I read your link, and I stand by my earlier remarks. The guy behind Richards made a dumb joke about dongles. Richards took his photo, tweeted it out to her followers, and then tweeted it to the #pycon hashtag saying “Can someone talk to these guys about their conduct? I’m in lightning talks, top right near stage, 10 rows back.”
When I said this was her “very first reaction”, what I meant was that this was the very first measure she took. She didn’t ask the guys to knock it off, or ask someone else to ask the guys to knock it off, or address it with them after the show privately, or get someone else to address it with them after the show privately. No. Instead the very first thing she actually did was broadcast their pictures to an audience of thousands and complained to the event organisers in such a public way that his employer decided to fire him to spare themselves any bad publicity - which is a perfectly foreseeable result of accusing someone of misogyny sexism in front of an online audience of tens of thousands.
It’s worth pointing out that the joke was so incredibly tame that the guy who made it could probably have made it at his desk in front of his CEO and not suffered any repercussions. However, by choosing to utilise her substantial media presence, Richards all but guaranteed the guy would get fired - not for making the joke per se; the joke was very mild, after all - but for finding himself in the centre of a scene, which he wouldn’t have done if Adria Richards had even the slightest sense of proportion.
Horrible? What hyperbolic nonsense. He was criticized and apologized. What’s horrible about that? I’m not familiar with this other instance – if it occurred as you characterized, then it is unjust. But it doesn’t sound very similar to someone who took the time to compose a reasoned criticism of a public figure for the imagery on their t-shirt.
So much dogma, so little substance. You should preface every post with ‘I believe…’ because none of this anti-liberal ranting has anything to do with actual fact. ‘Common sense’ doesn’t replace evidence, and the simple fact is that through this entire thread you’ve prevented none.
Let me save anyone who sees a Starving Artist post the time by summarizing it for you: liberal bad, conservative good. There, you’re done, now you can move on to reading more substantive posts.
Nobody’s denying that a lot of people are complaining about political correctness. They’re free to complain about it all they like. (Which btw kind of refutes your melodramatic claims that political correctness is establishing some kind of iron-curtainy “dictatorship” with everyone “bullied into compliance”. If anything like that were actually happening in the real world instead of in conservatives’ paranoid-victim fantasies, most people would be too intimidated to complain about it.)
The point is that if conservatives are really allowing their paranoid-victim fantasies about “political correctness” to push them into voting for Trump when they don’t sincerely support Trump, they’re being silly and immature.
If, on the other hand (as I tend to believe) conservatives voted for Trump because they genuinely supported Trump’s positions, then their feelings about political correctness are at best a side issue.
And thus you confirm my opinion that the whole “PC” kerfuffle is essentially irrelevant, electorally speaking. If conservatives chose to vote for Trump because they actually supported his positions, then they would have done so whether or not they were mad about “political correctness”. Any conservative who did base their vote crucially on being mad about “political correctness” is, as I said, silly and immature, and I give conservatives the benefit of the doubt that most of them would act more rationally than that.
So what this whole thing boils down to is that a bunch of conservatives supported Trump, and at least some of them also had a gleeful hard-on for his “anti-PC” persona. So what? If that’s what conservatives get their gleeful hard-ons from, it’s no business of mine.
And if they genuinely base their major electoral choices on the feelings they get from their gleeful hard-ons, then they’re too silly to bother arguing with.
It’s somewhat distressing, albeit mildly so, to see so much erroneous thinking couched in so much faux-intellectual condescension. However I do thank you for giving me the opportunity to, uh, elucidate my thinking on these points you’ve raised. Yes, I most certainly equate what you characterize as ‘anti-Muslim’ anxiety but which is actually ‘anti-Muslim terrorist’ anxiety with political correctness. Same with trade policies, the environment, economics, or pretty much any areas where the left has staked out a position. This is because political correctness dominates the left’s side of the debate over every one of these issues. If one believes that environmental issues are overly complex and restrictive and ultimately do the country more harm than good, the left will condemn him as being ‘anti-environment’, because clearly whatever the left has been able to accomplish in this regard is beyond reproach and may be challenged only out of dastardly motive, or in this case by somebody who supposedly has an active dislike for or opposition to the environment itself.
Or take take issues of trade, taxes and economics, where either stupidity, racism, selfishness or greed are the only reason any politician would want to oppose liberal positions on such issues. Same with questions regarding welfare, where absolutely no credence is given whatever to concerns that so-called social safety nets actually create an underclass of people mired in the misery of a life spent merely existing and dependent on the government even for that (and not so coincidentally more inclined to vote Democrat, btw). No, to hear the left tell it, objections to welfare and other income redistribution schemes are motivated solely by selfishness and a callous disregard for those who are less fortunate.
In fact, I can’t think of a single area of political disagreement where the left doesn’t attempt to portray its opposition as being driven by stupid, selfish, racist, sexist, or blatantly evil-for-its-own-sake motives. And that, my friend, is political correctness in a nutshell.
Once again you’re describing the fantasy left from talk radio, or a very small percentage of real world liberals.
