The gigantic chairs wouldn’t be so bad if they had the ordinary lowered arms so that a human can comfortably rest the elbows on the arms of the chair instead of having them up by his ears the way Harris does.
I’ve managed to force myself through the whole thing now. Dillahunty is a lot less infuriating than Harris. Harris is, frankly, detestable.
Dillahunty starts around 7 or 8 minutes in. I found him significantly less annoying than Harris. Harris is truly fingernails-on-blackboard level grating – the calm assumption of authority, the smugness, the smarm as you say.
So, two men are discussing sexual assault. Nothing unusual about that, right? I can’t listen to Sam – some of my best friends are women – Harris. Matt starts out by comparing someone telling him they saw an angel with a report of sexual assault? I don’t think the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is valid in these cases. Too much worrying about the man’s reputation as opposed to the mental and physical injuries to the women.
To be fair, Dillahunty’s comparison was not to invoke the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” standard. His point was to say that he generally believes that accusers are telling what they believe to be the truth, just as he believes that people claiming angels sightings subjectively believe in what they’re saying. It’s still an unfortunate comparison.
Overall, he’s sort of a mix of good and… not-so-good. He says that he tends to believe the denials, too, that both parties can believe they’re telling the truth, which… yeah, in some specific scenarios that’s probably true, but I wish he had added that, when A says “I didn’t consent” and B says “I thought you did consent,” we’re not in some nebulous territory — A is the pretty much indisputable authority on whether or not A consented. (That’s a different question from if and how we punish B for being mistaken in cases where we believe it was a genuine honest mistake.) He’s bending over backwards to interpret every scenario as one of “oops, sorry, I thought you wanted me to run my hand up your thigh, I guess I’m just socially awkward and lousy with cues.”
On the plus side, he then goes on to bring up — and reject — the notion that “innocent until proven guilty” is a useful slogan, making the obvious point that the criminal court standard isn’t a generally applicable one.
Unfortunately, in cueing up to Dillahunty’s part, I got stuck listening to the end of Harris’s remarks, which just further illustrate his bad faith on this topic. Once again there’s the claim that #metoo is failing to distinguish among the Harvey Weinstein rapes and extortion, the Garrison Keilor harassing remarks, and the Aziz Ansari pushing of boundaries. I keep hearing that claim, but I never hear examples to back it up. The Ansari article brought up discussion, and some people expressed their disappointment with Ansari, but there was no push I’ve heard of to boycott his show or get HBO to cancel it, much less to have criminal action taken against him.
In fact, the three cases Harris mentions seem to be good illustrations of how #metoo has in fact made sensible distinctions among degrees of offenses: Weinstein is being sued and is the subject of criminal investigations, Keilor was fired but nobody I’m aware of is asking for further sanctions, and Ansari has suffered no consequences other than some loss of reputation. Seems about right to me.
But hey, maybe Sam Harris, with his vast knowledge of the feminist perspective, can point to many examples of people demanding that Ansari be locked up.
Well being fired is a pretty big deal…but then again Garrison Keillor should have been fired from that particular job a long time ago for being SO FUCKING BORING and cutesy and smug. I can’t get very worked up about the principle in his case when he’s been such a blight for so long.
Oh, firing isn’t nothing* — my point is just that Keillor is a middle case between (not saying exactly halfway between, just somewhere in there) Weinstein’s and Ansari’s — both in terms of the severity of the conduct and in terms of the punishment imposed or being contemplated. Meaning that, contrary to Harris’s suggestion, #metoo does seem to be distinguishing between different cases.
(Amazingly enough, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an episode of Keillor’s show, so I am completely neutral on his merits as a broadcaster. I really just never got into NPR at all.)
*– Though it seems to vary. If you’re a regular person, getting fired for sexual harassment would be a very big deal, especially if you have to disclose it to future would-be employers. If you’re famous, though, it seems there’s always someone willing to hire you as long as you still bring in the ratings or whatever.
I wonder who thought those gigantic chairs were a good idea.
They look ridiculous.
