crass and vulgar, racist. Roseanne rightly got thrown in the garbage for being racist, just like we throw people in the garbage here for being racist.
And yes we are all better off that a spoiled rich person with a stupid TV show got her stupid TV show taken off her for spreading racist and Islamophobic hate. If she were on this site, she would have been banned instantly and we would have been similarly better off. It sends exactly the right message.
You need to ask yourself this question @Hanover, do you want more racism, Islamophobia, and anti-semitism in your society or less? Because presuming you want less you need a deterrent. Why you're conflating that with dirty jokes or being vulgar I have no idea as that's a completely separate issue. I doubt anyone here would have objected if Roseanne or the idiot on Fox News had made a dirty joke on air.
Reply to Baden Your distinction is valid, and I'm willing to allow more racist comments (not just crass) with less drastic penalties than you. If one buys into the argument that more severe penalties will offer a greater detterent, then the solution will always be the most Draconian penalty imaginable. Again, justice requires proportionality.
OK fine, I'm on mobile and moving around and maybe not reading you all that clearly. But getting back to Roseanne, she has (had?) a lot of fans and a lot of Twitter followers. Think about the net effect of her legitimizing racism to all those people. It would have had some influence, it would be very naive to think otherwise, and the ensuing extra racism more than likely caused pain and material loss down the line. It's not something we can trace exactly, but that's what needs to be balanced when considering a just punishment. And considering all the money and privilege she has, losing her TV show is hardly very severe. It might seem so to her or her supporters, but that's a deficiency of perspective as far as I'm concerned. I don't know what the alternative would be, allowing the show to go on would have made ABC look racist, and it would have been boycotted anyway, and some of her co-stars probably would have walked off. If you're going to say it would have been better to do nothing, that would have certainly resulted in an absence of justice. So, what would have been just in your view?
I'm not saying that only an African American can have an opinion on this. In fact, I provided my opinion for whatever it was worth. The question is whether it's right for someone to be outraged, and it'd be very difficult for me to say that a black person is wrong to be outraged at certain comments, as if I know what emotion he feels. It's sort of like if I joked about fucking your mother, I can't really say it'd be wrong for you to be outraged, although if you said the same of mine, I wouldn't be outraged. Maybe you're from a particularly close family and greatly religious and such comments are just not funny to you. I really don't know what you've been through, so I do stand by what I said when I say that it's hard for me to condemn a black guy for being insulted about something I really don't think much about.
Are you suggesting that you don't know what emotions the black person in the video clip felt? The emotions he expressed or likely felt were apparent or can be quite easily inferred: shock and outrage. The same emotions were triggered in me just by watching, so you shouldn't even have to go as far as to place yourself in his shoes, which I am capable of doing to some extent, and to an extent sufficient to empathise, relate, understand, and share feelings. I don't know why you're suggesting it's different for you. I would question why that is.
Also, in your analogy, you said that it's something insulting which you really don't think much about. But, though I might not think about such things much from day to day, I certainly pick up on it in situations like the situation in the video. So, in that sense, you don't really need to think much about it, so long as you're not oblivious or insensitive to it when you witness it transpiring, or, in this case, a recording of it. Alarm bells should be ringing. And, in your conversation with Baden, I noticed that you spoke of proportionality; well, a lack or restraint of emotion, which you seem to be equating with being reasonable, might not be proportionate or just under the circumstances. Sometimes it's right to be outraged.
Judging the legitimacy of your emotive response requires that I be in your head and weigh your response against what a reasonable person would do given your experience.
No, it doesn't necessarily require that you be in the other persons head. Sometimes it hits you straightaway, as it hit me when watching the video.
Two people can know that they can joke about fucking each others mother with very little chance of causing offence. But a situation more closely analogous to the video clip would be if someone had just come back from their mothers funeral, and that was fairly apparent in some way. This person would still be dressed in funeral attire. And some other person says something about fucking his mother. But that's still not quite a match, because it's too personal. What the guy in the video clip said was less personal and insults a considerably larger group of people. And it was said on television and will have been viewed by a massive number of people.
I actually take a different approach. I think we ought stop disposing of people who cross these boundaries we set. People should be allowed to be more crass and vulgar without being completely ostracized. These rules we impose so harshly have not made the world the better place they've intended to. It's made the world harsher, meaner, unforgiving, and critical. I'm not saying we can just let everything go without responding, but I don't think Roseanne needed to be thrown in the garbage for her comments. No one is better off for that.
Justice without mercy is revenge.
I'm not suggesting that they should be thrown in the "garbage". I don't think that they should. But they should be held responsible, there should be consequences of some sort, and they should understand their wrongdoing and be remorseful and apologetic afterwards. Trump rarely admits wrongdoing or shows remorse or acts apologetically. Arguably, that might weaken his position as president, but I also think that that's just the way that he is, president or not. On that basis, he behaves worse than Roseanne has behaved recently, and, as a result, Roseanne comes across as a better person. Maybe, given her admission of wrongdoing and apologies, and if she learns from her mistake and doesn't repeat it, and given enough time, she should be granted new opportunities. That's at least a step in the right direction.
As for Trump though, he should be executed by firing squad, guillotined, or maybe even hanged, drawn and quartered. (In fact, based on a photo I've seen, I think he may have already been guillotined).
I also believe that some feign outrage as an effective tactic against outrageous conduct and it's just sort of an outrage game people play. Is that what happened in Tiff's example? I really don't know
I'm glad you brought this up; I had the feeling this was the subtext.
There's a lot of disingenuous, weaponized outrage out there. But then there's also a lot of disingenuous "how could you ever think I was saying *that*??" indignation. When it's a game, its usually a game with two players.
In any case, the suspicion of local disingenuousness can metastasize, slowly and invisibly, frog in boiling water, into a full-blown cynical universal suspicion. Almost everyone is feigning outrage - and even if they aren't, and the authenticity of outrage is rhetorically bracketted, the 'outrage' is best addressed as an occasion for speaking of inauthentic outrage.
Same thing, but reversed, applies to the other side. 'I also believe that some feign emotional investment in the open marketplace of ideas as an effective tactic against pc moralizing and it's really just sort of 'only-saying-this as devil's advocate' game people play. Is this what [x] is doing? I really don't know [but regardless, that's what's important to focus on here]'
(I'm sure your familiar with one variant of this rhetorical move, a mirror of yours: if someone's accused of being racist, and then that case crumbles, well actually that's the point, because its important to recognize the *systemic* racism that the person is unwittingly the vessel for.)
A similar thing happens with religion. One side, snarky and less-holy-than-thou, smears publically what's of spiritual value to the other. Then the other side weaponizes their spirituality in retaliation. After a few decades, you're left with hollow accusations of ignorance and hypocrisy on the one hand, and amorality on the other.
But that shouldn't blind one to the fact that spiritual communities often provide real succor, both spiritual and material, for their members Or (from the other side) that people who don't fit that community's mold can be severely damaged by the judgments of the religious.
The spectacle of argument divorces both participants from what they're arguing about, and the cynical game-theory thing of 'he's bullshitting, so I have to bullshit back' allows each participant to justify their immersion in the spectacle to themselves.
Tldr; cotton-picking whatever is shitty, no matter how the other person reacts. Chastising an older generation for not understanding intersectionality or knowing gender pronouns v. 9.3 is bullshit. But the fact that stuff like the latter example exists, doesnt mean the former example should be tactfully and with plausible deniability waved-off.
But are we on the shore building intellectual sandcastles here or have we actually got our toes in the water yet? The meta-game is to be above it all and imagine we're making a contribution simply by analyzing how fucked up each side is. Meanwhile society as a whole drifts towards some -ism that we, for real ethical reasons, object to but don't or can't do anything about. And rhetoric is the currency of politics whether we like it or not. Martin Luther King knew that as well as Hitler. Bernie Sanders knows it as well as Trump. Maybe a beach and the sea isn't the right analogy. Maybe a Starbucks cafe next to a dirty canal. So, it's a nice clean philosophical Latte or toxic political sewage. With all the action happening in the canal. So, we can talk about inauthenticity and games but we can also look at where real change comes about or not. Selma was a tactic; it was rhetoric and images and it was misleading and it was deliberately misleading, and inauthentic in some sense if you like. And there was outrage. And it worked.
But even when you're in that political sewage and you're stirring up outrage because you need it just to stay afloat, I agree you can recognize some distinctions. Jordan Peterson is not Hitler, and that white woman on the Youtube vid who called the police on a little black girl who was selling water to make money to help her family afford a trip to Disneyland (what a story!) is not necessarily a racist bigot, might generally be a nice person in fact, and definitely doesn't deserve death threats. Trump and his merry band of fascist ghouls on the other hand deserve any form of outrage that can tactically undermine them by fair means or foul.
So, I don't know, where do we draw the line between not being immersed in the spectacle and not being involved in the fight? which is a very real and toxic one just by its nature.
"President Johnson:..I don't want to follow [Adolf] Hitler, but he had an idea—
King: Yeah.
