A million miles from the thoughtless acceptance
Sarah Ditum on the decline in sanctimony:
When actors in the new [Harry Potter] production are challenged about Rowling’s views, they tend to respond in robustly live-and-let-live style.
Asked whether criticism of Rowling had put him off accepting the role of Dumbledore, John Lithgow offered a genial: “Heavens, no.” Nick Frost, the new Hagrid, shrugged: “She’s allowed her opinion and I’m allowed mine.”
Frost’s comment might be the lowest possible bar of support for free speech imaginable, and part of me unkindly wants to demand a point-by-point explanation of exactly how he disagrees with Rowling. But it’s a million miles from the thoughtless acceptance of five years ago that, by demurring from activist talking points, Rowling was maliciously endangering vulnerable trans people.
It’s been a very long and very tedious journey, but it’s good to be here.
What’s changed? Partly, the debate has moved on in law and politics. But more important is the way social media has changed. In 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter, later renaming it X and gutting many of the features that allowed opinions to go viral. Meanwhile, liberal users decamped to a new service called Bluesky.
Bluesky has never been able to match old Twitter’s power for promulgating outrage and generating headlines. The users on there are very, very opposed to anything they consider “right wing” (I gave it up as a bad job after a solid day of being told to kill myself) but it doesn’t matter: no one outside Bluesky is likely to care.
In the words of the journalist Josh Barro: “Bluesky isn’t a bubble. It’s a containment dome.” Finally, furious liberals have a safe space to be righteously unpleasant in, leaving everyone else to safely ignore them as they rile themselves into ever-more unpopular positions.
Pass the lemonade.
It’s heartening to read that some people in the entertainment industry are no longer as ready to condemn JKR for being outspokenly sane as certain other people once were.
I think that all the wins which less famous people have been having in courts and tribunals around the country were being ignored or actively suppressed until the decision of the Supreme Court in April, which unfortunately led to most people only ever reading and hearing the propaganda from the TRA side, along with the explicit threats aimed at anyone who agreed with JKR. That decision was simply something which could not be ignored, and suddenly it’s as if a dam burst in the media stream, and we’re all getting the news now – not just those who have been paying attention – so everyone else is reading about the wholly unreasonable demands of the lunatic cohort, such as ‘no debate’ whilst women’s rights are destroyed and ‘be kind’ to rapists.
For the most part, BlueSky is boring. I follow some people who share good science stories, but there’s nothing to engage with. It’s the Oakland of the Social Media World.
Hahaha ouch.
I suspect Lithgow is a closet terf.
Not entirely closet!
Semi off topic response to a meme I detest:
Why does Oakland get such a rap? It’s full of beautiful architecture, Lake Merritt is lovely park, there are still fantastic neighborhoods, and it has a fascinating melange of cultures (and food). It certainly beats in every way it’s West Coast doppelgänger, Tacoma! Sure, the politics is ineffectual, the police are notorious, and the crime rates are high and getting worse. But Oakland is not dull in any way.
Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever really been to Oakland, although I think I have driven through it once or twice. But I just assumed the point is that it’s in the shadow of San Francisco. Berkeley doesn’t work for that because it has the glam of the university. See also: Hoboken – minutes from Manhattan but without the glam.
I guess. San Francisco is a bit full of itself. half the downtown is empty, the city just smells. The politics can be insufferable although the new mayor seems to be rational. But sure.
Plus, the original comment came from some smug annoying “literary “ genius. As I am rarely interested in the family stories of upper middle class intellectuals, I guess I don’t respect the source of the meme, either.
Ya I’ve gathered that, and then some. I was thinking of the SF I knew decades ago. But then what I mean by SF is everything BUT downtown. That part was always hideous to me; the good stuff was Pacific Heights and the Presidio and GG Park and the Marina and Richmond and the Sunset. It’s the same here now: downtown Seattle is hideous and I see it only because I often have to traverse it to get a bus to one of the nabes.