Do you really think that the vast majority of liberals are unkind, dishonest, foolish, or otherwise deficient, as this post suggests – or is it possible that, just like conservatives, most liberals are decent people who reach their political positions honestly and reasonably based on very different personal life experiences from that of conservatives?
They also exist merely in your own mind. I’ve told you before that most of Trump’s voters who’ve been energized over the years to oppose political correctness have eagerly jumped onto Trump’s bandwagon rather than being reluctantly pulled aboard against their will or better judgement. I realize how central such a notion is to your efforts to convince yourself that no one truly supports Trump and therefore your desire to keep pouring fuel on the fire is merited, but the simple fact is that it has no basis in reality whatsoever.
As I keep saying, I haven’t claimed that that isNovelty Bobble’s position. What I claim is that it makes Novelty Bobble’s position essentially an irrelevant quibble.
[QUOTE=Rick Sanchez]
As I read it, he’s arguing that such concern over “social media dustups” may be a deciding factor for voters who aren’t committed to Trump or Clinton. […] If you truly think you’re screwed no matter who wins, it doesn’t take much to tip the balance away from one candidate and towards another.
[/quote]
But as I keep saying, casting one’s vote on the basis of such trivial resentments is silly and immature. Neither liberals nor anybody else should be trying to appease that kind of whimsical tantrum-throwing.
What we need electorally is more attention to serious issues, not empty PR initiatives to coddle the feelings of voters too frivolous or ill-informed to be able to tell the difference between Clinton and Trump.
So, your theory is that people voted for perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States simply because they were upset about political correctness?
The ones I’m describing are the ones who drive the national dialog and who either succeed or fail in accomplishing liberal orthodoxy. And given that the only people on the left who speak out in opposition to it are pretty much ignored, it isn’t much of a stretch to consider that everyday liberals who most would consider to be good people are nevertheless fine with these tactics. They’re sort of like the ‘good’ Muslims who would never saw the heads off babies or commit suicide bombings themselves, but who nevertheless understand and at least somewhat sympathize with the motivations of those who do. The fact that there are good liberals out there doesn’t detract from the fact that they allow those who are the problem to behave as they do and to represent them without opposition or condemnation.
Actually, I’m the one who’s been opining all along that the reason conservatives voted for Trump is that they do truly support Trump’s positions. I have no problem at all recognizing that.
You’re the one who’s been trying to argue that something as silly as “political correctness” controversies somehow crucially tipped the balance for Trump, irrespective of support for his actual positions.
Once again, Starving Artist, you can’t have it both ways. If conservative support for Trump is not predicated on their hatred for “PC”, then all your concern trolling here about how liberals are fatally sabotaging their own cause by promoting “PC” is irrelevant.
On the other hand, if conservative support for Trump is crucially based on their hatred for “PC”, then they’re being feckless idiots to prioritize that over so many so much more important issues. I don’t waste my time tailoring my remarks to coddle the over-fragile sensibilities of feckless idiots. (Which, one might argue, is in fact very un-“PC” of me, so all your concern about my excessive “PC” was unnecessary anyway, right?)
As I’ve said already, concern over the effects of political correctness goes to the very issue of freedom itself and whether we want to continue to live freely as the founders of the country intended, or whether we want to live by the dictates of political correctness and therefore live lives ever vigilant that we not express non-PC-approved words, thoughts or beliefs, lest we pay the price in lost careers and public excoriation. Basically political correctness is a modern day witch hunt against non-believers and its purpose is to pound everyone into submission. There isn’t a greater threat to free speech and our basic right to live as we see fit than is political correctness, and it is well and truly deserving of whatever actions are necessary to see it defeated.
Ummm…you’re complaining about liberals actually exercising free speech. What you’re actually claiming is that free speech is a threat to free speech.
You’re also claiming that Republicans elected probably the worst president in US history because they were upset about liberals exercising their right to free speech. Personally I have a higher opinion of Republicans than that, but you’re closer to them than I am.
I’ve seen some pretty silly efforts to promote a turn of phrase as “PC”, kinda like someone repeats a phrase hoping it will “catch on”, like an internet meme. Others are experiments in speech, an effort to craft an alternative. No real harm in that, it either catches on, or it doesn’t.
Take “Ms.” for example. That one caught on like wildfire, became part of our standard speech with remarkable speed. Why? Seems the best bet was the time was ripe for it, it did fit a need. Seems that the soft guys with the wobbly bits like it, they liked not having to refer to their marital status as if it were somehow definitive. Where’s the harm? I don’t much like being called “Sir”, but I won’t object to it.
How about special adjustments to assist people disadvantaged by some condition, like blindness or being wheelchair bound? Is that “PC”? “PC” speech is usually a sincere effort by earnest people hoping to affect how we talk. It works to the extent it is adopted into the common vernacular, and fails when it doesn’t.
This annoys people who are inherently uncomfortable with change, its always too soon, its always tou much trouble. The PC correct term for such persons is “conservative”. But the people at large either will, or will not, adopt it. That’s the only test of value worth mentioning here.
Unless you’re an old stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddy. Sorry, I mean “conservative”.
