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Conor is correct here about the distinction. That said, it is routinely collapsed by folks pushing the coddling/PC run amok discourse in order to portray certain people as weak or authoritarian. Let me furnish an example @conor64 knows well: Steve Bannon.
Last September, Steve Bannon was disinvited to the New Yorker Ideas Festival. Not disrupted, not heckled. Disinvited, and disinvited by David Remnick, the man who asked him to come in the first place.
vox.com/policy-and-pol…
vox.com/policy-and-pol…
There had been an outcry, you see. Remnick explained that his staff, as well as other guests to the event, had persuaded him that Bannon’s presence was a bad idea and the invitation had been a mistake.
Cue the outrage. Here's an example from @jaynordlinger, who seems like a decent fellow but is a convenient stand-in for the general centrist/conservative response. Weenies!
@conor64 cites approvingly the decision by the UCLA Republicans to disinvite Milo, something they did at the urging of their faculty advisor, Gabriel Rossman. I share Conor's approval of this decision, which is why I made that exact comparison to Jay.
nationalreview.com/corner/the-dis…
nationalreview.com/corner/the-dis…
(I am the academic)
As you'll see, Jay stands his ground. Yes, Milo should have been disinvited, but not Bannon. How to square that circle? Well, you just argue that Milo is worse than Bannon. Simple, done. But! That is conspicuously NOT how the coddling/PC run amok debate works, is it?
Instead, it's about how we have become a country of weenies and mice. Not "What you find offensive, I find controversial" or "These ideas that threaten you might not threaten me". Weenies and mice.
That's what rankles when someone like Bari Weiss makes this sort of move.
That's what rankles when someone like Bari Weiss makes this sort of move.
It is, quite understandably, viewed as a double standard: What does not hurt me is harmless, and therefore only objectionable to a weenie. But what does hurt me is cruel and can be opposed without shame.
It's a dynamic I suspect we have all seen, at one time or another.
It's a dynamic I suspect we have all seen, at one time or another.