President Johnson: —that if you just take a simple thing and repeat it often enough, even if it wasn't true, why, people'd accept it. Well, now, this is true, and if you can find the worst condition that you run into in Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana, or South Carolina where—well, I think one the worst I ever heard of is the president of the school at Tuskegee [Institute], or the head of the Government Department there, or something, being denied the right to cast a vote, and if you just take that one illustration and get it on radio, and get it on television, and get it on . . . in the pulpits, and get it in the meetings, get it every place you can, pretty soon the fellow that didn't do anything but follow—drive a tractor, he'll say, "Well, that's not right, that's not fair."
King: Yes.
President Johnson: And then that will help us on what we're going to shove through in the end. "
LBJ to King (1965) http://www.teachwithmovies.org/guides/selma-files/selma-supplemental-materials.html
It seems pretty outrageous to me. I don't think the comparison with "smart ass white men" works. White men don't have a history of slavery, discrimination affecting them negatively and oppression. In that context to then refer to a typical slave activity of the past seems inconsiderate at best and downright racist at worst.
It also makes me wonder how likely it would be for this person to refer to another white man, latino or asian as being "out of his cotton picking mind". I suspect the likelihood is pretty close to zero.
I'd add that for me the outrage is justified not just by what was said but by who said it. Outrage should be employed to a significant degree to the extent the offender is part of the prevalent power structure. If this were just a random white guy on the street, I'd say some opprobrium would be appropriate but then forget him, leave him alone, give him the benefit of the doubt if it can be reasonably applied, and certainly don't try to intimidate him through social media or whatever (same goes for that woman in the YouTube vid, just leave her alone now, she's had enough). But when said offender is an integral part of the political game and it's something as serious as potential racism, then take him to pieces. The morality of the response here relates not so much to the particular incident but to the bigger picture of fighting back against the legitimizing of the damaging discourse, which is much more a problem when the offender is in a position of status, which in itself implies legitimacy. You've got to explode that link of racism-legitmacy, and that takes outrage.
I think his target handled it well by the way. A degree of outrage but he maintained his dignity throughout. That's about the right balance.
I come from a place where nobody has ever picked cotton, and "cotton-picking..." is not a slur to my ears. But I see no good reason for somebody whose ancestors probably did pick cotton to take this as some sort of racial insult. It's agricultural work, hard work, yes--performed by slaves prior to 1865, but white sharecroppers also had to pick cotton. That poor blacks and poor whites both had to pick cotton after 1865 is just a fact of life. Picking cotton was no more degrading than any other kind of agricultural work which is performed by hand.
A lot of people are "primed to be outraged" about any expression or gesture that can be interpreted as racist, sexist, and various other "...ists". It's a complete and total waste of outrage on extraordinarily trivial causes. What people should be outraged about are the highly unsatisfactory material conditions which a good share of the population are forced to endure for the benefit of a small minority.
Outrage should be employed to a significant degree to the extent the offender is part of the prevalent power structure.
If one doesn't like the way society is organized, then let's save our outrage for the facts of "the prevalent power structure" rather than what some running dog lackey of the dominant class said.
If we are just worried about statements that have ambiguous racial overtones, but are content with the fact that the media (which distributed this errant comment) is a tool of the plutocracy, then again, the outrage is just a fart in a windstorm. Correcting people's speech is not going to change the power structure one whit.
It does frustrate me that the bigger picture system is not something that allows outrage to function against itself. That's partly why Occupy failed. But I don't see that you've said much more than you have different priorities and your priorities are better. You've conceded the principle that outrage is a legitimate political weapon. I'm just for employing it more widely than you are and am less complacent about the results of not doing so.
A lot of people are "primed to be outraged" about any expression or gesture that can be interpreted as racist, sexist, and various other "...ists". It's a complete and total waste of outrage on extraordinarily trivial causes. What people should be outraged about are the highly unsatisfactory material conditions which a good share of the population are forced to endure for the benefit of a small minority.
I beg to differ that being outraged at a perceived racist comment is a trivial thing in the current political climate in the USA. Even if it were trivial, then the fact that you perceive other things as more important is an example of "whataboutism". We can be outraged by both and still differentiate between the two as being more or less important.
Reply to Benkei People only have so much attention span and so much emotional reserve. Spend it on tending to even only major slights against all the sensitive categories you are aware of, and you'll soon be either exhausted, or too wound up to think straight -- or think gayly forward either.
Worse, all the conflict over real or imagined slights (I'm not talking about deliberate and focused insults) makes it more difficult for people to cooperate. It's one thing if somebody calls me a 'homosexual' instead of 'gay'. That's not worth getting riled up about. They might even get away with calling me a cock sucker. Outrage? Nah.
But I don't see that you've said much more than you have different priorities and your priorities are better. You've conceded the principle that outrage is a legitimate political weapon. I'm just for employing it more widely than you are and am less complacent about the results of not doing so.
Right, mine are better. Absolutely.
Outrage is a useful motivator for change, but the shelf-life of outrage is relatively short. Direct it towards the most important targets. There are 7+ billion people, all of whom have prejudices of various kinds (except me and thee, and even thee has a couple of unfortunate hangups). New annoying people are being born faster than you can reform the old annoying people. The hamster wheel of outrage will wear you out.
Outrage is not going to cause the few hundred thousand people who have control of much of the world's wealth to give it up, either. But enlightening the masses about rich folks' role in everyone's lives is more doable than fussing over verbal etiquette.
Outrage should be employed to a significant degree to the extent the offender is part of the prevalent power structure.
This is a rationalization for a double standard and it breeds contempt. The right very much feels that they are being held to a much higher standard than the left, all under the specious argument that the left is properly fighting the man yet the right is the man. The right doesn't consider itself the one in power, but instead sees the power being in the hands of the left in terms of setting the agenda and determining what is proper conduct in public.
Roseanne Barr said what she said and is removed from civil society. Bill Maher, when told by a Senator he could help work the Senator's fields in Nebraska said, "Work in the fields? Senator, I’m a house n*****.” And after some feigned outrage just to be fair, Maher wakes up to work as usual. Suppose a former Trump advisor said that?
And moving from racism to crassness and anti-intellectualism, Trump says all the nonsense he says and the left is outraged, yet De Niro hijacks an awards show and says "Fuck Trump" and receives a standing ovation. How about if someone said "Fuck Obama" at the country music awards and everyone stood up and cheered? No big deal?
You can rationalize the double standard all you want, but what you end up doing is further polarizing. I'd even say that a large part of the right's embracing of Trump is his refusal to play by the left's rules of conduct. If you want to make sure that there are future Trumps, keep arguing that the right isn't allowed to be outraged and that the left has the right to speak more openly than the right. Next thing you know they'll elect another Trump to prove you wrong.
Even if it were trivial, then the fact that you perceive other things as more important is an example of "whataboutism".
It's not this phantom "whataboutism". The material causes of misery among blacks, poor whites, hispanics, native Americans, et al grossly overwhelm the harm caused by someone saying "cotton picking". People get poor, stay poor, and sink deeper into poverty and suffering as a result of deliberate material arrangements kept in place for the convenience and benefit of the few.
Extreme disparities in various outcomes isn't a result of insults, racist phrases, and the like. Those are epiphenomena. The very real, present, and active causes are crude economic exploitation and/or economic exclusion because some populations no longer have "utility". The average black income in San Francisco is around $15,000 a year. The average educated population income is $82,000. Clearly, uneducated people (whatever racial group) are being effectively excluded from San Francisco--the cost of living there is too high, and there is no way the unskilled can make a reasonable income. The process of being excluded is inordinately stressful and unpleasant. That's one of the reasons why there are "excess deaths" among white, unskilled, working class men in the rust belt, or among other bottom-of-the-heap groups. Having been exploited in decades past, they are now being excluded. They are no longer economically relevant. Officially, "fuck 'em". Same thing for other groups.
Roseanne Barr said what she said and is removed from civil society. Bill Maher, when told by a Senator he could help work the Senator's fields in Nebraska said, "Work in the fields? Senator, I’m a house n*****. And after some feigned outrage just to be fair, Maher wakes up to work as usual. Suppose a former Trump advisor said that?”
I've heard this what-aboutism so many times and it's just boringly easy to refute. I mean do you really think comparing a person of black heritage to an ape with the express intent of belittling them is the same as accidentally referring to yourself, not a black person, as a house n**** as a joke? Really?
If you are reasonable enough to realize the answer is "No" then your double standard disappears. Having said that, I don't like Bill Maher and I don't like his comment, so maybe there should have been more objection, but again the degree is not the same (plus, Roseanne has a history of similar offensive statements against minorities and Bill Maher doesn't).
And moving from racism to crassness and anti-intellectualism, Trump says all the nonsense he says and the left is outraged, yet De Niro hijacks an awards show and says "Fuck Trump" and receives a standing ovation. How about if someone said "Fuck Obama" at the country music awards and everyone stood up and cheered? No big deal?