Well, there were supposed to be three…
The gigantic chairs wouldn’t be so bad if they had the ordinary lowered arms so that a human can comfortably rest the elbows on the arms of the chair instead of having them up by his ears the way Harris does.
I’ve managed to force myself through the whole thing now. Dillahunty is a lot less infuriating than Harris. Harris is, frankly, detestable.
So, nothing new there.
I gave up at 2 minutes, too much smarm. When does Dillahunty weigh in? I might skip to that, just to find out what he is like.
Was Lily Tomlin pranking them?
Dillahunty starts around 7 or 8 minutes in. I found him significantly less annoying than Harris. Harris is truly fingernails-on-blackboard level grating – the calm assumption of authority, the smugness, the smarm as you say.
So, two men are discussing sexual assault. Nothing unusual about that, right? I can’t listen to Sam – some of my best friends are women – Harris. Matt starts out by comparing someone telling him they saw an angel with a report of sexual assault? I don’t think the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is valid in these cases. Too much worrying about the man’s reputation as opposed to the mental and physical injuries to the women.
‘
Seriously? God damn it, I think I just burst a blood vessel on that one.
To be fair, Dillahunty’s comparison was not to invoke the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” standard. His point was to say that he generally believes that accusers are telling what they believe to be the truth, just as he believes that people claiming angels sightings subjectively believe in what they’re saying. It’s still an unfortunate comparison.
Overall, he’s sort of a mix of good and… not-so-good. He says that he tends to believe the denials, too, that both parties can believe they’re telling the truth, which… yeah, in some specific scenarios that’s probably true, but I wish he had added that, when A says “I didn’t consent” and B says “I thought you did consent,” we’re not in some nebulous territory — A is the pretty much indisputable authority on whether or not A consented. (That’s a different question from if and how we punish B for being mistaken in cases where we believe it was a genuine honest mistake.) He’s bending over backwards to interpret every scenario as one of “oops, sorry, I thought you wanted me to run my hand up your thigh, I guess I’m just socially awkward and lousy with cues.”
On the plus side, he then goes on to bring up — and reject — the notion that “innocent until proven guilty” is a useful slogan, making the obvious point that the criminal court standard isn’t a generally applicable one.
Unfortunately, in cueing up to Dillahunty’s part, I got stuck listening to the end of Harris’s remarks, which just further illustrate his bad faith on this topic. Once again there’s the claim that #metoo is failing to distinguish among the Harvey Weinstein rapes and extortion, the Garrison Keilor harassing remarks, and the Aziz Ansari pushing of boundaries. I keep hearing that claim, but I never hear examples to back it up. The Ansari article brought up discussion, and some people expressed their disappointment with Ansari, but there was no push I’ve heard of to boycott his show or get HBO to cancel it, much less to have criminal action taken against him.
In fact, the three cases Harris mentions seem to be good illustrations of how #metoo has in fact made sensible distinctions among degrees of offenses: Weinstein is being sued and is the subject of criminal investigations, Keilor was fired but nobody I’m aware of is asking for further sanctions, and Ansari has suffered no consequences other than some loss of reputation. Seems about right to me.
But hey, maybe Sam Harris, with his vast knowledge of the feminist perspective, can point to many examples of people demanding that Ansari be locked up.
Well being fired is a pretty big deal…but then again Garrison Keillor should have been fired from that particular job a long time ago for being SO FUCKING BORING and cutesy and smug. I can’t get very worked up about the principle in his case when he’s been such a blight for so long.
Oh, firing isn’t nothing* — my point is just that Keillor is a middle case between (not saying exactly halfway between, just somewhere in there) Weinstein’s and Ansari’s — both in terms of the severity of the conduct and in terms of the punishment imposed or being contemplated. Meaning that, contrary to Harris’s suggestion, #metoo does seem to be distinguishing between different cases.
(Amazingly enough, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an episode of Keillor’s show, so I am completely neutral on his merits as a broadcaster. I really just never got into NPR at all.)
*– Though it seems to vary. If you’re a regular person, getting fired for sexual harassment would be a very big deal, especially if you have to disclose it to future would-be employers. If you’re famous, though, it seems there’s always someone willing to hire you as long as you still bring in the ratings or whatever.