Translation: “Conservatives aren’t really interested in meaningfully addressing serious political issues as much as in posturing about how heroic they are for complaining about liberals making a fuss over racial slurs on Twitter.”
(Mind you, I don’t believe that conservatives in general are such feckless idiots as that, but you seem to be working very hard to maintain that they are.)
Stripping this effusion of its whiny hyperbole again, the fact is that American public discourse is much freer today than “the founders of the country intended”. Try saying something uncomplimentary to the Deity under early American blasphemy laws and you’d see what “public excoriation” really looks like.
The critical point here of course is that the Brexit polls were **not **consistently wrong - in the final couple of weeks the polls were pointing towards a Brexit win. Which is one reason to doubt this chilling effect. The General Election polls were inaccurate in favour of Labour, but post-mortem studies have shown that is much more due to poor sampling by the pollsters than to shy Tories. So that’s two reasons.
However, I’m interested in the mechanism by which this chilling effect takes place. You’re proposing that the liberal commentariat write thousands of words in the Guardian, Independent and New Statesmen excoriating Leave voters as racist, and that Grimsby fishermen read these words and feel insulted. So to back this mechanism up, I would like to see:
a) Quotes from a selection of articles from these publications saying that Leave voters are racist idiots.
b) A breakdown of how many Grimsby fishermen read the Guardian, Independent and New Statesman.
Spoiler alert: the answer to b) is “Pretty much none of them”. Which is a poor reflection on the Guardian et al. no doubt. But given that, how did they come to learn that the liberal commentariat thought they were idiot racists?
My answer to the above is that they learned it from their actual news sources. News sources which had their own opinions about Brexit, and were perhaps not , when discussing the pro-Remain camp, above painting them in a bad light. In other words, the apparently common belief that you couldn’t speak your mind about Brexit without being shrieked down by frothing liberal is 99% manufactured agit-prop bullshit pushed by the pro-Leave camp to create a factitious sense of victimhood among readers, the better to entice their votes.
At this point, it’s worth noting that “Leave voters are all racist idiots” stands as the hallmark of the death of respectful debate, whereas “Remain voters are patronising, arrogant ivory tower liberals” is just a plain statement of obvious fact. Apparently. And it might be worth asking (again), while we weep for the Grimsby fishermen who couldn’t leaf through the Guardian letters page without being labelled bigots, what response Remain-leaning voters in strongly Leave areas got when they raised their voices. An invitation to further civilised debate? Or might they have been told that they obviously hated democracy and Britain?
Honestly, the only case you’ve made in this thread is that the right has far better and more effective propagandists than the left. Case in point:
Claire Landsbaum “drives the national dialog”?
And if you just said “who?”, that’s my point. Claire Landsbaum is the NYMag columnist who got on Steve Martin’s case about his eulogy. You know, that thing you found so disturbing. Never mind Obama, or Clinton, or Sanders, or Warren… Nah, it’s a handful of random twitter tards who are “driving the national dialogue”. And not the swarm of trolls that hang on Milo’s every word and will gladly drive celebrities they don’t like off twitter, or the fucking gamergate crew who continue to make video game design an incredibly hostile space towards essentially anyone who isn’t a white man, but rather a handful of social justice warriors who push things too far.
The only thing you have consistently shown throughout this thread is that the right wing is really really good at propaganda. That they are amazing at painting something innocuous and otherwise quite positive as though it was the worst thing in the world based on a few bad apples, and putting themselves in the position where they can defend us from the horrible evils of things like a movement to end the systemic racism in the US justice system, attempts to get people to be less shitty towards minorities and women, or the call for more varied representation in video games.
And you know what? We knew that already. We knew full well that the right wing is willing to be incredibly dishonest about virtually everything, and we knew full well that a massive chunk of the American electorate is gullible enough to fall for it. Got any useful suggestions on how to deal with that problem?
“PC politics is like the iron curtain!”
“Liberals who refuse to reject PC posturing are just like Muslims who sympathize with terrorists!”
Dude. Dude. Perspective. It’s a thing.
And never mind that you are once again demanding that we police our own side while making absolutely no attempt to police your own, far far far more noxious side. Where were you during Gamergate? Where were you during the rallies?
I’ll tell you what. Once you demonstrate that you’ve gone around calling out the people shouting “TRUMP THAT BITCH” for their sexism, or calling out Rush Limbaugh for being a lying sack of pig shit, or calling out Sean Hannity for being a lying sack of pig shit, or doing any kind of policing of your own side… Then you can come here and complain about the fact that in your utterly baseless opinion, not enough liberals stand up against the cases where political correctness crosses the line and becomes harmful. Until then, maybe you should worry about your own house.
I find it incredibly telling that given all the posts I make in this thread directly addressing your central thesis, this is the one you deem worthy of response. Nice. Y’wanna try something a little more substantive?
No. That’s not the complaint. The complaint is beatings, calling for the rape of the first lady, arson, and vandalism are a threat to free speech. And these are events the left uses to silence and intimidate those they disagree with. All the imaginary violence the left is worried about the left engages in. Sad.