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Jesse Singal

26 Oct, 9 tweets, 3 min read

Anne Applebaum: This guy's career was ruined because he criticized arson

Michael Hobbes, summing up Applebaum's article: He got in trouble for criticizing BLM protesters

The dude is just fundamentally incapable of any charity or nuance when describing his perceived enemies

2/ This is *intentional*! He read the essay he is criticizing and decided to shield from his readers (no link to the incident either) the fact that the dude's career was destroyed because he said arson is bad. Instead, vague it up so it sounds like he's anti-BLM.

3/ “America is, like, the only country in the world that has prison rape” is the best Hobbes quote, from his Matthew Shepherd episode of YWA. (1:16:00 in that one.)

That this dude ever caught on as a debunker is just insane -- and it's such an annoying, dishonest style.

4/ Anyway I had to read this closely because we are doing a premium ep on the increasingly radicalized anti-anti-cancel-culture movement. I apologize for getting Mad Online. Again.

5/ Hobbes: Laurie Scheck's investigation for reading a Baldwin quote w/the n-word was the New School's grievance system "working as intended"

FIRE: The New School did not follow its disciplinary process

He distorts everything. He is fundamentally dishonest about this stuff.

6/ The dishonesty always points in the same way: to downplay the importance of incidents that could be placed under the "cancel culture" (bad term) umbrella. There's never anything to worry about! There's just virtuous bosses and administrators doing their best.

7/"[Alexandra] Duncan, a young adult fiction author, received criticism on the concept of an unpublished manuscript and decided not to publish it." Again, this is deceptive. Duncan's novel was DONE. Slated for release. Pulled b/c someone who hadn't read it complained.

8/ By misrepresenting each and every one of these incidents, by sanding down their rough edges, Hobbes can continue to be on the 'right' side (anti-anti-cancel culture) of this debate. He never has to grapple with the incidents themselves, or their effects on the victims.

9/ He can't even get factual stuff based on primary documents correct. Trump's EO on diversity trainings was bad and an example of RW authoritarianism. But it plainly didn't outright *ban* any training containing these terms!

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More from @jessesingal

Jesse Singal

@jessesingal

25 Oct

1/ New from me, for paid subscribers: It Probably Makes More Sense To Banish College Admissions Essays Than To Banish SAT Scores

One thing I've harped on is how certain very flat understandings of race are erasing the importance and influence of class.

jessesingal.substack.com/p/it-probably-…

2/ This is a great example. Banishing the SAT is being treated as a blow struck for 'equity.' The effect of this has been to heighten the importance of admissions essays.

But imagine you're a rich parent and your goal is to get your child into a top school. Statistically, it

3/ is very unlikely your child is in the top 5% of SAT scorers. It is also very unlikely you can get your child there -- we know thanks to the research highlighted here that the test is much less gameable than many think.

So what practical effect will

slate.com/technology/201…

Read 7 tweets

Jesse Singal

@jessesingal

25 Oct

The claim that British leftist feminists are allied with, like, Victor Orban relies on logical chains like "A UK court thought the evidence for blockers and hormones was paltry, and other people opposed to blockers and hormones used that ruling as evidence, and therefore..."

2/ You also have to believe that "a small cadre of British feminists with immense social capital" have major policy-making influence. I can only assume they meet in a bunker 20 floors below Big Ben.

This is a conspiracy theory and should be laughed at.

3/ What's going on here is JCW supports a very unpopular policy -- full-blown self-ID -- can't can't argue it on the merits. So she and others are trying to go the guilt-by-association route. It would be better to simply debate self-ID, which is not yet law in most places.

Read 5 tweets

Jesse Singal

@jessesingal

22 Oct

Michael Hobbes wants you to know that it's okay for someone's academic career, years in the making, to be permanently torpedoed if they say "sex is a biological reality," because this is 'TERFese' (?) for “trans people don’t exist” (???).

Extremely gross but helpfully revealing.

Does Colin Wright *actually* think trans people don't exist? Did he *actually* write anything that could be fairly construed as such? Details! It isn't Michael Hobbes' career on the line, so who cares? Shorthand's okay.

This shit is so fucking gross, man. It's disgraceful.

First image is Hobbes' argument that if you, an academic, are coerced into an interview with an administrator because of a meritless complaint, that's the "system working as intended." Then my reporting on the "system working as intended" for a Palestinian student at CUNY.

Read 5 tweets

Jesse Singal

@jessesingal

21 Oct

@VitoGesualdi

1/ This AP photo caption reads "Comedian and videographer Vito Gesualdi screams profanities as he engages with peaceful protesters begging him to leave." A damaging claim about @VitoGesualdi, circulated globally.

It never happened. Join me on some basic photo-trutherism.

2/ The photo is very distinctive :

-someone holding tambourine with two hands and blue plaid sleeves

-Gesualdi holding two hands up

-photographer in green shirt back and to his left

3/ Anyone who has been too online the last day-plus already recognizes the tambourine from the protester who has a "REPENT, MOTHERFUCKER!!!" meltdown after protesters destroy Gesualdi's sign in this viral video.

Read 12 tweets

Jesse Singal

@jessesingal

21 Oct

For paid subscribers, I wrote about the Netflix walkout and the chronic tendency of lefty protesters to give their opponents exactly what they want in the age of viral outrage -- a tendency that has dogged them since the days of Milo's provocations.

jessesingal.substack.com/p/so-whats-the…

2/ The Netflix thing is a really clear example because it was such a small protest, enjoyed blanket coverage from mainstream outlets (meaning it was particularly important), and because it would have been so easy for the protesters to just have a tiny bit of discipline.

3/ As I note, Berkeley/Milo was a bit more complicated given that a lot of antifa goons flooded in to start trouble.

Read 4 tweets

Jesse Singal

@jessesingal

20 Oct

1/ I just talked to the director of a school board. She didn't want me to say which one for obvious reasons, but she said she was very skeptical of The Daily Wire's reporting, including its followup reporting, on the Loudoun County situation.

2/ A few key things from our chat:

-School systems almost always have to educate kids. This could include even a kid who was under investigation for a violent sexual assault. If things were functioning properly, there'd be a safety plan in place that might include, for example,

3/ a policy ensuring the kid in question is never with other students without an adult present. My source's point is something clearly went wrong here, but the kid's mere *presence* in another school, contrary to what I and many others believed, is not inherently damning.

Read 9 tweets

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