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  #11  
Unread 06-23-2020, 05:02 AM
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Quincy Lehr Quincy Lehr is offline
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Several thoughts:

1. The current round of protests have not been focused on the “representativeness” of elite (and elitist) organizations as much as state repression directed at working-class, disproportionately black communities.
2. The Poetry Foundation and its Big Pharma money have the influence they do due to massive wealth inequality (the huge endowment represented a relatively small sliver of the Lilly Family fortune) and deplorable state of arts funding in general and poetry funding in particular in the U.S.
3. American arts funding has two contradictory impulses—to be “meritocratic” (which tends in practice to be elitist) and to aid “the deserving poor,” as it were.
4. I trust neither the Poetry Foundation nor the better-known signatories of the letter to rectify any of the above.
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  #12  
Unread 06-23-2020, 06:27 AM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
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.
Mark previously: "Don't worry, I shall bore no more. It was my last hurrah. I'm definitely done here. It's exhausting."

Mark again: "(I'm not here btw. You ain't seen me. This is Stewart Lee's contribution to the discussion) "


Mark, your ability to resurrect your interest in a topic you've exhausted is just one more log on my fire of believing in an afterlife : )

(I am not intentionally trying to derail this topic. I just hanging around trying to understand)

.
.
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  #13  
Unread 06-23-2020, 08:10 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Jim, while the opportunities conferred by General Talk may offer material benefits, they also involve forms of extraction, harm, exploitation, or even trauma.

Last edited by Mark McDonnell; 07-08-2020 at 01:32 AM.
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  #14  
Unread 07-08-2020, 01:33 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nyt...etter.amp.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53330105


the letter

https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-just...d-open-debate/

Fascinating stuff. Weird times. Of course, I agree with the letter.

Jim, I'm doing it again.

Last edited by Mark McDonnell; 07-08-2020 at 04:14 AM.
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  #15  
Unread 07-08-2020, 06:48 AM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
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You shouldn't.
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  #16  
Unread 07-08-2020, 08:46 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Well, thanks for letting me know, Aaron, but I still do, one person on Twitter notwithstanding. Her comparison of anti-vax/COVID conspiracy theories is missing the point. That's the equivalent of the free-speech exception of shouting fire! in a crowded theatre. She seems to want to deliberately miss the point. The point of the letter and the examples it gives aren't about giving equal credence to all opinions, however extreme, as she suggests, they're generally about people being fired/pressured into silence/forced to resign/apologise for expressing often fairly reasonable opinions. Also she calls the examples in the letter "vague" and "unspecified". Well, no, the letter doesn't name names, but they are pretty specific and five minutes googling would lead anyone to the relevant news stories being referenced.

There seems to be a tendency of some on the left (you might be an example, though you might not) to see the whole "cancel culture" phenomena as something that exists, maybe, but is an easily dismissed, exaggerated fringe phenomena and any acknowledgement of it as potentially genuinely disturbing is playing into the hands of the right. But it isn't just a right-wing canard. When the right mock and decry "woke" and cancel culture, which is invariably associated with the left, they are sometimes, gallingly, quite correct. It is illiberal. The principles of free artistic expression and open debate have been unjustifiably commandeered by the right and needs to be wrested back by more unafraid voices on the left and I think this letter is a good start. The left, which should be about economic justice and opportunity based on wealth distribution, needs to disassociate itself from the sort of people who will happily try to ruin a young, first time YA author's career because she wrote a novel containing "problematic representations" (for example). Sure, the signatories range across the artistic and political spectrum, from Noam Chomsky through Margaret Atwood and Joy Ladin to Francis Fukuyama, but that's the point isn't it? As the instigator of the letter says: “It includes plenty of Black thinkers, Muslim thinkers, Jewish thinkers, people who are trans and gay, old and young, right wing and left wing.” They may not agree with each other on many things but they agree they should be able to think, speak and write freely, including making the occasional bad joke, without the fear of professional disgrace, real examples of which are numerous.

Last edited by Mark McDonnell; 07-08-2020 at 10:57 AM.
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  #17  
Unread 07-08-2020, 11:42 AM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
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I suppose it's important to remember that things are said by people, in contexts, for reasons.

For instance, JK Rowling, who in addition to being a terrible writer is also a horrible person, and who has of course never suffered any significant consequence for her speech (besides people deciding that they don't like her), is signing the letter to piss and moan that people criticize her on twitter when she says hateful things about trans people.

By contrast, Noam Chomsky is signing the letter because he's thinking about his friend Norman Finkelstein, who has suffered actual (and horrible) consequences for his speech.

The idea that Rowling and Chomsky, though they are signing on to the same letter, mean anything remotely similar by their words, is beyond cartoonish.

The examples of Chomsky and Rowling, who have very different "consequences" in mind when they sign the same letter, also points to the fact that cancel culture, insofar as it actually exists, is pretty much exclusively a right-wing phenomenon. Left-wing examples, which tend to be fairly tepid, are absolutely much more widely publicized, and the right has been marvelously effective at casting criticism (more speech) as suppression of speech. I don't deny that—after all, the fact that you, a basically reasonable and well-meaning person, consistently worry about left-wing "cancelations" while passing over right-wing cancelations (except when you need to rebut me pointing this out) is a consequence of the fact that the right is winning this fight. And I do think the left is playing with fire insofar as they seek actual infringements on free speech—any enshrining of such infringements ultimately just gives more power to the right (because, again, actual speech suppression is much more of a right wing phenomenon than a left wing phenomenon). But you'll excuse me if I am extremely suspicious of the majority of the signatories to this letter having anything like these thoughts in mind.
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  #18  
Unread 07-08-2020, 12:23 PM
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Ann Drysdale Ann Drysdale is offline
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What makes Jo a horrible person?
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  #19  
Unread 07-08-2020, 12:31 PM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
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She has decided that a good way to use her large platform is to throw weight behind efforts to undermine legal protections for trans people.

https://news.avclub.com/determined-t...lin-1844272768
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  #20  
Unread 07-08-2020, 12:49 PM
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Kevin Rainbow Kevin Rainbow is offline
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Quote:
For instance, JK Rowling, who in addition to being a terrible writer is also a horrible person, and who has of course never suffered any significant consequence for her speech (besides people deciding that they don't like her), is signing the letter to piss and moan that people criticize her on twitter when she says hateful things about trans people.

She did not express anything hateful about anyone. She expressed her belief about gender identity, one that simply didn't correspond with a liberal mainstream one. It is despicable of you to call her (or anyone else) a horrible person simply for that. This is what prevents people from disagreeing with each other in a civilized way.

These modern "movements" are becoming more and more intolerant, to the point that they hardly differ from "religious extremism". At any sign of you not being a member of what they believe in, they are ready to spew toxic outrage and demonize you as a hateful "phobic".
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