Cleanup in Aisle Lunatic (h/t romad1)

[mtutiger]

8 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

 

I guess the assumption going in was that while the 1st generation of users might have these 'transitional' issues learning how to keep their private selves private again, that the generations coming up behind them would have it figured out, but I think the availability of SM to adolesecents and their unfinished comprehension of risk and future consequence is too hopeless a combination to ever get everyone out the other side safely.....

It's just interesting how far we've shifted in my lifetime from the simplicity of Volaire's "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.", which was once pretty commonly accepted as the 'enlightened view', to our present complexities.

Setting aside that Scott Adams is not indicative of someone having transitional issues and clearly knows what he's doing on SM, I guess I don't necessarily buy your view that people were never fired or services weren't retained at times in the past for their views or even lifestyles, particularly when they infringed on people's business. 

I'll leave it at that. Social media is another thread for sure, but this isn't novel either. And I'm not sure why Scott Adams deserves my sympathy in this case.

[gehringer_2]

just to complete the thought:

I think there is a deeper phenomenon at work here. During the Civil Rights era we came to a recognition that the Civil War had been fought and Slavery ended, but that as a whole government, and particularly but not exclusively southern State governments hadn't been forced to purge race consciousness from the law. The Civil Right era was all about that fight. And it was fairly successful in removing de jure racial policies from the books in the US. But during the C.R. era, I think you still would have found that most 'progressive' people agreed with Voltaire,  believing we certainly had to bend the State to impartiality, that it was still not the role of 'authority', State, secular or otherwise, to tell individual people what to believe. I believe the operative assumption was that we would simply wait for the racist generation to die off and somehow racism would be gone in the next. 

But here we are a lot more than a generation later and we look out and see that the removal of de-jure racial policies hasn't actually fixed the concentration of poverty and social capital deficits in America's Black community. I think this realization is now driving toward the view that we do have to coerce people into what we want them to believe and that we have to use more forms of social/economic pressure to achieve that. And that would be why right now Voltaire's simplicity seems quaintly anachronistic. 

Now in point of fact, I'm personally not so sure that the CR movement really did succeed to the degree it believes it did in removing institutional bias, and thus not very confident that the logic I just described is sound. I'm also skeptical that you can coerce people into more socially acceptable views via the kinds of social pressures we now bring to bear. 

[gehringer_2]

17 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

I guess I don't necessarily buy your view that people were never fired or services weren't retained at times in the past for their views or even lifestyles, particularly when they infringed on people's business

absolutely things have always been unacceptable, but there is almost an inversion today. In time past I think you were much more likely to be overtly discriminated against for your lifestyle than for your political beliefs - though I will freely admit up-front that the anti-communist purges of the 50's stand in contradiction to that.  None-the-less, today I still think the general trends of those lines are reversing - at least on the progressive or liberal side of the ledger.

Edited February 27, 2023 by gehringer_2

[romad1]

Paul Ryan stated he would not attend GOP convention if Trump is the nominee.  Ok.  Finally backbone.

[mtutiger]

5 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

absolutely things have always been unacceptable, but there is almost an inversion today. In time past I think you were much more likely to be overtly discriminated against for your lifestyle than for your political beliefs - though I will freely admit up-front that the anti-communist purges of the 50's stand in contradiction to that.  None-the-less, today I still think the general trends of those lines are reversing - at least on the progressive or liberal side of the ledger.

This much is definitely true... sensibilities of the general public are much different now. Whereas 20 years ago it was the Dixie Chick's getting "canceled" (to much less controversy, I might add), today you have a general public who values different things.

5 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

But here we are a lot more than a generation later and we look out and see that the removal of de-jure racial policies hasn't actually fixed the concentration of poverty and social capital deficits in America's Black community. I think this realization is now driving toward the view that we do have to coerce people into what we want them to believe and that we have to use more forms of social/economic pressure to achieve that. And that would be why right now Voltaire's simplicity seems quaintly anachronistic. 

I think you are overly complicating this: newspapers are owned by large companies who are in the business of selling newspapers or online subscriptions. A high-profile cartoonist that you publish popped off a highly racist rant in a high profile way. The business sees that and, worried about their brand and ability to sell newspapers and online subscriptions, decides to go a different direction.

This isn't rocket science nor is it a new phenomena. Rush Limbaugh, Jimmy the Greek, Michael Richards are all cases of people who lost jobs or future jobs/income in the past for similar such things said o that largely predated social media. And again, if any of us said the same thing, we'd be risking the same thing.

Scott Adams gets no sympathy from me. He knew exactly what he was doing when he was doing it.

[CMRivdogs]

The Dilbert strip and Adams stopped being relevant and/or funny at least 10 years ago. He should have disappeared to his imaginary island then

[chasfh]

Scott Adams has been a star for a couple of decades now, so of course he believes be deserves preferential treatment and that normal workplace rules don’t apply to him. Stars have always believed that, and extreme cases like this aside, they’ve always gotten away with it, too.

