View Full Version : The Harpers Letter
So I read that letter being published in Harper’s Magazine signed by the 150 or so literary types decrying the stifling effect of “cancel culture” (after the ritual condemnation of Trump & Co., of course). It seemed pretty innocuous to me, so I was surprised at all the attacks quickly springing up.
Some insisted there is no such thing as cancel culture, and anyone who claims otherwise deserves to lose their job. Others went with the “OK Boomer” approach, or advised the signers to check their privilege. Still others went with the guilt by association attack, questioning why anyone would appear on a list that included this or that offender. Some felt an appeal for freedom of speech somehow ignores the struggles of various groups in various ways.
I guess it was a little disheartening to me that so many people have such a problem with the free flow of ideas that they want to punish anyone who doesn’t think like they do.
I just spent 10 minutes reading the letter, and then reading the article about it in the NYT and also reading the comments in the NYT, and I agree with you, LDAHL. The letter has been signed by people whom I greatly respect. I think the thesis of the letter is valid.
I, too, am dismayed at the pushback. The comments in the NYT were disheartening. In general, I blame a culture shift towards thought based on Facebook memes as opposed to critical thinking, a reactionary culture as opposed to a culture responsive to dialogue, and an increased tribal mentality as opposed to a mentality based on an expectation that others may experience life differently and have different opinions, but are still worthy of respect.
When I read about stuff like this, I have a craving for Neil Postman, because I think cancel culture represents the dark side of a world in which human relations and communications are driven by technology and the media.
When I read about stuff like this, I have a craving for Neil Postman, because I think cancel culture represents the dark side of a world in which human relations and communications are driven by technology and the media.
I agree, Catherine, a great time for everyone to read Amusing Ourselves to Death, which has proven so prescient.
I agree, Catherine, a great time for everyone to read Amusing Ourselves to Death, which has proven so prescient.
Yes, Tybee--also Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
rosarugosa
7-13-20, 10:38am
I like JP Sears and I thought you guys might like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7A-MLVEeMA
Simplemind
7-13-20, 10:58am
I had never heard of JP Sears but dang..... he's pretty funny.
catherine
7-13-20, 11:23am
I had never heard of JP Sears but dang..... he's pretty funny.
I agree--he was pretty spot on!
ApatheticNoMore
7-13-20, 11:36am
the thing about the letter is noone knows what it is about. I was like: oh for heaven sakes, say something concrete, what is it you are even referring to, abstract if you must, but tie it to the real world so we even know what you are on about.
It's like I wrote a letter that said nothing but how wonderful democracy was and went on and on but it was really about how I disliked Trump and thought the electoral college that elected him should be abolished, but it was so obscure noone could actually tell. Lay it on the line.
ApatheticNoMore
7-13-20, 12:20pm
Of course that's assuming the letter was every meant to be of concern for most people. Which I don't think it was. Some kind of inter-elite battle. If you have to ask what it's about, it's not meant for you. If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.
It seemed straightforward enough to me. And to the legions of exception-takers. I certainly hope our culture hasn’t been dumbed down to the point where attempting to intimidate people from expressing ideas is just an “inter-elite battle”.
Can someone explain to me how "cancel culture" is any different from the dreaded "politically correct".
ApatheticNoMore
7-13-20, 3:21pm
If it's about the right of Trump to call Mexicans rapists and so on, count me out. See thing is we have an actual problem with fascists (trump cult style - they flash their white supremacy symbols at us and in Trump they have actual near dictatorial power) in this country at the moment. It's not the only problem? Gee, ya think? But it's pretty huge.
Can someone explain to me how "cancel culture" is any different from the dreaded "politically correct".I think it's the same as politically correct except there's a super charged turbo under the hood. Both are leftist strategies to force their version of wokeness but where political correctness was a tool to bludgeon people with, cancel culture must totally destroy them. It's been an active part of college life for several years but has now crossed over into the real world.
It was interesting to see several of the signatories on the Harpers Letter backtrack once the Cancel Activists went after them. It's beginning to look like doing the right thing has devastating consequences for anyone willing to suggest it.
Can someone explain to me how "cancel culture" is any different from the dreaded "politically correct".
When you lecture someone and have HR sign him up for mandatory sensitivity training for saying something dreadful like “all lives matter”, it’s political correctness. When you demand he be fired, banned from Twitter and make anonymous death threats, it’s cancel culture.
Can someone explain to me how "cancel culture" is any different from the dreaded "politically correct".
When I think of "politically correct" I think mainly of language, not of personalities.
I've always thought "politically correct" is a stand-in for plain courtesy. Political incorrectness/rudeness is useful to expose people you want to "cancel' from your social circle.
So cancel culture is things like when trump states that social media platforms should be shutdown for fact checking him, or states that certain journalists like Chuck Todd should be fired for stating things he doesn't approve of or that Mitt Romney should be impeached for daring to vote in favor of trump's removal from office?
So cancel culture is things like when trump states that social media platforms should be shutdown for fact checking him, or states that certain journalists like Chuck Todd should be fired for stating things he doesn't approve of or that Mitt Romney should be impeached for daring to vote in favor of trump's removal from office?I think that's a pretty good comparison, except that cancel culture has a much better success rate.