That's two words vs what? we must be into the thousands with Trump at this point. Having said that, there is hypocrisy there in terms of degrading public discourse. I would much prefer if he had been more dignified. But people stood up and cheered because Trump deserved it, basically. After his continuous crass insults of just about everyone else who opposes him, it was probably cathartic to see him get one back. So, you can't generalize without taking into account the behaviour of the target. Obama, whatever you say about him, and I don't like him either, was no Trump when it came to how he expressed himself. And would you be upset, for example, if a Republican said "Fuck the Ayatollah". I mean, does this apply to every target? Are we not justified in saying "Fuck X" publicly ever? In this case I don't support it, I think it was counterproductive, but I wouldn't rule it out tout court as being a legitimate form of protest.
...but what you end up doing is further polarizing. I'd even say that a large part of the right's embracing of Trump is his refusal to play by the left's rules of conduct. If you want to make sure that there are future Trumps, keep arguing that the right isn't allowed to be outraged and that the left has the right to speak more openly than the right. Next thing you know they'll elect another Trump to prove you wrong.
And moving from racism to crassness and anti-intellectualism, Trump says all the nonsense he says and the left is outraged, yet De Niro hijacks an awards show and says "Fuck Trump" and receives a standing ovation. How about if someone said "Fuck Obama" at the country music awards and everyone stood up and cheered? No big deal?
As to the first part, should we hold the President to the same standard as an actor? I think the answer is no. As a civil servant I'm held by a different standard as well. In particular, working for the ministry of finance, I cannot say or do just anything. I also receive additional checks on my tax returns to make sure they are correct to avoid the perception of a dual standard. All sorts of roles bring different standards of conduct.
Second, there's a qualitative difference between racist and mysogynistic comments Trump has made and the sort of crassness De Niro showed.
I do agree however that it's entirely likely the reactions to a Fuck Obama would have been different. On the other hand, no white president is going to get shit about his birth certificate either. So it seems the Left and the Right throw different types of insults at each other.
Occupy failed because sleeping in a park doesn't do shit.
If you are trying to say they weren't well organized enough, I'd agree, and would invite you to write an instructional pamphlet for the next attempt at a left-wing revolution. I suggest "Hanover's Guide on how not to Sleep in the Park and Actually Get Shit Done!" as a working title. Thank you for your service and "Viva la Revolución! :strong:
It's not this phantom "whataboutism". The material causes of misery among blacks, poor whites, hispanics, native Americans, et al grossly overwhelm the harm caused by someone saying "cotton picking". People get poor, stay poor, and sink deeper into poverty and suffering as a result of deliberate material arrangements kept in place for the convenience and benefit of the few.
If someone is deeply offended by "cotton picking" then that's a real harm, however much they might have material causes of misery. It's like saying to a poor man, "Don't complain about me calling you're a poor stupid piece of shit because you've got more important things to worry about." That just doesn't make sense. So yes, it is whataboutism because you're telling people not to care or not to act on issues important to them because you think there are more important things. It's the same line of reasoning when Trump is confronted with "But Putin kills journalists"... and he replies "Well, we kill a lot of people too". Or let's not worry about human rights abuses in China because things are worse in Saudi-Arabia. It's nonsense.
I've heard this what-aboutism so many times and it's just boringly easy to refute. I mean do you really think comparing a person of black heritage to an ape with the express intent of belittling them is the same as accidentally referring to yourself, not a black person, as a house n**** as a joke? Really?
The joke would be outrageous if Rush Limbaugh was asked to do some menial task and he responded by saying he was a house N and he wasn't fit for the fields. It's not funny. It references a horrible episode in American history where black people were divided into subgroups where those who had more European features (most notably skin tone) were permitted the better work in the house and the blacker ones were left out in the field. Hilarious Rush! You're too white to do that work. Yeah, good one. Quoting Baden
So, you can't generalize without taking into account the behaviour of the target. Obama, whatever you say about him, and I don't like him either, was no Trump when it came to how he expressed himself. And would you be upset, for example, if a Republican said "Fuck the Ayatollah". I mean, does this apply to every target? Are we not justified in saying "Fuck X" publicly ever? In this case I don't support it, I think it was counterprocuctive, but I wouldn't rule it out tout court as being a legitimate form of protest.
Again, sit on what you consider to be your logical distinctions all you want, but every time it happens, you further polarize. The right does not buy into your distinctions, and candidly, neither do I. It pushes me more toward voting for Trump actually.
My point is that you've got to look at the practical application of these things and worry less about some academic distinction you want to make. If, for example, black people didn't care about being called cotton pickers, then such comments wouldn't be outrageous. They'd be just as logically offensive, but to be truly offensive, you have to actually have that emotion. By the same token, if it is the case that the right is being offended by the application of what they perceive as a double standard, it's of limited relevance whether they ought logically be offended. The simple truth is that they are, so stop it. If you think it's fair game to say "Fuck Trump," but you scream and yell at "Fuck Obama" (despite you're personally thinking he's less offensive than Trump), you're going to continue to insult the right. If that's what you wanted to do anyway, then have at it, but don't expect any great respect back at you. Quoting Baden
I've refuted it not rationalized it. But feel free to try to rebut. I honestly don't think you have much on this one.
And I've refuted you and don't think you have much on this one. In fact, I think you're just hanging on to your argument because you feel you've already invested in it so you won't let go. Not really, but those are the sorts of things you like to say.
I do agree however that it's entirely likely the reactions to a Fuck Obama would have been different. On the other hand, no white president is going to get shit about his birth certificate either. So it seems the Left and the Right throw different types of insults at each other.
I never thought the birther movement was racist. I thought it was stupid, but I'd have expected the same had Hillary's birthplace been suspect for some reason.
The joke would be outrageous if Rush Limbaugh was asked to do some menial task and he responded by saying he was a house N and he wasn't fit for the fields. It's not funny. It references a horrible episode in American history where black people were divided into subgroups where those who had more European features (most notably skin tone) were permitted the better work in the house and the blacker ones were left out in the field. Hilarious Rush! You're too white to do that work. Yeah, good one.
You didn't answer to my point: Roseanne comparing a black person to an ape in order to belittle her is worse in degree of offensiveness to Bill Maher comparing himself to a house n**** as a joke. That's crucially important to recognize because we are arguing over the degree of outrage that's appropriate and that is proportional to the degree of offensiveness. I never claimed the joke was funny (in fact I said it was objectionable and Maher should have been punished more) nor did anyone else claim that, so you're arguing against a strawman rather than addressing the issue. The fact is your attempted equivalence does not hold therefore your argument fails. Period.
Again, sit on what you consider to be your logical distinctions all you want, but every time it happens, you further polarize.
So, I should be illogical or not make distinctions? That's a pointless line to take. If we're not going to attempt to do an intelligent analysis, it's going to be a short and boring disagreement.
The right does not buy into your distinctions, and candidly, neither do I. It pushes me more toward voting for Trump actually.
They're not my distinctions. I'm trying to apply reason here. So this is another pointless response. And telling me I'm pushing you towards voting Trump by analyzing the situation is flattering in an odd way but you can hardly expect me to modify my analysis in order to please you or anyone else. If you want to shoot yourself in the face to spite a political opponent, go ahead. I'll happily record the occasion and post it as a contender for the metaphorical Darwin awards.
My point is that you've got to look at the practical application of these things and worry less about some academic distinction you want to make. If, for example, black people didn't care about being called cotton pickers, then such comments wouldn't be outrageous. They'd be just as logically offensive, but to be truly offensive, you have to actually have that emotion. By the same token, if it is the case that the right is being offended by the application of what they perceive as a double standard, it's of limited relevance whether they ought logically be offended. The simple truth is that they are, so stop it. If you think it's fair game to say "Fuck Trump," but you scream and yell at "Fuck Obama" (despite you're personally thinking he's less offensive than Trump), you're going to continue to insult the right. If that's what you wanted to do anyway, then have at it, but don't expect any great respect back at you.
The question we were arguing was not whether the right should be offended over the application of double standards, the question was whether there are actual double standards or not. You claimed there were. I've argued against that and told you why, and you've refused to reasonably engage. So, I don't accept there are double standards (at least in the examples we've dealt with. It's up to you to raise more if you want) to be offended by in the first place. The double standards argument appears to me to be an invention of the right in order to distract from the behaviour of some of their public representatives, spokespeople and fellow travelers, and a very weak attempt to justify that behaviour by drawing false equivalences. I've seen this strategy time and time again where pundits compare, for example, racist comments by a right winger to rude or vulgar comments by a left winger, two completely different categories of offense (though not in the case of Bill Maher where both comments were racist but in very different ways, one being a stupid attempt at being self-effacing, the other a straightforward racist attack).
On the example of DeNiro, I said he was wrong to say what he did, so it's not exactly accurate to say I said it's fair game. I said I understood the reaction. On Obama, I would not scream and yell if someone said Fuck Obama, I would probably on the contrary say, yes, Fuck Obama. I would think it hypocritical for an actor to say that in public if part of the reason for saying it was that the target was lowering the tone of public discourse as Trump is. But again, Trump deserves these kinds of insults more in the sense he does the same to others all the time. If right wingers are so bound up in their own partisan cloud of self-delusion that that simple common sense point cannot be admitted, it's again, their loss. I'm not going to stop pointing out reality because it's uncomfortable for them.