The flip side about stars, though, is that they are never truly on their own time. So when they lip off in public, the consequences also accrue to the people and organizations they are closely associated with, which in this case is the newspapers in which Adams runs. The Plain Dealer was the only place the folks in Cleveland could see his work. When they think of Dilbert, they think of the Plain Dealer, so when Adams goes off like this, his actions are associated with the Plain Dealer as well. In such a case, they are practically obliged to let Adams go. It’s the same thing if a player lips off in public, even during the offseason—he is associated with the team he’s on, so they’re going to bear the brunt of criticism, too, so they have every right to sanction him within bounds as they see fit. That’s something most of us don’t have to worry about when we ourselves lip off in places like this. Yup, it’s totally not fair.

The last thing here is that Scott Adams also wasn’t really on his own time, anyway. He was trading on the fame he gained through his association with the newspapers to host a live stream in which he could spout off his noxious views in the first place. He wasn’t doing this on his free time—he was still working, making income due to his associated fame, which he couldn’t have done so prominently had he not acquired that fame through the newspapers he was still being featured in. Even if the papers don’t share in the revenue he generates from it, they still bear the brunt of the externalities his bad behavior generates, anyway.

Any newspaper dumping him because of this is totally in the right.

Edited February 27, 2023 by chasfh

[Tigerbomb13]

Lol okay, Elmo

[Motown Bombers]

As the saying goes, you can take the boy out of appartheid but you can't take the appartheid out of the boy. 

[CMRivdogs]

Can we move on to Bryan Cranston?

Personally I think it's a great answer...

[Motown Bombers]

Breaking Bad was a poorly rated show on a dying TV channel. Bryan Cranston begged me to be on Celebrity Apprentice which was the highest rated TV show ever.  

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

..

Any newspaper dumping him because of this is totally in the right.

I don't shed any tears for Adams. I do worry generally about how and where and limits when it comes to thought-policing. This case may be fairly clear cut, but at some level it is important to understand why dumping on Adams might be more OK than dumping on someone else in the next case.

[CMRivdogs]

I get where you're coming from but Adams has had a 30 year run recycling the same half dozen or so jokes. I've read he's worth $75 mil so I don't expect any need for tag sales. 
 

His 60 minutes were up a long time ago, he isn't selling any newspapers or making meaningful contributions to improve society. Time to let him stew in his own juices.

[mtutiger]

9 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I don't shed any tears for Adams. I do worry generally about how and where and limits when it comes to thought-policing. This case may be fairly clear cut, but at some level it is important to understand why dumping on Adams might be more OK than dumping on someone else in the next case.

I get where you are coming from, I just don't think Adams is the right example to highlight for a variety of reasons.

[pfife]

Isn't it all free market and profit motive?

[oblong]

We can address each case of "cancelling" on it's own merit when it happens.  There doesn't need to be a mission rule.

 

[chasfh]

44 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I don't shed any tears for Adams. I do worry generally about how and where and limits when it comes to thought-policing.

Everything I wrote that you snipped out of the quote pretty much lays out what the limits are in a case like this.

This is definitely not a case of thought-policing, and you do acknowledge as much. It is a case of a newspaper protecting itself from being associated from someone specifically trading on that association to blowtorch society at large with his inflammatory views. The Plain Dealer had a right to shit-can him, and I believe they were right to. And the next person who does this same thing and gets shit-canned will deserve it, too.

I don't think this is the right example to clutch our pearls about how far will newspapers go to quash whatever, since by bringing that up now in relation to this incident, you are (inadvertently, I hope) casting aspersions on the Plain Dealer's decision.

Edited February 27, 2023 by chasfh

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

I don't think this is the right example to clutch our pearls about how far will newspapers go to quash whatever, since by bringing that up now in relation to this incident, you are (inadvertently, I hope) casting aspersions on the Plain Dealer's decision.

No, I think I believe I said right at the get go I didn't have a problem with his carriers dumping him. And your exposition on the commerical aspect is spot on, but it's maybe at a level one tier lower.  Premise: SA said objectionable stuff->conclusion:the Plain dealer takes these justifiable actions. All sound. I'm always more insterested in how the premise "SA said objectional stuff" gets formulated as an accepted premise and by who. Granted these are purely general considerations - that once abstracted no longer bear on this case and it's not pearl clutching about it, it's just my tendency to want to abstract to the ideas that these cases make me think about.

I guess in a sense my direct 'argument' such as it is would be with Rob's post. It suggests our judgments are all or should be ad hoc. While I understand Situation Ethics, I suspect that in reality they are not even if we think they are. There are probably some kind of rules we are working from whether we are concious of them or not.

Edited February 27, 2023 by gehringer_2

[romad1]

What the actual hell is Tulsi Gabbard's sister doing running Sinema's security?

 

[Motor City Sonics]

8 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

Can we move on to Bryan Cranston?

Personally I think it's a great answer...

[Motown Bombers]

Big if true. 

 

[romad1]

2 hours ago, Motown Bombers said:

Big if true. 

 

Alex Jones is a proven liar.  

[CMRivdogs]

Has he paid his lawyers yet? I know he's going to stiff everyone else. 

[pfife]

 

 

[Tigerbomb13]

2 hours ago, pfife said:

 

 

Almost as good as the Great Axl Rose/Steve Mnuchin War of 2020