So cancel culture is things like when trump states that social media platforms should be shutdown for fact checking him, or states that certain journalists like Chuck Todd should be fired for stating things he doesn't approve of or that Mitt Romney should be impeached for daring to vote in favor of trump's removal from office?
I would say that fell more in the category of abuse of office in the interest of a single individual. Cancel culture is more in the category of enforcing a dogma.
I think that's a pretty good comparison, except that cancel culture has a much better success rate.
Not surprising considering the person I used in my examples. In a life full of failures his one big success came due to our constitution’s affirmative action for minority political viewpoints.
Not surprising considering the person I used in my examples. In a life full of failures his one big success came due to our constitution’s affirmative action for minority political viewpoints.
Too bad there's no protections against cancel culture.
Too bad there's no protections against cancel culture.
It’s not like he’d respect those anymore than he does the first amendment.
It’s not like he’d respect those anymore than he does the first amendment.
The important thing is that the effective cancel culture can't be voted out of office so they can continue till they either grow up or become a modern Robespierre and are cancelled by their own.
I tend to agree with the sentiment of the letter. But I'm reminded of an uncomfortable meeting that happened a number of years ago at my previous mega-corp job. Everyone in the company had been trained on a new "Way of Working (WOW)" where employees were given avenues to point out flaws in our processes that caused inefficiencies, with the goal of coming up with solutions to improve operations (and theoretically profits). One day not too long after we'd all been through WOW training a senior NY home office bigwig in my division was in our office and held a team meeting with the twenty-ish of our division in the San Francisco office. Having been WOW'd everyone was ready and eager to point out problems. The question and answer session turned into a gripe-fest of everything that was wrong with the company and how we managed things. After fielding questions for a good half hour the bigwig finally stopped for a moment to collect his thoughts and then said something to the effect of "I appreciate that WOW has given everyone the confidence to speak up about our shortcomings as an organization. That's all well and good. But you all seem to have forgotten the second half of WOW, which is equally important, and that is to bring solutions to solve these problems."
As I pointed out above, "cancel culture" runs all the way to the top of the country, with our president, literally the most powerful person in the US, engaging in it just as much as everyone else. Recognizing that it's a problem is a good first step, but what are the solutions? Personally I don't know what the solution is. This conversation reminds me of Ultralight's descriptions of meetings with his SJW friends/acquaintances who were just as ready to "cancel", or at least harshly deride, others for not being SJW'y enough.
30-35 years ago when I was in high school/college and still firmly in the closet I had a number of friends who at one time or another made homophobic remarks or slurs. At the time lots of people did this. After joining facebook ten years ago a number of these same people sent friend requests. I decided to accept those requests and see what these people were like now after not having been in touch with them for decades. Through my interactions with them on Facebook I've come to see that every single one of them are now staunch supporters of LGBTQ equality. None of them would make a homophobic comment today, and I suspect if I were to ask them about their past behavior all those years ago they would be embarrassed/ashamed to know that they had unintentionally hurt me and possibly others. I'm thankful that I didn't hold their prior actions against them when the initial facebook friend requests came through.
iris lilies
7-13-20, 11:30pm
Jp1, related but not about cancel culture, were ANY gay men popuLar in your high school class? I mean, popular as gay men.
I ask because back in the 70s, early 70s when I graduated, there was one gay man who was “taken up” by the popular girls. He was the solidly in their clique for a couple of years. I’m not sure that it was ever stated that he was gay.I don’t mean he was their pet, he was solidly a participating member of their clique.
What I was thinking about today was that I’m sure there were other gay men in our class who didn’t get that treatment, maybe would’ve like that treatment, maybe would not have liked the treatment, I don’t know and I’m not sure who else was gay to this day. My best friend’s high school boyfriend has turned out to be trans, so that’s quite a surprise. I mean it’s a surprise considering how, er, randy he was around her. He still sort of seems like that for women, according to his Facebook page. But he also has mental illness that keeps him on an uneven keel.
IL, interesting question. To my knowledge, no, there were no out gay guys or even widely assumed to be gay guys in the 1600 kids in my high school when I was there. I truly had not known anyone to be gay until I got to college and my freshman (and the rest of my college career) roommate was gay. Other than him it wasn't until my summer job busing tables after freshman year of college that I met anyone who was openly comfortable with gay men or being a gay man. At that summer job most of the younger waitresses were part of a bigger scene of downtown Denver servers and their larger friend group included a couple of effeminate gay guys that they all seemed to really adore. Over the course of that summer I listened in on lots of stories of the fun they all had together. It was only after I moved to NYC post-college that I began to meet a lot of out gay men and became comfortable with the fact that it wasn't a particularly unusual or creepy thing.
Jp1, related but not about cancel culture, were ANY gay men popuLar in your high school class? I mean, popular as gay men.