And I've refuted you and don't think you have much on this one. In fact, I think you're just hanging on to your argument because you feel you've already invested in it so you won't let go. Not really, but those are the sorts of things you like to say.
Yes, not really. In fact, not at all. Because you haven't responded to my arguments so much as simply expressed your dislike of them. And if you think I didn't refute you and therefore shouldn't have claimed I did, actually respond and defend the equivalences instead of just shrugging the point off on the basis of anyone can be offended by anything they like. They can. But not justifiably. And therein lies the rub.
But are we on the shore building intellectual sandcastles here or have we actually got our toes in the water yet? The meta-game is to be above it all and imagine we're making a contribution simply by analyzing how fucked up each side is. Meanwhile society as a whole drifts towards some -ism that we, for real ethical reasons, object to but don't or can't do anything about
Yeah, that's an apt criticism, and the Selma example is a good one. I've never been very politically active (mostly because I don't know how to interact with people outside bars and small gatherings) and that sometimes makes me liable to 'beautiful soul' armchair analysis. I still think the point I was trying to make is valid, but I do need to separate the wheat from the ivory starbucks meta-chaff.
--
I think my last post was sloppy and confusingly mixed up two different themes:
(a) authentic vs inauthentic outrage
(b) What sort of missteps are grounds for legitimate outrage?
I do think these are closely linked, but nevertheless distinct. I didn't outline very well the way in which I think they're related to one another.
(Separating the question of legitimacy from the question of authenticity opens up a category of 'authentic outrage for illegitimate reasons' which might appear troubling, but I don't think it is. I'll bracket that at this point, but I'd be willing to defending that in more detail, and will probably expand on it below)
@Hanover's post moved from diplomatic agnosticism regarding a specific example toward a broader criticism of a general climate of performative outrage. I was trying, in my post, to demonstrate that I acknowledge the existence of that climate (which I sincerely do find to be problematic) but also...
The also was this: Peformative outrage exists - moreover, illegitimate performative outrage exists, and is rampant. BUT. That doesn't mean that we should approach all outrage as opportunity to comment on a corrupt climate. People fake injuries all the time, for pills. Someone comes to a doctor, leg mangled - 'Well I can't say one way or the other in this case, but what I think is worth talking about how many people do fake."
But the other point is this: The political use of illegitimate occasions for outrage, whether the outrage is authentic or not, casts doubt on legitimate uses of outrage. Selma is clearly legitimate, whatever the degree of personal authenticity for the people involved. Whatever the artifice, it embodies an authentic outrage, but strategically. It worked.
What would work now?
So...oh but I don't know how to say what I want to say now. It's tip of the tongue.
Something like: You can argue for the pragmatic use of tactical outrage, and I think you're right, but that use will only be pragmatic as long as it actually moves people. Moves people other than the people who are already moved. If you reach a crisis point where everyone suspects that everything is politics and is inauthentic ---then that rationale utterly fails. I would argue that that's already happened (2016), and that the left, in denial, is sleepwalking to the same tune. There was plenty of tactical outrage directed at Trump. But, like a bad dream, any attempt by the democrats to capitalize on that outrage just made the rest of the country like trump all the more, ala Berlusconi.
Intellectually, ivory-starbucks, I have no problem suggesting to Hanover that he's mixing up levels. Pragmatically, sewer-thing, I think Hanover's dead right. If you want to mobilize on that level, you have to focus on what people feel - not what should they feel.
I doubt that the cancellation of Roseanne's show was meant as punishment. It was probably just an attempt to protect a brand. She's a Trump supporter. Trump isn't a popular president. What she said sounded racist. Trump has been accused of racism.
It all swerves into a nasty racist stew that doesn't play particularly well.
Here's a poll from 2015. The pollster gets a B rating from 538, and shows a tiny Democratic lean.
You can argue race is not a factor here. You could say thinking Obama was born somewhere else is just ignorance, like most Americans not being able to pick out Estonia on a map, something like that. After all, only 60% of usual Republican primary voters seem to know where Ted Cruz was born. You can say there's no pattern to the opinions of Trump's primary supporters, and I won't be able to prove you wrong. There's no proof to be had either way here.
I'm just asking, do you really look at numbers like these and see no evidence that race was part of birtherism?
you have to focus on what people feel - not what should they feel
Not only is that true, but, as Arlie Russell Hochschild argues in Strangers in Their Own Land, Republicans deeply resent being told by the Left how they should feel, who they should care about, what they should be outraged about and what not.
Do I think it's something to get outraged over? I won't tell an African American how he ought react. I do remember though when the good Jesse Jackson called NYC Hymie Town and when Andrew Young called Mondale's aides smart ass white boys. I was insulted neither time. It just lets me know their real opinions, as if I didn't already know.
Is it okay for a person to behave violently, or to trample on the speaker's right of free speech, in reaction to words? I don't think so.
You make a point with the comparison of reactions to spoken words (yours and an African American; you may be different races, but you're both human). Why are there different reactions to the same words and phrases among the same group of minorities? Not all blacks would react the same to some racial slur. Is it racist for you to group all African Americans together if they all have the same reaction to words?
The fact that there are different reactions needs to be looked at and the rejection of any implication that there are things that certain groups of people can't say (which is racist), or that anyone's free speech rights should be hindered. Fight ignorant speech with logical speech. Use your own free speech to bring reason back to the discussion. The goal of the user of the word is usually trying to bait the person into getting side-tracked off the main discussion. The insult is just a means to an end and the listener fell for the trap.
Trump didn't say "Fuck De Niro" though. His comments have been less than that.
Less in what sense? Less intelligent? If you think Trump has been less egregious than De Niro, I really don't think our standards are similar enough to have common ground on this. Trump has called on supporters to "knock the crap" out of a protester; which is just incitement to violence. He has a history of making claims that belie his racism/xenophobia; claims about that Mexican judge, the birther thing, the mother of a dead muslim US soldier wasn't allowed to speak, both sides at fault in Charlotsville, suggesting most Mexicans being bad people. Grabbing them by the pussy.
Let's not get into his Twitter.
So no, where De Niro expressed a clear dislike of Trump in a pathetic way, Trump expresses xenophobia and racism as President of the USA and continually demonstrates continually not to represent the interests of all US citizens (which is fine during campaign time).
I never thought the birther movement was racist. I thought it was stupid, but I'd have expected the same had Hillary's birthplace been suspect for some reason.
Really? So after providing evidence it was still questioned. His birthplace wasn't suspect at all moving from 2011 onward. How long did it last though and why? Because some whiteys couldn't handle a black president; one of them being Trump, who's a racist and simply based on that fact alone doesn't really deserve any political support.
Good points and I want to get back with more when I have time. Short and dirty version for now is legitimate outrage only, authentic or inauthentic doesn't matter. Also the 50% or so of Republicans who, according to polls, think Obama was a Muslim, supported the birther movement, think global warming is a liberal conspiracy etc. are not worth trying to move, and I wouldn't try to move them. And neither are a lot of other Republicans. The pragmatic effort is to occupy the middle ground particularly that of swing voters and marginalize the right, and particularly the racist/islamophobic/anti-semite elements through, amongst other things, outrage. This will likely increase the intensity of hate towards the left by many on the right but they've only got one vote each. By the way, Trump didn't win the general imo because of the outrage directed by the left against the horrible things he said (this is more like why he won the Republican nomination because that's where extremists have way more say); he was at his highest in the polls for the general actually when he was being moderate and at this lowest after the outrage at the pussy-grabbing comments. And anyway, it was mostly about the economy and name recognition and the fact he's been on TV for so long. And it's also more like he won because Hillary was just about the worst possible person the Dems could have run and stimulated outrage on the other side (and even on her own side amongst the left). So, outrage worked but in the wrong direction.
“We recorded constantly. We went into the boardroom to set up discussions about how and who should get fired [on the show] without talking and saying directly who got fired, so there was a big, long exchange, all of which was recorded,” he said. “Out of those exchanges came some really unfathomably despicable words said by this guy who is a TV star. I heard it. I watched it, and those things are somewhere in some warehouse.”
Asked more specifically about the content of the tapes and whether they contain only disparaging comments about women, Pruitt said, “No, very much a racist issue.” Pressed further on whether it was about African-Americans, Jewish people or all of the above,” Pruitt responded “yes” to all three.
... Nobody, Pruitt says, ever confronted Trump about his offensive remarks."
More outrage was needed about this kind of stuff not less.
I'd agree, and would invite you to write an instructional pamphlet for the next attempt at a left-wing revolution.
He could just send them a copy of Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals. Alinsky wasn't right about everything, but he was right about some things. Like, the Occupy people could have rented a safe deposit box in one of New York's premier banks and occupied the box with a few fish and dead squirrels. They could have arranged to track dog shit into the executive suites -- at least up to the reception desk.
