[gfodor]

Hilarious that the top comment exemplifies the problem. It seems few today are still able to engage with ideas directly, always trying to filter them through some, any, lens to discredit the ones they don’t like. Sometimes it’s attacking the speaker, sometimes their associations, sometimes the tweets they have “liked.” If all else fails, seek out language in the text itself for unfalsifiable “dog whistles” that allow the affixing of a label. Whatever allows one to shield their eyes, ignore the argument made, and secure the moral high ground.

[alecb]

So you're digestion of her letter should not be informed in anyway by the fact that she routinely employed the tactics that she now claims she's a victim of? She's spent her career vilifying and seeking out personal retribution for people who she's disagreed with, I don't know how this doesn't factor into one's purview.

[ashconnor]

I think readers here think that you are engaging in an "Ad hominem" attack on Weiss but since she herself is the subject of discussion I don't see why you wouldn't include her historical contradictory actions in a response.

[kyledrake]

It's very appropriate to call someone out on their actions if they are completely inconsistent with what they are claiming to value whenever it stops being useful to them. This isn't a scoring panel for high school speech and debate class.

[jirdperson]

I certainly don’t think that. What “ideas” that Bari Weiss presents in this essay does your conversational counterpoint here fail to engage? And why is the context of her hypocrisy not relevant?

[ritchiea]

Aren’t there times when an ad hominem attack is fitting?

If I have a documented history of a certain type of bad behavior and turn around to say I’m a victim of exactly that same sort of behavior. If I write a screed about my victimhood it does lie in the background that my own behavior likely seeded the negativity I received in return.

In that sense this goes beyond “ad hominem attack”. The accusation is more accurately that Bari Weiss is a bad faith actor in a system of mutual journalistic integrity, accusing her current colleagues of being bad faith actors. I don’t know if her colleagues are bad faith actors are not but Weiss does seem to be a case of “the pot calling the kettle black” or whataboutism which should be taken seriously rather than dismissed as ad hominem.

[ashconnor]

> Aren’t there times when an ad hominem attack is fitting?

Yes! That's why I'm saying it's relevant.

[koheripbal]

> I don't see why you wouldn't include her historical contradictory actions in a response.

...because that's a bad faith argument. Arguing the arguer rather than the argument is not an honest debate.

I don't care about Wiess specifically - I care, as most here, about the cancer of Cancel Culture.

[gfodor]

If you read my comment and assumed I was making an argument of absolutism, ie, that you should never consider the speaker in any way, you should re-read it and consider how it may have led you there.

In any case, a person’s background should be fair to consider when an argument by that person is raised. The anti-pattern is to use that, among other things, at the exclusion of any direct engagement of the argument, as was done by the comment I was replying to.

We are not living in a world plagued by people ignoring the background of authors or the subtext of writing they disagree with, and blindly focusing on arguments. We are living in a world where arguments themselves are routinely ignored by focusing exclusively on their authors and presumed subtext.

Unlike the former scenario, which doesn’t exist from my vantage point, the latter scenario seems more difficult to unwind since it terminates in unfalsifiability. If you stand firm that a certain phrase signals some kind of latent subtext, and that can be used to discredit the whole thing, then that tactic basically results in an equilibrium where arguments can not stand on their own under any circumstance since a clever reframing, which cannot be disproven, is fatal to them.

[Barrin92]

In this particular case the author argues from her particular experience in her workplace without providing any evidence, so I think it's pretty relevant to take such things into account because she might be exaggerating.

I'm not exactly inclined to take someone's purely personal criticisms at face value if they have engaged in the same behaviour.

For all we know she might be leaving on bad terms and is taking it out on her coworkers who may have a different story to tell.

[DavidSJ]

I agree, as someone who is concerned about "cancel culture" broadly, and found Weiss's resignation later interesting and noteworthy, that her credibility as a witness is a relevant consideration in this situation, since she is asking us to believe her accounts of the internal politics at the New York Times. She isn't just making an argument based on publicly available facts.

I would appreciate a better source for the claim that Weiss tried to get a professor at Columbia fired than that article by Glenn Greenwald. I dug through it (admittedly a bit quickly, so maybe I missed something), and could only find evidence that she was harshly critical of a Columbia professor, but not that she attempted to get him fired. It's also noteworthy that some or all of her criticism of that professor concerned not his expressed opinions, but the way he (allegedly) berated Israeli students in his classroom.

Ironically, I haven't generally found Greenwald himself to be the most reliable narrator, but that discussion would take us far afield.

[zzzeek]

they absolutely do have a different story to tell and it has been told over and over again within the various twitter threads, in examples such as https://twitter.com/maxstrasser/status/1268636885989105665

[gfodor]

If you read my comment and interpreted it to mean “everything should be taken at face value” that is worth reflecting on.

