Morning. Reminder that James Bennet is not a victim of woke authoritarians. He was demonstrably bad at his job & had lost the confidence of both his employees and employers. If we’re going to fight about this stuff shouldn’t we acknowledge this?
Think of it like when a coach gets fired. Neither the players nor management thought this guy put them in a position to succeeed...for good reason. If that’s the situation, you’ve got to go. Seems like Bennet grasped this as much as anybody.
The thing about that Harper’s letter is you can’t actually separate the particulars from the example and have the example still hold meaning. This bit from the letter is incredibly weak rhetorical hand waving. It dodges the responsibility to think. 
The particular arguments about Bennet are that he fucked up, and it wasn’t the first time. The Times (even Bennet) acknowledges this. To make him a martyr you must ignore the particulars.
I'm as big a believer in free speech as anyone on that letter, but referencing Bennet as one of the wronged when he was either the editorial patron or pal of so many of the signees makes the whole enterprise look disingenuous. Handwaving the particulars is dishonest.
If that group truly wanted to rally support around the principles they claim to hold dear, support which could easily come from folks like me, they needed to attempt to speak to more than their current club members and acknowledge at least some of the particulars of the moment.
They did not do this. They relied on their status and station to try to signal virtue. It is the exact rhetorical move that they accuse others of doing that, in their own formulation, damages the ability to speak freely. It's just hypocritical.
These people are just too smart to not see the hypocrisy, which is why they're coming under charges of bad faith, though I'm trying dearly to resist going down that road myself. (It's hard, though, given the obvious contradictions.)
If that very smart group couldn't see how the statement not despite, but because of its vague, anodyne nature, coupled with some of the signatories could be read in a way that imbues the statement with anti-trans messaging, they're being willfully blind.
That this is even being categorized as a culture war is bullshit. I'm for freaking clarity of expression if anything, and that thing does not meet the bar, not even close.
Are there cases where people from the left go overboard with so-called "cancel culture?" Of course! These sorts of disputes are nothing new and they will always be fraught. I decry all of them. Everyone deserves to be treated fairly.
Is James Bennet an example of this? Clearly not. Clearly. That he is being held up as a martyr to the cause undercuts the case the signers of that letter are trying to make.
And is there any kind of equivalence between right and left on this issue? Obviously not. As soon as leftists clear peacefully assembled people out of a public space with tear gas and rubber bullets, I'll start to worry about the equivalencies.
As soon as there's a leftist group 1/10th as active at TPUSA, which was advocating for students to tape their liberal professors during remote learning sessions so they could then get them fired, I'll worry about the equivalences.
As soon as a Democratic pres. sues everyone who attempts to publish a book about him, I'll worry about the equivalences, but right now, there's an elephant (hah!) on one side, and a mouse on the other. I will stay vigilant for my own side, but let's acknowledge true proportions.
New voices with different perspectives are coming into the discourse. That will (and must) be contentious. There's been attempts to silence students by accusing them of practicing "safetyism" when in reality, they were alerting us to longstanding systems of oppression.
Maybe the manner of that alert was annoying to us olds, but looking at the events of the last several months, how can we conclude anything other than they were right?
Not that I matter, but I'll gladly sign any statement affirming free speech rights that doesn't simultaneously seem like it's trying to shut some other people up.
And a final addendum, that some who are distancing themselves from the letter are referencing others they were told were signing and figured the were in "good company" should give us as much pause as anything. Talk about thoughtless tribalism.
Honestly, the only time in the last five years I endorsed shit I didn't write myself was a petition to remove the Calhoun statue from Charleston's Marion Square, and I'd been on the record for that years ago. That prominent academics and thinkers don't practice this shocks me.
Good piece from @alex_shephard showing some of the flaws in the defense of James Bennet as free speech martyr, just published today. Fresh and hot! newrepublic.com/article/158401…