Asked more specifically about the content of the tapes and whether they contain only disparaging comments about women, Pruitt said, “No, very much a racist issue.” Pressed further on whether it was about African-Americans, Jewish people or all of the above,” Pruitt responded “yes” to all three.
Vice is trying to deal with the exec of the show to get the tapes released. I think Cornell mentioned something like 14 uses of the "n" word by Trump in a single recording.
It seems credible to me as it's unlikely all those that witnessed and reported it are lying, and let's face it considering Trump's actions and words before and after becoming President, it fits right in to who he is, but until the tapes come out it's unprovable so I hope they get them out, and then watch the Whitehouse implode as it tries to spin the "n" word. Hopefully, mass protests and civil disobedience to follow until he's impeached.
Isn't the disagreement precisely over whose double standard everyone should follow?
There'll always be bias and there'll always be a degree of double standard in that sense, but the specific argument is over whether outrage from the left (and centre) directed against individuals on the right can be classed as illegitimate/hypocritical based on examples of the sort Hanover provided. I'm saying "no" as even under a cursory analysis, the equivalences he's tried to draw fall apart (or at least don't hold enough to make said outrage illegitimate/hypocritical to any significant degree). Hanover appears to be responding to that by saying something like "Republicans don't care about this kind of analysis, they're still going to see this as a double standard and still not going to see the outrage as legitimate/fairly directed". Which is fine as I still consider that fighting the ideological fight to marginalize those who engage in racist/anti-semitic/Islamaphobic comments is worthwhile in a wider ethical context and is of pragmatic use, maybe not in the sense of convincing those whose ideology is already fully baked in of anything, which is generally futile anyway, but in winning over those in the center ground that can be got on side to the extent that it disempowers the objectionable discourse at least to some degree. And that's about the best that can be hoped for.
Comments (48)
I realize the emotion connected to the phrase so I ask do you believe it is something to be outraged over?
Do I think it's something to get outraged over? I won't tell an African American how he ought react. I do remember though when the good Jesse Jackson called NYC Hymie Town and when Andrew Young called Mondale's aides smart ass white boys. I was insulted neither time. It just lets me know their real opinions, as if I didn't already know.
I'm impressed, naturally, that you read about Andrew Young slamming Mondale aides and didn't call out of work to nurse your rage. But what's the point of that anecdote? Do you think its a scenario roughly equivalent to one tiff mentioned - only you reacted better? If not, then what's your point?
But one time, long ago, my high-school girlfriend got accepted, from bumfuck maine, to Columbia, in NYC.
I followed her out there, nothing to my name. Went to a party in manhattan and someone there, comfortably new-yorked, sized me up and let loose the same poor-maine stuff I'd read without ever blinking an eye. It was different then. I got mad. And he, in retrospect, won. He held his ground. I looked foolish.
He had the power, he was in his element - it was up to me to hold my ground in the face of that. He didn't have to defend shit. You can see how it's a different thing. Words aren't just words, depending on where you're at.
My point was (1) that I don't stand in the shoes of an African American so I won't begin to tell him how he ought to react, and (2) I've not found being outraged, offended, and insulted particularly useful in responding to morons, but, like you said, it's often difficult to control one's reactions to attacks. I also believe that some feign outrage as an effective tactic against outrageous conduct and it's just sort of an outrage game people play. Is that what happened in Tiff's example? I really don't know.
But that wasn't the question. The question was whether it is something to be outraged over, not whether it is something an African American should be outraged over, nor whether we should tell him how he ought to react.
If you're suggesting, as it seems, something along the lines that only an African American can rightly have an opinion on this, then I would find that ludicrous, and unlike your usual levelheaded judgement.
Quoting Hanover
What's useful and what feels right or wrong are two separate things. I took it as an ethical question rather than a question about what would be practical.
Watching that clip caused some degree of outrage in me. I think that what he said was wrong. And even if he said it unthinkingly, and didn't mean to cause offence, I still don't think that that would get him off the hook. People should be held responsible for the stupid and offensive shit they say. Trump should be held responsible. Roseanne should be held responsible. This bloke on Fox News should be held responsible.
I, of course, am an exception. If the day ever comes when I say something stupid and offensive, blame Hanover.
I'm not saying that only an African American can have an opinion on this. In fact, I provided my opinion for whatever it was worth. The question is whether it's right for someone to be outraged, and it'd be very difficult for me to say that a black person is wrong to be outraged at certain comments, as if I know what emotion he feels. It's sort of like if I joked about fucking your mother, I can't really say it'd be wrong for you to be outraged, although if you said the same of mine, I wouldn't be outraged. Maybe you're from a particularly close family and greatly religious and such comments are just not funny to you. I really don't know what you've been through, so I do stand by what I said when I say that it's hard for me to condemn a black guy for being insulted about something I really don't think much about.
Judging the legitimacy of your emotive response requires that I be in your head and weigh your response against what a reasonable person would do given your experience.
And stop accusing me of levelheadedness. It will do nothing other than to curb my more entertaining opinions. Quoting Sapientia
I actually take a different approach. I think we ought stop disposing of people who cross these boundaries we set. People should be allowed to be more crass and vulgar without being completely ostracized. These rules we impose so harshly have not made the world the better place they've intended to. It's made the world harsher, meaner, unforgiving, and critical. I'm not saying we can just let everything go without responding, but I don't think Roseanne needed to be thrown in the garbage for her comments. No one is better off for that.
Justice without mercy is revenge.
Quoting Hanover
No, not crass and vulgar, racist. Roseanne rightly got thrown in the garbage for being racist, just like we throw people in the garbage here for being racist.
And yes we are all better off that a spoiled rich person with a stupid TV show got her stupid TV show taken off her for spreading racist and Islamophobic hate. If she were on this site, she would have been banned instantly and we would have been similarly better off. It sends exactly the right message.
Why not shoot her in the head? The answer is proportionality, a concept we both agree with. It's not if, but how much. I say it's too much.
OK fine, I'm on mobile and moving around and maybe not reading you all that clearly. But getting back to Roseanne, she has (had?) a lot of fans and a lot of Twitter followers. Think about the net effect of her legitimizing racism to all those people. It would have had some influence, it would be very naive to think otherwise, and the ensuing extra racism more than likely caused pain and material loss down the line. It's not something we can trace exactly, but that's what needs to be balanced when considering a just punishment. And considering all the money and privilege she has, losing her TV show is hardly very severe. It might seem so to her or her supporters, but that's a deficiency of perspective as far as I'm concerned. I don't know what the alternative would be, allowing the show to go on would have made ABC look racist, and it would have been boycotted anyway, and some of her co-stars probably would have walked off. If you're going to say it would have been better to do nothing, that would have certainly resulted in an absence of justice. So, what would have been just in your view?
Are you suggesting that you don't know what emotions the black person in the video clip felt? The emotions he expressed or likely felt were apparent or can be quite easily inferred: shock and outrage. The same emotions were triggered in me just by watching, so you shouldn't even have to go as far as to place yourself in his shoes, which I am capable of doing to some extent, and to an extent sufficient to empathise, relate, understand, and share feelings. I don't know why you're suggesting it's different for you. I would question why that is.
Also, in your analogy, you said that it's something insulting which you really don't think much about. But, though I might not think about such things much from day to day, I certainly pick up on it in situations like the situation in the video. So, in that sense, you don't really need to think much about it, so long as you're not oblivious or insensitive to it when you witness it transpiring, or, in this case, a recording of it. Alarm bells should be ringing. And, in your conversation with Baden, I noticed that you spoke of proportionality; well, a lack or restraint of emotion, which you seem to be equating with being reasonable, might not be proportionate or just under the circumstances. Sometimes it's right to be outraged.
Quoting Hanover
No, it doesn't necessarily require that you be in the other persons head. Sometimes it hits you straightaway, as it hit me when watching the video.
Two people can know that they can joke about fucking each others mother with very little chance of causing offence. But a situation more closely analogous to the video clip would be if someone had just come back from their mothers funeral, and that was fairly apparent in some way. This person would still be dressed in funeral attire. And some other person says something about fucking his mother. But that's still not quite a match, because it's too personal. What the guy in the video clip said was less personal and insults a considerably larger group of people. And it was said on television and will have been viewed by a massive number of people.
Quoting Hanover
I'm not suggesting that they should be thrown in the "garbage". I don't think that they should. But they should be held responsible, there should be consequences of some sort, and they should understand their wrongdoing and be remorseful and apologetic afterwards. Trump rarely admits wrongdoing or shows remorse or acts apologetically. Arguably, that might weaken his position as president, but I also think that that's just the way that he is, president or not. On that basis, he behaves worse than Roseanne has behaved recently, and, as a result, Roseanne comes across as a better person. Maybe, given her admission of wrongdoing and apologies, and if she learns from her mistake and doesn't repeat it, and given enough time, she should be granted new opportunities. That's at least a step in the right direction.