I ask because back in the 70s, early 70s when I graduated, there was one gay man who was “taken up” by the popular girls. He was the solidly in their clique for a couple of years. I’m not sure that it was ever stated that he was gay.I don’t mean he was their pet, he was solidly a participating member of their clique.
What I was thinking about today was that I’m sure there were other gay men in our class who didn’t get that treatment, maybe would’ve like that treatment, maybe would not have liked the treatment, I don’t know and I’m not sure who else was gay to this day. My best friend’s high school boyfriend has turned out to be trans, so that’s quite a surprise. I mean it’s a surprise considering how, er, randy he was around her. He still sort of seems like that for women, according to his Facebook page. But he also has mental illness that keeps him on an uneven keel.
I was madly in love with only two men in high school--the first one from my freshman year to my junior year and the other for the rest of my high school life. Both loves were unrequited, even though I sent plenty of signals.
They were both very popular, leaders in their classes, very well liked, funny and warmhearted. The first one, "J," bonded with me like glue when we were both sitting backstage while rehearsing for a school play and he mentioned his parents were divorced. As my parents were the ONLY OTHER parents I knew who were divorced, his admission attracted me like a magnet. I no longer felt alone.
He graduated a year before me and that left me free to pursue "P." We spent hours on the phone talking, and hours in his basement singing to records. I adored him.
They have both been married many years now to their husbands. I'm not sure if they knew they were gay at that time, but certainly no one in high school knew. As far as we knew, there were no gays in my high school of 1200 students in 1970.
Jp1, related but not about cancel culture, were ANY gay men popuLar in your high school class? I mean, popular as gay men.
I ask because back in the 70s, early 70s when I graduated, there was one gay man who was “taken up” by the popular girls. He was the solidly in their clique for a couple of years. I’m not sure that it was ever stated that he was gay.I don’t mean he was their pet, he was solidly a participating member of their clique.
What I was thinking about today was that I’m sure there were other gay men in our class who didn’t get that treatment, maybe would’ve like that treatment, maybe would not have liked the treatment, I don’t know and I’m not sure who else was gay to this day. My best friend’s high school boyfriend has turned out to be trans, so that’s quite a surprise. I mean it’s a surprise considering how, er, randy he was around her. He still sort of seems like that for women, according to his Facebook page. But he also has mental illness that keeps him on an uneven keel.
It's not unusual for transpeople to choose partners of the sex they've transitioned to, in my experience.
The important thing is that the effective cancel culture can't be voted out of office so they can continue till they either grow up or become a modern Robespierre and are cancelled by their own.
I think we may be approaching Peak Woke, both in terms of elite and popular tolerance. Much like we stopped hearing about #MeToo when the focus changed from Brett’s high school yearbook to Joe’s alleged frolics, our upper echelons may be less enthusiastic about scalp-hunting. And at some point soon the general public will weary of the preaching from privileged celebrities, not to mention all the righteous destruction.
And in the likely event that Trump departs from office next January, we will lose the mad energies released by the weird symbiotic relationship he seems to have with his more obsessed enemies.
happystuff
7-14-20, 10:18am
As I pointed out above, "cancel culture" runs all the way to the top of the country, with our president, literally the most powerful person in the US, engaging in it just as much as everyone else. Recognizing that it's a problem is a good first step, but what are the solutions? Personally I don't know what the solution is.
How about "respect culture"? Culture doesn't need to be cancelled, it should be respected. That doesn't mean you participate in it or agree with it, ect. - but you do respect it. And, before anyone says that means the statues/base names/etc should stay... I still disagree as they are "history" (BTDT on that conversation and NOT repeating it).
I know already that the arguments against the above would be that too many people have no concept of "respect" and the disagreements/fights/etc would turn into what constitutes "culture".
I also believe that for folks who have no respect for people they consider "not us, but them", there is no solution.
iris lilies
7-14-20, 10:37am
It's not unusual for transpeople to choose partners of the sex they've transitioned to, in my experience.
Oh I know, who we are is different from who we love.
I see that Bari Weiss is leaving the NYT editorial staff. That place has become a veritable College of Cardinals for Woke dogma. Apparently the environment there has been pretty hostile for her.
I remember a Chicago columnist named Mike Royko who took a lot of pleasure in periodically printing some of his worst hate mail (back when hate mail was delivered by the USPS rather than Twitter). Of course, most of it wasn’t from co-workers.
iris lilies
7-15-20, 11:24am
I see that Bari Weiss is leaving the NYT editorial staff. That place has become a veritable College of Cardinals for Woke dogma. Apparently the environment there has been pretty hostile for her.
I remember a Chicago columnist named Mike Royko who took a lot of pleasure in periodically printing some of his worst hate mail (back when hate mail was delivered by the USPS rather than Twitter). Of course, most of it wasn’t from co-workers.
I saw that resignation piece and thought of this thread.
I don’t read the New York Times so I cannot say that this long respected columnist will be a loss there. I don’t get the impression that she’s been there all that long nor her work great. But I don’t know, maybe that’s just the result of the environment she was working in and she couldn’t do the work she really wanted to do.
Her Characterization of the cancel culture at NYT was pretty juicy though.
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