They do not welcome and will not tolerate
Andrew Sullivan on That Letter.
[T]his week, we saw another campus maneuver: an open letter from a thousand or so New York Times contributors, accusing the NYT of “follow[ing] the lead of far-right hate groups” in its coverage of transgender issues. Other campus tactics: a loud demo outside; alliance between insiders and outsider activists; public shaming of named journalists; accusations that the NYT is a “workplace made hostile by bias” (the now-familiar HR gambit); and non-negotiable demands for even more hiring solely on the basis of identity and ideology.
It’s an echo of Evergreen and Yale and Middlebury and Reed. The ploys are repeated because they work and there’s no downside. And almost all the university presidents caved. They held meetings and meetings; they apologized; they appeased; they conceded core liberal principles of free speech and dissent; they terminated dissident faculty; they equivocated and collaborated in the pursuit of “diversity” and then “equity.” In a word, they were pathetic.
The Times bosses were supposed to do the same, but they didn’t.
Check this out, from the executive editor of the NYT. It’s the response we always needed from the leadership of besieged liberal institutions before and never got:
It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism. In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort. Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name. Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy … We have a clear policy prohibiting Times journalists from attacking one another’s journalism publicly or signaling their support for such atacks …
We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.
I take “will not tolerate” to mean some asses could be fired.
Andrew Sullivan is so frustrating. He’ll spout column after column of outrageous bullshit and then make absolute sense. I once sent an angry email to him detailing how he was wrong about something, and he posted my entire email — with rebuttal — on his Daily Dish blog, which at the time was reaching several million people. Comments were never allowed, so I wrote back to him with what would have been my followup rebuttal, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t reply personally in a sensible and honest fashion.
It’s really hard to fan the flames of hatred towards someone who is willing to engage honestly. But then he just up and says something stupid again. It’s almost like this is how communication between adults of different backgrounds and experiences works in general, or perhaps should work. I dunno.
Typo.? Should that not read ‘arses could be fried.?’
Perhaps donkeys will be launched from cannons.
I took it to mean some ignoramuses could lose their jobs. This is in reference to employees violating company policy.
Like that Washington Post reporter.
Omar
“Asses” is the American spelling, “arses” is British.
Arses is also the spelling in Australia. And, probably, everywhere else that English is spoken and they don’t use Webster’s Eccentric Spelling Dictionary For The Exclusive Use of USAians. ;)
Of course, asses are also stubborn and stupid people, not just their sit-upons. “He’s an ass” in world-wide English is often used to mean that he’s not worth bothering with, he’s too stupid for words. It means he’s like the popular conception of a donkey. It doesn’t mean he’s a pair of buttocks.
Har har har. If I did spell it “arse” it would simply look affected, because I am in fact a USAian.
The once-funny website “The Onion” has weighed in, with a remarkable unfunny and didactic piece that attacks the NYT articles as harmful and endangering the lives of marginalised people. It’s full of the the talking points of David Klion, Jessica Valenti, Drew Magary and the rest of the Successor Ideology crowd.
https://twitter.com/ScottGreenfield/status/1626646189725679618?cxt=HHwWhIC8neuFgZMtAAAA
Argh.
I’m reminded of my feelings about the Guardian. For a long time I liked it a lot, and used it as my main source of serious news. I even sent them money a couple of times. Since they went full woke I only see one of their articles when I follow a link without checking efficiently where it’s going.
To me this reads like Andrew Sullivan recycling the passages from Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind about the response to 1960s Black student radicalism at Cornell. I think that it was the Uinversity of Chicago that was the beneficiary of the comparison on that occasion. Perhaps Sullivan has noticed the comparison and thinks he is catechising slow learners.