As for Trump though, he should be executed by firing squad, guillotined, or maybe even hanged, drawn and quartered. (In fact, based on a photo I've seen, I think he may have already been guillotined).
I'm glad you brought this up; I had the feeling this was the subtext.
There's a lot of disingenuous, weaponized outrage out there. But then there's also a lot of disingenuous "how could you ever think I was saying *that*??" indignation. When it's a game, its usually a game with two players.
In any case, the suspicion of local disingenuousness can metastasize, slowly and invisibly, frog in boiling water, into a full-blown cynical universal suspicion. Almost everyone is feigning outrage - and even if they aren't, and the authenticity of outrage is rhetorically bracketted, the 'outrage' is best addressed as an occasion for speaking of inauthentic outrage.
Same thing, but reversed, applies to the other side. 'I also believe that some feign emotional investment in the open marketplace of ideas as an effective tactic against pc moralizing and it's really just sort of 'only-saying-this as devil's advocate' game people play. Is this what [x] is doing? I really don't know [but regardless, that's what's important to focus on here]'
(I'm sure your familiar with one variant of this rhetorical move, a mirror of yours: if someone's accused of being racist, and then that case crumbles, well actually that's the point, because its important to recognize the *systemic* racism that the person is unwittingly the vessel for.)
A similar thing happens with religion. One side, snarky and less-holy-than-thou, smears publically what's of spiritual value to the other. Then the other side weaponizes their spirituality in retaliation. After a few decades, you're left with hollow accusations of ignorance and hypocrisy on the one hand, and amorality on the other.
But that shouldn't blind one to the fact that spiritual communities often provide real succor, both spiritual and material, for their members Or (from the other side) that people who don't fit that community's mold can be severely damaged by the judgments of the religious.
The spectacle of argument divorces both participants from what they're arguing about, and the cynical game-theory thing of 'he's bullshitting, so I have to bullshit back' allows each participant to justify their immersion in the spectacle to themselves.
Tldr; cotton-picking whatever is shitty, no matter how the other person reacts. Chastising an older generation for not understanding intersectionality or knowing gender pronouns v. 9.3 is bullshit. But the fact that stuff like the latter example exists, doesnt mean the former example should be tactfully and with plausible deniability waved-off.
But are we on the shore building intellectual sandcastles here or have we actually got our toes in the water yet? The meta-game is to be above it all and imagine we're making a contribution simply by analyzing how fucked up each side is. Meanwhile society as a whole drifts towards some -ism that we, for real ethical reasons, object to but don't or can't do anything about. And rhetoric is the currency of politics whether we like it or not. Martin Luther King knew that as well as Hitler. Bernie Sanders knows it as well as Trump. Maybe a beach and the sea isn't the right analogy. Maybe a Starbucks cafe next to a dirty canal. So, it's a nice clean philosophical Latte or toxic political sewage. With all the action happening in the canal. So, we can talk about inauthenticity and games but we can also look at where real change comes about or not. Selma was a tactic; it was rhetoric and images and it was misleading and it was deliberately misleading, and inauthentic in some sense if you like. And there was outrage. And it worked.
But even when you're in that political sewage and you're stirring up outrage because you need it just to stay afloat, I agree you can recognize some distinctions. Jordan Peterson is not Hitler, and that white woman on the Youtube vid who called the police on a little black girl who was selling water to make money to help her family afford a trip to Disneyland (what a story!) is not necessarily a racist bigot, might generally be a nice person in fact, and definitely doesn't deserve death threats. Trump and his merry band of fascist ghouls on the other hand deserve any form of outrage that can tactically undermine them by fair means or foul.
So, I don't know, where do we draw the line between not being immersed in the spectacle and not being involved in the fight? which is a very real and toxic one just by its nature.
King: Yeah.
President Johnson: —that if you just take a simple thing and repeat it often enough, even if it wasn't true, why, people'd accept it. Well, now, this is true, and if you can find the worst condition that you run into in Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana, or South Carolina where—well, I think one the worst I ever heard of is the president of the school at Tuskegee [Institute], or the head of the Government Department there, or something, being denied the right to cast a vote, and if you just take that one illustration and get it on radio, and get it on television, and get it on . . . in the pulpits, and get it in the meetings, get it every place you can, pretty soon the fellow that didn't do anything but follow—drive a tractor, he'll say, "Well, that's not right, that's not fair."
King: Yes.
President Johnson: And then that will help us on what we're going to shove through in the end. "
LBJ to King (1965) http://www.teachwithmovies.org/guides/selma-files/selma-supplemental-materials.html
The tactic of weaponizing outrage at its finest.
It also makes me wonder how likely it would be for this person to refer to another white man, latino or asian as being "out of his cotton picking mind". I suspect the likelihood is pretty close to zero.
I'd add that for me the outrage is justified not just by what was said but by who said it. Outrage should be employed to a significant degree to the extent the offender is part of the prevalent power structure. If this were just a random white guy on the street, I'd say some opprobrium would be appropriate but then forget him, leave him alone, give him the benefit of the doubt if it can be reasonably applied, and certainly don't try to intimidate him through social media or whatever (same goes for that woman in the YouTube vid, just leave her alone now, she's had enough). But when said offender is an integral part of the political game and it's something as serious as potential racism, then take him to pieces. The morality of the response here relates not so much to the particular incident but to the bigger picture of fighting back against the legitimizing of the damaging discourse, which is much more a problem when the offender is in a position of status, which in itself implies legitimacy. You've got to explode that link of racism-legitmacy, and that takes outrage.
I think his target handled it well by the way. A degree of outrage but he maintained his dignity throughout. That's about the right balance.
I come from a place where nobody has ever picked cotton, and "cotton-picking..." is not a slur to my ears. But I see no good reason for somebody whose ancestors probably did pick cotton to take this as some sort of racial insult. It's agricultural work, hard work, yes--performed by slaves prior to 1865, but white sharecroppers also had to pick cotton. That poor blacks and poor whites both had to pick cotton after 1865 is just a fact of life. Picking cotton was no more degrading than any other kind of agricultural work which is performed by hand.
A lot of people are "primed to be outraged" about any expression or gesture that can be interpreted as racist, sexist, and various other "...ists". It's a complete and total waste of outrage on extraordinarily trivial causes. What people should be outraged about are the highly unsatisfactory material conditions which a good share of the population are forced to endure for the benefit of a small minority.
If one doesn't like the way society is organized, then let's save our outrage for the facts of "the prevalent power structure" rather than what some running dog lackey of the dominant class said.
If we are just worried about statements that have ambiguous racial overtones, but are content with the fact that the media (which distributed this errant comment) is a tool of the plutocracy, then again, the outrage is just a fart in a windstorm. Correcting people's speech is not going to change the power structure one whit.
It does frustrate me that the bigger picture system is not something that allows outrage to function against itself. That's partly why Occupy failed. But I don't see that you've said much more than you have different priorities and your priorities are better. You've conceded the principle that outrage is a legitimate political weapon. I'm just for employing it more widely than you are and am less complacent about the results of not doing so.
I beg to differ that being outraged at a perceived racist comment is a trivial thing in the current political climate in the USA. Even if it were trivial, then the fact that you perceive other things as more important is an example of "whataboutism". We can be outraged by both and still differentiate between the two as being more or less important.
Worse, all the conflict over real or imagined slights (I'm not talking about deliberate and focused insults) makes it more difficult for people to cooperate. It's one thing if somebody calls me a 'homosexual' instead of 'gay'. That's not worth getting riled up about. They might even get away with calling me a cock sucker. Outrage? Nah.
Quoting Baden
Occupy..., bless them, were rebels with a cause but rebels without a plan.
Quoting Baden
Right, mine are better. Absolutely.
Outrage is a useful motivator for change, but the shelf-life of outrage is relatively short. Direct it towards the most important targets. There are 7+ billion people, all of whom have prejudices of various kinds (except me and thee, and even thee has a couple of unfortunate hangups). New annoying people are being born faster than you can reform the old annoying people. The hamster wheel of outrage will wear you out.
Outrage is not going to cause the few hundred thousand people who have control of much of the world's wealth to give it up, either. But enlightening the masses about rich folks' role in everyone's lives is more doable than fussing over verbal etiquette.
Dunno, I feel like I've got enough outrage for a few more revolutions yet. ;)
This is a rationalization for a double standard and it breeds contempt. The right very much feels that they are being held to a much higher standard than the left, all under the specious argument that the left is properly fighting the man yet the right is the man. The right doesn't consider itself the one in power, but instead sees the power being in the hands of the left in terms of setting the agenda and determining what is proper conduct in public.
Roseanne Barr said what she said and is removed from civil society. Bill Maher, when told by a Senator he could help work the Senator's fields in Nebraska said, "Work in the fields? Senator, I’m a house n*****.” And after some feigned outrage just to be fair, Maher wakes up to work as usual. Suppose a former Trump advisor said that?
And moving from racism to crassness and anti-intellectualism, Trump says all the nonsense he says and the left is outraged, yet De Niro hijacks an awards show and says "Fuck Trump" and receives a standing ovation. How about if someone said "Fuck Obama" at the country music awards and everyone stood up and cheered? No big deal?
