The thing about a private conversation is that it is more easily taken out of context. For instance, when I watched “12 Years a Slave” I made a number of comments, that were from the racist’s perspective, in kind of a Poe’s Law sort of way. The intent was to show what pieces of shit that these slave owners were, by saying what they were thinking. However, if some of my comments were made public, without context, then I’d come off as a raging racist.
So, comments made in private should be given a chance to understand the context if they are made public. If there is a recording of someone saying something offensive, then there should also be a recording of the context around that, and that should be part of the consideration. If that is not available, then I’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the accused that their comments are being taken out of context.
OTOH, as in this case, comments made in public are in the context that the commenter chose to put them in. That she made them 10 years ago only means that she had 10 years to take back, repudiate, and apologize for her comments. She declined to do so, and that is part of the context that they should be viewed in.
In my opinion, Conde Nast simply doesn’t have the political capital to get away with this hire. If Conde Nast had a reputation for standing up for minorities, then I could see them defending this hire, but after the Bon Appetit thing, they were already in a weak position.
I had mentioned in the Seuss thread that I’m of the opinion that anti-asian bigotry tends to be taken less seriously in this country. It sucks that it took yet more murder for the seriousness to come to light.
I was completely on board with Carano getting canned but I am gobsmacked that people think it’s reasonable for someone to be fired for something they tweeted as a stupid teenager ten years ago. 90% of us have likely said something equally stupid at that age; we’re all just lucky it wasn’t recorded on Twitter. The important questions are:
Has she apologized?
Has she stopped acting like a racist prick since maturing into an adult?
I’m glad you clarified and said general you; otherwise I would have taken you literally and had no choice but to pursue legal action* for giving me incorrect, negligent professional advice that would have resulted in my loss of employment and future career earnings.
*Sarcasm: just in case it wasn’t clear. Around here, you never know how it’s going to be taken.
I mostly agree with you, but the reality of today is Conde Nast can’t defend this hire. Not today. Not this week. Maybe later.
I’m reminded of the James Gunn situation with Disney. Disney fired him for multiple tangentially related to him reasons. (1) Disney had fired Rosanne and (2) Disney was acquiring Fox. Insane right? But James Gunn said all the right words and was re-hired later.
I’m not even completely on board for Carano’s dismissal, though I have a better appreciation for why it happened and admit that there was more to the story than I initially posted.
As a general principle, I think the whole idea that ‘We don’t associate or talk to evil’ is lazy thinking. Don’t get me wrong – there are definitely times when that’s an appropriate response, but it’s a default setting. It doesn’t solve the problem of racial discord. It just makes us feel good for punishing someone.
I can pretty much guarantee that none of my kids or their friends have said anything remotely this racist on a public forum. I hope they don’t say things like that in private (they don’t around me), but it’s not like 2011 was the dawn of social media and no one knew what might happen.
She posted those things in order to publicly declare those thoughts. Then, she turned 18 and didn’t disown and delete them. Then she went to college and didn’t disown and delete them. Then, she went along for several more years in an industry saturated with people who would vomit at these tweets and didn’t disown and delete them.
Then, she applied for a job at one of the most liberal, woke, anti-racist magazines available in the mainstream.
Of course. If my hypothetical asahi’s hypothetical ex-wife, who decided to tell the world about his (hypothetical) long history of privately making offensive bigoted remarks, was fundamentally misrepresenting the context and meaning of those remarks, then hypothetical-asahi is fully entitled to tell his side of the story to clarify those issues. And even to sue his hypothetical-ex-wife for defamation, if he chooses.
But he’s not entitled to declare that the public is ethically obligated to ignore that information about his offensive bigoted remarks, which is now public knowledge, simply because he originally uttered those remarks in private.
When you get caught doing something shitty, you can defend yourself by saying that it wasn’t actually as shitty as it’s being misrepresented, or you can apologize for your shitty behavior, or you can double down on it and say “yeah I did, so what?”. But trying to argue “I only did shitty things in private so everybody should pretend they don’t know about it” is not a persuasive defense.
It’s true; she didn’t delete or disown them because maybe she forgot that they existed? Maybe she thought she had deleted them. What someone says on a video recording or on a post in 2011 didn’t even remotely represent the whole of their whole person in 2011, and it represents them even less today.
It’s good that you and people you know would never say such things, but that doesn’t mean anyone who does deserves to be reminded of mistakes they made years later. People need to move on.
I think part of Donald Trump’s appeal was that he never apologized for any of the hurtful shit he said. Millions of people identified with that and wished that they had that same kind of power to tell people to stuff it.
Obviously, millions of people really are racist assholes, but a more reasonable, less racist person might at least understand why that sort of defiance is appealing.
I would have thought that when she went to college, probably just two years later, she may have decided to look at her own history.
Anyway, you didn’t address the other part of my post – she applied for a job that couldn’t really be more anti-racist and woke than editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue.
Maybe. Or…
Maybe Conde Nast knows what they are doing.
Maybe Conde Nast knows things about her that you don’t.
We can all “maybe” anything to death in favor of our position