[ideals]

Right, the parents complaint is essentially Spiderman_pointing_at_Spiderman.jpg

If the original complaint is a "dog whistle" then people will also respond the same way.

Otherwise know as debating

[kup0]

Look, I believe people can change, but how they've behaved previously, especially as recently as in the case (2 years ago) is relevant to now.

Especially when the very arguments they are making- they were recently, actively working against

[horsemessiah]

This comment is not explemifying the problem, as you put it. It's pointing out the hypocrisy of this author for condemning something she engages in herself, without taking any blame.

[vangelis]

Eh, nobody likes a hypocrite.

[chasing]

> It seems few today are still able to engage with ideas directly...

Who has the TIME? I mean, you have to filter what you choose to think about and engage on. The world doesn't need to pause and refute every stupid opinion someone trots out.

[srpablo]

If I say "only weak people would choose to smoke; and I have never been weak" you don't think pointing out that I was once a smoker is relevant? Who's really making the contortions here?

[gfodor]

Nobody is ignoring the smoking history of people who make claims about quitting smoking.

But a lot of people are rejecting such claims on their surface if they come from someone who smoked, or knows a smoker, or was once rumored to have sat in the smoking section of a restaurant 20 years ago. (As if that should be tolerable by anyone other than someone who, in their heart of hearts, is a smoker even if they’ve never actually been seen with a lit cigarette before.)

[dimgl]

It's truly telling that the most upvoted comment is one working to discredit the writer, rather than taking what's being said at face value.

[Redoubts]

> rather than taking what's being said at face value

Why should I be this credulous?

[dimgl]

No one is asking you to be naive and all-accepting. Simply to not be dismissive.

[aaronbrethorst]

It is incumbent upon all of us to be as credulous about Bari Weiss's stated rationale as James Bennett always was about guest op-eds.

[duxup]

>rather than taking what's being said at face value

Should we?

I don't always do that, hard to imagine doing so all the time, you'd experience constant whiplash of opinions.

[Bjartr]

> you'd experience constant whiplash of opinions

I don't understand this phrase. I certainly wouldn't describe what I experience when I take the time to consider things at face value as causing anything I'd describe as whiplash. Just because I attempt to evaluate what I read from another's perspective doesn't mean I give up my own in the meantime.

[dimgl]

And I'm not advocating for that, especially given the amount of garbage on the Internet. But the pendulum has swung too far in one direction and many people are scared to voice their opinions for fear of being rejected or worse, outcast from their livelihood and their way of life.

What the writer is saying is that she no longer feels that The Times is unbiased. I don't see how that's a hard thing to take at face value.

[duxup]

> I don't see how that's a hard thing to take at face value.

How about I say the Times is unbiased.

Ok now what do we do? Do we take it at face value?

I might be misunderstanding what you mean, but it seems like you are in fact advocating ... 'that'.

[shkkmo]

I don't see anything "discrediting" the that comment. I think it is very salient to point out that it us much easier to call out intolerance in other people than to face our own intolerance. Weiss's own intolerance doesn't negate the intolerance she faced, instead it reminds us to remember to strive for tolerance within ourselves as well as pushing for it from other people.

[majormajor]

The people who have spent decades trying to keep the airwaves "clean," "family friendly," "anti-communist," etc, are suddenly shocked that they don't get to set the rules anymore, and that they're on the wrong side of some of them.

Context is everything for this discussion, because if you truly don't want there to be such censorship, you have to be aware of the motivations of the people pushing for change at the top now.

Otherwise you just get them running the show again, and you've just rolled back the clock a few decades to a world with a more violent state and a more cheerleading media.

[hsitz]

That's an interesting thought that I don't think I've encountered before; I'll think about that.

[gfodor]

Your argument that “context is everything” is exactly my point. It’s not. Context is something. If context was everything, then there is no point in writing anything, because words cannot be wielded to create new meaning. Their meaning will be imbued by their collectively interpreted context.

[dane-pgp]

> The people who have spent decades trying to keep the airwaves "clean," "family friendly," "anti-communist," etc, are suddenly shocked that they don't get to set the rules anymore, and that they're on the wrong side of some of them.

Or, to frame it another way, the people who spent decades saying "We should be allowed to broadcast whatever we want, because we support equality and liberty", and "If you don't like what we broadcast then you can just avoid it", are now suddenly finding themselves drunk on the power that they have gained, and are abusing it in much the same way as the people they were complaining about before.

[jimbokun]

Bullshit.

Censorship by the right, and censorship by the left are not the only two exclusive options. Free exchange of ideas in a constructive and respectful fashion should be the ideal.

[majormajor]

They aren't the only two options, but they're our actual history.

So be aware of that.

[s17n]

Those who disagree with Bari Weiss have spent plenty of time and energy engaging with her ideas directly. At this point, it's pretty clear that she's a troll.