By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling with
Scott V. Sandford in Washington
Well, that didn't take long.
Less than a week after telling us uncouth mortals not to shun and shame those whose political or other views we find abhorrent (because they are), the same New York Times opinion page now tells us that, wait for it, it's OK to shun and shame some people.
Like a Supreme Court Justice and his bats**t crazy wife.
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| Mrs. Clarence Thomas |
A thousand years ago (actually, Sunday March 20) the Times Sunday Review devoted 2,500 words to the ongoing collapse of free speech in this country because intolerant liberals say mean things on Twitter. We covered this as recently as last week (see below).
For those of you too busy to glance down for five seconds, here's the money quote:
"For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned," the diatribe about mean tweets begins.
The pain of being shunned or shamed for saying dumb s**t is unendurable (unlike the pain of being fired from your teaching job for reading a kid's book to kids), unless of course it's inflicted on someone approved for the torment by the New York Times Editorial Board.
Let's let them explain it:
Ms. Thomas’s efforts, and her husband’s refusal to respond appropriately, have been haunting the court for years, but this latest conflagration shouldn’t be a close call. ...
Yes, married people can lead independent professional lives, and it is not a justice’s responsibility to police the actions of his or her spouse. But the brazenness with which the Thomases have flouted the most reasonable expectations of judicial rectitude is without precedent.
So you're shunning and shaming Ginnni Thomas just for expressing a few opinions. What were those opinions, by the way? The Washington Post reprinted one opinion she offered to Mark Meadows, no longer living in a trailer in North Carolina but then Chief of Staff to the Tangerine-Faced Loser:
You would think that the President's Chief of Staff would already know whether the guy that just shellacked him in the election and thousands of others had been jailed, but in fairness Mark was often the last to know.
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| OK to shun and shame this guy? |
You also might think this was an obviously ridiculous tale repeated by an alkie whackjob, but could a booze-addled fabulist make up a tale like this? She even knows where detainees are being held at Guantanamo: in barges parked in the bay, rather than in the vast illegal encampment used to illegally hold the poor schmucks picked up anywhere from Amman to Islamabad after being tortured in by the CIA. It's the details that sell the story.
And yet the Times now thinks Ginnie and Long Dong Thomas should be shunned and shamed! Oh, the humanity!
Speaking of shunning and shaming very fine people just for speaking their minds, the news operation of the Times had this to say on A1 about Tucker “Where's Mommy?” Carlson:
After President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia claimed that action against Ukraine was taken in self-defense, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the conservative commentator Candace Owens repeated the assertion. When Mr. Putin insisted he was trying to “denazify” Ukraine, [Former CBS News Correspondent] Lara Logan, another right-wing commentator, mirrored the idea.
...As war has raged, the Kremlin’s talking points and some right-wing discourse in the United States — fueled by those on the far right — have coalesced. On social media, podcasts and television, falsehoods about the invasion of Ukraine have flowed both ways, with Americans amplifying lies from Russians and the Kremlin spreading fabrications that festered in American forums online.
By reinforcing and feeding each other’s messaging, some right-wing Americans have given credibility to Russia’s assertions and vice versa. Together, they have created an alternate reality, recasting the Western bloc of allies as provokers, blunderers and liars, which has bolstered Mr. Putin.
Accusing a TV talking head of parroting Kremlin disinformation? That sounds pretty shaming to us, but no one has offered us a lifetime of ease on the Times editorial board, so our views can be shunned and shamed into oblivion without any offense to the goddess of speaking freely, or her brother Kevin.
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| Or this one? |
Of course the effort to hold white men to account for subverting U.S. national security in wartime by repeating Putin's lies got some pushback from the usual white male suspects on the Times editorial page. Both Bretbug and Ross (no links to pisspoor content, per Spy policy) now tell us how important it is to respect criticism of U.S. foreign policy. We don't recall hearing much about this in 2003, when their brother in platitudinousness, David Brooks, was busily engaged in humiliating the few lonely lefties who correctly said the Iraq War was a fraud and a catastrophe.
In fairness, in 2003, little Ross was in his mid-twenties and still figuring out how to parlay his brilliant undergraduate career as an anti-abortion rights raver in the Harvard Salient into a lifetime of ease. (Spoiler alert: he figured it out!)
But let's leave those hacks to one side (or perhaps, in tribute to Soprassata Dave, on both sides), and consider whether it's a good idea to shun and shame those who are paid many millions a year to beam Russian disinformation into American homes, and those, like Rupert Murdoch, doing the paying.
After due deliberation, we think shunning and shaming those who propagate repellent views is an excellent idea. If we shunned and shamed everyone who repeated the subversive lie that the 2020 election was stolen, like Mrs. Pubic Hair on the Coke Can, we might successfully remove them to where they belong: the lunatic fringe of society. That would mean that appealing to those anti-American hatemongers would spell political doom, and we'd rid ourselves of the likes of Cancun Ted Cruz and Fist of Fury Josh Hawley.
Imagine the benefit to American society if it no longer tolerated the view that fake voters were barged into Milwaukee to swing Wisconsin for Biden, or whatever nutball theory the seditionists are passing around. We might even be able to attach a few more threads to keep democracy from plunging into the abyss.
More generally, we remember our old friend Herb Marcuse who wrote about what he called “Repressive Tolerance” 60 years ago. He was raked over the coals by the white male warmongers of the day, but his point was unexceptionable. He noted the danger of pretending that truly terrible ideas, like racial segregation or the Vietnam War, were good and worthy ideas that should be respectfully discussed, rather than immoral drivel whose propagators should be shunned and shamed.
The danger was these ideas would take root in Establishment (that is, white male) circles and thereby endure, as would the harm to the lives of millions of persons of color in America not to mention millions in Indochina.
Even the most cursory review of American history will reveal terrible evil ideas (slavery for one) whose awful cruelties still haunt our days today. If you don't believe us, ask Trayvon Martin.
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| Or the guy in the doorway? |
So we say bring on the shunning and shaming of vicious garbage. We don't mean that the Government should criminally prosecute Tucker and Josh and Cancun Ted. We mean that the rest of us must make it clear that racist ideology, sedition, and Russian disinformation have no place in our discourse. Not at a rally of yahoos. Not on the New York Times op-ed page. Not at 8 p.m. Eastern five nights a week.
To anticipate the reaction of Bretbug and his fellow white men, let's just note that shunning and shaming horrible speakers and ideas doesn't require or justify the shunning and shaming of people who offer non-evil views like we shouldn't invade Iraq or all children, cis and trans, have the right to be treated with respect.
Shunning and shaming is like any other social remedy: it has to be used in a discriminating way. Incarcerating the innocent is a bad idea. That doesn't mean we should empty all the jails; it means as a society we should be sure to direct the unpleasant remedy at the proper targets.
Our targets for shunning and shaming? Here's a start:
- Traitors passing along Kremlin disinformation
- Insurrectionists devoted to tearing down American democracy
- Advocates of and apologists for the dreadful history of racism
- Tormentors of children wrestling with sexual preference or identity
- Cancun Ted Cruz. (On general principles.)
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