You can rationalize the double standard all you want, but what you end up doing is further polarizing. I'd even say that a large part of the right's embracing of Trump is his refusal to play by the left's rules of conduct. If you want to make sure that there are future Trumps, keep arguing that the right isn't allowed to be outraged and that the left has the right to speak more openly than the right. Next thing you know they'll elect another Trump to prove you wrong.
It's not this phantom "whataboutism". The material causes of misery among blacks, poor whites, hispanics, native Americans, et al grossly overwhelm the harm caused by someone saying "cotton picking". People get poor, stay poor, and sink deeper into poverty and suffering as a result of deliberate material arrangements kept in place for the convenience and benefit of the few.
Extreme disparities in various outcomes isn't a result of insults, racist phrases, and the like. Those are epiphenomena. The very real, present, and active causes are crude economic exploitation and/or economic exclusion because some populations no longer have "utility". The average black income in San Francisco is around $15,000 a year. The average educated population income is $82,000. Clearly, uneducated people (whatever racial group) are being effectively excluded from San Francisco--the cost of living there is too high, and there is no way the unskilled can make a reasonable income. The process of being excluded is inordinately stressful and unpleasant. That's one of the reasons why there are "excess deaths" among white, unskilled, working class men in the rust belt, or among other bottom-of-the-heap groups. Having been exploited in decades past, they are now being excluded. They are no longer economically relevant. Officially, "fuck 'em". Same thing for other groups.
Occupy failed because sleeping in a park doesn't do shit.
I've heard this what-aboutism so many times and it's just boringly easy to refute. I mean do you really think comparing a person of black heritage to an ape with the express intent of belittling them is the same as accidentally referring to yourself, not a black person, as a house n**** as a joke? Really?
If you are reasonable enough to realize the answer is "No" then your double standard disappears. Having said that, I don't like Bill Maher and I don't like his comment, so maybe there should have been more objection, but again the degree is not the same (plus, Roseanne has a history of similar offensive statements against minorities and Bill Maher doesn't).
Quoting Hanover
That's two words vs what? we must be into the thousands with Trump at this point. Having said that, there is hypocrisy there in terms of degrading public discourse. I would much prefer if he had been more dignified. But people stood up and cheered because Trump deserved it, basically. After his continuous crass insults of just about everyone else who opposes him, it was probably cathartic to see him get one back. So, you can't generalize without taking into account the behaviour of the target. Obama, whatever you say about him, and I don't like him either, was no Trump when it came to how he expressed himself. And would you be upset, for example, if a Republican said "Fuck the Ayatollah". I mean, does this apply to every target? Are we not justified in saying "Fuck X" publicly ever? In this case I don't support it, I think it was counterproductive, but I wouldn't rule it out tout court as being a legitimate form of protest.
Quoting Hanover
I've refuted it not rationalized it. But feel free to try to rebut. I honestly don't think you have much on this one.
Quoting Hanover
I didn't argue any of that, so...
As to the first part, should we hold the President to the same standard as an actor? I think the answer is no. As a civil servant I'm held by a different standard as well. In particular, working for the ministry of finance, I cannot say or do just anything. I also receive additional checks on my tax returns to make sure they are correct to avoid the perception of a dual standard. All sorts of roles bring different standards of conduct.
Second, there's a qualitative difference between racist and mysogynistic comments Trump has made and the sort of crassness De Niro showed.
I do agree however that it's entirely likely the reactions to a Fuck Obama would have been different. On the other hand, no white president is going to get shit about his birth certificate either. So it seems the Left and the Right throw different types of insults at each other.
If you are trying to say they weren't well organized enough, I'd agree, and would invite you to write an instructional pamphlet for the next attempt at a left-wing revolution. I suggest "Hanover's Guide on how not to Sleep in the Park and Actually Get Shit Done!" as a working title. Thank you for your service and "Viva la Revolución! :strong:
If someone is deeply offended by "cotton picking" then that's a real harm, however much they might have material causes of misery. It's like saying to a poor man, "Don't complain about me calling you're a poor stupid piece of shit because you've got more important things to worry about." That just doesn't make sense. So yes, it is whataboutism because you're telling people not to care or not to act on issues important to them because you think there are more important things. It's the same line of reasoning when Trump is confronted with "But Putin kills journalists"... and he replies "Well, we kill a lot of people too". Or let's not worry about human rights abuses in China because things are worse in Saudi-Arabia. It's nonsense.
The joke would be outrageous if Rush Limbaugh was asked to do some menial task and he responded by saying he was a house N and he wasn't fit for the fields. It's not funny. It references a horrible episode in American history where black people were divided into subgroups where those who had more European features (most notably skin tone) were permitted the better work in the house and the blacker ones were left out in the field. Hilarious Rush! You're too white to do that work. Yeah, good one. Quoting Baden
Again, sit on what you consider to be your logical distinctions all you want, but every time it happens, you further polarize. The right does not buy into your distinctions, and candidly, neither do I. It pushes me more toward voting for Trump actually.
My point is that you've got to look at the practical application of these things and worry less about some academic distinction you want to make. If, for example, black people didn't care about being called cotton pickers, then such comments wouldn't be outrageous. They'd be just as logically offensive, but to be truly offensive, you have to actually have that emotion. By the same token, if it is the case that the right is being offended by the application of what they perceive as a double standard, it's of limited relevance whether they ought logically be offended. The simple truth is that they are, so stop it. If you think it's fair game to say "Fuck Trump," but you scream and yell at "Fuck Obama" (despite you're personally thinking he's less offensive than Trump), you're going to continue to insult the right. If that's what you wanted to do anyway, then have at it, but don't expect any great respect back at you.
Quoting Baden
And I've refuted you and don't think you have much on this one. In fact, I think you're just hanging on to your argument because you feel you've already invested in it so you won't let go. Not really, but those are the sorts of things you like to say.
Trump didn't say "Fuck De Niro" though. His comments have been less than that. Quoting Benkei
What about what Maher said?Quoting Benkei
I never thought the birther movement was racist. I thought it was stupid, but I'd have expected the same had Hillary's birthplace been suspect for some reason.
You didn't answer to my point: Roseanne comparing a black person to an ape in order to belittle her is worse in degree of offensiveness to Bill Maher comparing himself to a house n**** as a joke. That's crucially important to recognize because we are arguing over the degree of outrage that's appropriate and that is proportional to the degree of offensiveness. I never claimed the joke was funny (in fact I said it was objectionable and Maher should have been punished more) nor did anyone else claim that, so you're arguing against a strawman rather than addressing the issue. The fact is your attempted equivalence does not hold therefore your argument fails. Period.
Quoting Hanover
So, I should be illogical or not make distinctions? That's a pointless line to take. If we're not going to attempt to do an intelligent analysis, it's going to be a short and boring disagreement.
Quoting Hanover
They're not my distinctions. I'm trying to apply reason here. So this is another pointless response. And telling me I'm pushing you towards voting Trump by analyzing the situation is flattering in an odd way but you can hardly expect me to modify my analysis in order to please you or anyone else. If you want to shoot yourself in the face to spite a political opponent, go ahead. I'll happily record the occasion and post it as a contender for the metaphorical Darwin awards.
Quoting Hanover
The question we were arguing was not whether the right should be offended over the application of double standards, the question was whether there are actual double standards or not. You claimed there were. I've argued against that and told you why, and you've refused to reasonably engage. So, I don't accept there are double standards (at least in the examples we've dealt with. It's up to you to raise more if you want) to be offended by in the first place. The double standards argument appears to me to be an invention of the right in order to distract from the behaviour of some of their public representatives, spokespeople and fellow travelers, and a very weak attempt to justify that behaviour by drawing false equivalences. I've seen this strategy time and time again where pundits compare, for example, racist comments by a right winger to rude or vulgar comments by a left winger, two completely different categories of offense (though not in the case of Bill Maher where both comments were racist but in very different ways, one being a stupid attempt at being self-effacing, the other a straightforward racist attack).
On the example of DeNiro, I said he was wrong to say what he did, so it's not exactly accurate to say I said it's fair game. I said I understood the reaction. On Obama, I would not scream and yell if someone said Fuck Obama, I would probably on the contrary say, yes, Fuck Obama. I would think it hypocritical for an actor to say that in public if part of the reason for saying it was that the target was lowering the tone of public discourse as Trump is. But again, Trump deserves these kinds of insults more in the sense he does the same to others all the time. If right wingers are so bound up in their own partisan cloud of self-delusion that that simple common sense point cannot be admitted, it's again, their loss. I'm not going to stop pointing out reality because it's uncomfortable for them.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, not really. In fact, not at all. Because you haven't responded to my arguments so much as simply expressed your dislike of them. And if you think I didn't refute you and therefore shouldn't have claimed I did, actually respond and defend the equivalences instead of just shrugging the point off on the basis of anyone can be offended by anything they like. They can. But not justifiably. And therein lies the rub.
Yeah, that's an apt criticism, and the Selma example is a good one. I've never been very politically active (mostly because I don't know how to interact with people outside bars and small gatherings) and that sometimes makes me liable to 'beautiful soul' armchair analysis. I still think the point I was trying to make is valid, but I do need to separate the wheat from the ivory starbucks meta-chaff.
--
I think my last post was sloppy and confusingly mixed up two different themes:
(a) authentic vs inauthentic outrage
(b) What sort of missteps are grounds for legitimate outrage?
I do think these are closely linked, but nevertheless distinct. I didn't outline very well the way in which I think they're related to one another.
(Separating the question of legitimacy from the question of authenticity opens up a category of 'authentic outrage for illegitimate reasons' which might appear troubling, but I don't think it is. I'll bracket that at this point, but I'd be willing to defending that in more detail, and will probably expand on it below)
@Hanover's post moved from diplomatic agnosticism regarding a specific example toward a broader criticism of a general climate of performative outrage. I was trying, in my post, to demonstrate that I acknowledge the existence of that climate (which I sincerely do find to be problematic) but also...
The also was this: Peformative outrage exists - moreover, illegitimate performative outrage exists, and is rampant. BUT. That doesn't mean that we should approach all outrage as opportunity to comment on a corrupt climate. People fake injuries all the time, for pills. Someone comes to a doctor, leg mangled - 'Well I can't say one way or the other in this case, but what I think is worth talking about how many people do fake."
But the other point is this: The political use of illegitimate occasions for outrage, whether the outrage is authentic or not, casts doubt on legitimate uses of outrage. Selma is clearly legitimate, whatever the degree of personal authenticity for the people involved. Whatever the artifice, it embodies an authentic outrage, but strategically. It worked.
What would work now?
So...oh but I don't know how to say what I want to say now. It's tip of the tongue.
Something like: You can argue for the pragmatic use of tactical outrage, and I think you're right, but that use will only be pragmatic as long as it actually moves people. Moves people other than the people who are already moved. If you reach a crisis point where everyone suspects that everything is politics and is inauthentic ---then that rationale utterly fails. I would argue that that's already happened (2016), and that the left, in denial, is sleepwalking to the same tune. There was plenty of tactical outrage directed at Trump. But, like a bad dream, any attempt by the democrats to capitalize on that outrage just made the rest of the country like trump all the more, ala Berlusconi.
Intellectually, ivory-starbucks, I have no problem suggesting to Hanover that he's mixing up levels. Pragmatically, sewer-thing, I think Hanover's dead right. If you want to mobilize on that level, you have to focus on what people feel - not what should they feel.
It all swerves into a nasty racist stew that doesn't play particularly well.
Wait, really?
Here's a poll from 2015. The pollster gets a B rating from 538, and shows a tiny Democratic lean.
You can argue race is not a factor here. You could say thinking Obama was born somewhere else is just ignorance, like most Americans not being able to pick out Estonia on a map, something like that. After all, only 60% of usual Republican primary voters seem to know where Ted Cruz was born. You can say there's no pattern to the opinions of Trump's primary supporters, and I won't be able to prove you wrong. There's no proof to be had either way here.
I'm just asking, do you really look at numbers like these and see no evidence that race was part of birtherism?
Quoting Baden
Isn't the disagreement precisely over whose double standard everyone should follow?
Not only is that true, but, as Arlie Russell Hochschild argues in Strangers in Their Own Land, Republicans deeply resent being told by the Left how they should feel, who they should care about, what they should be outraged about and what not.
Is it okay for a person to behave violently, or to trample on the speaker's right of free speech, in reaction to words? I don't think so.
You make a point with the comparison of reactions to spoken words (yours and an African American; you may be different races, but you're both human). Why are there different reactions to the same words and phrases among the same group of minorities? Not all blacks would react the same to some racial slur. Is it racist for you to group all African Americans together if they all have the same reaction to words?
The fact that there are different reactions needs to be looked at and the rejection of any implication that there are things that certain groups of people can't say (which is racist), or that anyone's free speech rights should be hindered. Fight ignorant speech with logical speech. Use your own free speech to bring reason back to the discussion. The goal of the user of the word is usually trying to bait the person into getting side-tracked off the main discussion. The insult is just a means to an end and the listener fell for the trap.
Less in what sense? Less intelligent? If you think Trump has been less egregious than De Niro, I really don't think our standards are similar enough to have common ground on this. Trump has called on supporters to "knock the crap" out of a protester; which is just incitement to violence. He has a history of making claims that belie his racism/xenophobia; claims about that Mexican judge, the birther thing, the mother of a dead muslim US soldier wasn't allowed to speak, both sides at fault in Charlotsville, suggesting most Mexicans being bad people. Grabbing them by the pussy.
Let's not get into his Twitter.
So no, where De Niro expressed a clear dislike of Trump in a pathetic way, Trump expresses xenophobia and racism as President of the USA and continually demonstrates continually not to represent the interests of all US citizens (which is fine during campaign time).
Quoting Hanover
That was a racist comment. Not sure what the point is. Maher is a comedian, not the president. Different standards.
Quoting Hanover
Really? So after providing evidence it was still questioned. His birthplace wasn't suspect at all moving from 2011 onward. How long did it last though and why? Because some whiteys couldn't handle a black president; one of them being Trump, who's a racist and simply based on that fact alone doesn't really deserve any political support.
Trump is a racist with Neo-nazi sympathies as Charlottesville showed but Hanover will vote for him anyway because of those lefties and their outrage.
Good points and I want to get back with more when I have time. Short and dirty version for now is legitimate outrage only, authentic or inauthentic doesn't matter. Also the 50% or so of Republicans who, according to polls, think Obama was a Muslim, supported the birther movement, think global warming is a liberal conspiracy etc. are not worth trying to move, and I wouldn't try to move them. And neither are a lot of other Republicans. The pragmatic effort is to occupy the middle ground particularly that of swing voters and marginalize the right, and particularly the racist/islamophobic/anti-semite elements through, amongst other things, outrage. This will likely increase the intensity of hate towards the left by many on the right but they've only got one vote each. By the way, Trump didn't win the general imo because of the outrage directed by the left against the horrible things he said (this is more like why he won the Republican nomination because that's where extremists have way more say); he was at his highest in the polls for the general actually when he was being moderate and at this lowest after the outrage at the pussy-grabbing comments. And anyway, it was mostly about the economy and name recognition and the fact he's been on TV for so long. And it's also more like he won because Hillary was just about the worst possible person the Dems could have run and stimulated outrage on the other side (and even on her own side amongst the left). So, outrage worked but in the wrong direction.
“We recorded constantly. We went into the boardroom to set up discussions about how and who should get fired [on the show] without talking and saying directly who got fired, so there was a big, long exchange, all of which was recorded,” he said. “Out of those exchanges came some really unfathomably despicable words said by this guy who is a TV star. I heard it. I watched it, and those things are somewhere in some warehouse.”
Asked more specifically about the content of the tapes and whether they contain only disparaging comments about women, Pruitt said, “No, very much a racist issue.” Pressed further on whether it was about African-Americans, Jewish people or all of the above,” Pruitt responded “yes” to all three.
...
Nobody, Pruitt says, ever confronted Trump about his offensive remarks."
More outrage was needed about this kind of stuff not less.
He could just send them a copy of Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals. Alinsky wasn't right about everything, but he was right about some things. Like, the Occupy people could have rented a safe deposit box in one of New York's premier banks and occupied the box with a few fish and dead squirrels. They could have arranged to track dog shit into the executive suites -- at least up to the reception desk.
Vice is trying to deal with the exec of the show to get the tapes released. I think Cornell mentioned something like 14 uses of the "n" word by Trump in a single recording.
It seems credible to me as it's unlikely all those that witnessed and reported it are lying, and let's face it considering Trump's actions and words before and after becoming President, it fits right in to who he is, but until the tapes come out it's unprovable so I hope they get them out, and then watch the Whitehouse implode as it tries to spin the "n" word. Hopefully, mass protests and civil disobedience to follow until he's impeached.
There'll always be bias and there'll always be a degree of double standard in that sense, but the specific argument is over whether outrage from the left (and centre) directed against individuals on the right can be classed as illegitimate/hypocritical based on examples of the sort Hanover provided. I'm saying "no" as even under a cursory analysis, the equivalences he's tried to draw fall apart (or at least don't hold enough to make said outrage illegitimate/hypocritical to any significant degree). Hanover appears to be responding to that by saying something like "Republicans don't care about this kind of analysis, they're still going to see this as a double standard and still not going to see the outrage as legitimate/fairly directed". Which is fine as I still consider that fighting the ideological fight to marginalize those who engage in racist/anti-semitic/Islamaphobic comments is worthwhile in a wider ethical context and is of pragmatic use, maybe not in the sense of convincing those whose ideology is already fully baked in of anything, which is generally futile anyway, but in winning over those in the center ground that can be got on side to the extent that it disempowers the objectionable discourse at least to some degree. And that's about the best that can be hoped for.