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Resignation Letter

bariweiss.com

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Re: Resignation Letter

#471

Post by [deleted] »

orwin wrote: post #354
eric_b wrote: post #211

The "orthodoxy" the author writes about is real. I am a skeptic and cynic by nature. In my experience "common wisdom" is usually anything but. In software and technology I've found when you eschew dogma and "best practices" you more often than not get better results. But, in 2020 you cannot question or be skeptical of the "progressive" agenda. Merely hinting that you are not fully bought in will get you labeled as a…

> But, in 2020 you cannot question or be skeptical of the "progressive" agenda. Merely hinting that you are not fully bought in will get you labeled as a racist, or even worse these days, a "Conservative". Is it really the case? Or is it a perception you have? I've become less and less liberal the past three months, for multiple reasons, and at least in my liberal bubble, i did not face any backlash.

[deleted]

Re: Resignation Letter

#472

Post by cm2187 »

mancerayder wrote: post #337
Benjammer wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just sounds like bluster and emotion to me though. Why is truth not a process of collective discovery? Is this implying that truth used to be this and now is not? What exactly does "collective discovery" mean in the context of a newspaper? What evidence is there that this used to be the case and now is not? What is the new "orthodoxy"? Are you able to describe this orthodoxy in specific terms and not just labels…

I think it's pretty obvious what the new orthodoxy is, and she gave some examples of it. How many more questions do you want to ask? The NYT is condoning high school student canceling each other, hiding anti-Semitism from certain writers they like based on the obvious factors, making wild narratives about US history (like their Revolutionary War revisionism), and most importantly, unlike papers like the Financial Tim…

I don't remember seeing a single pro-brexit op-ed in the FT. The FT isn't publishing competing views. It very much aligned itself to the NYT's "only the facts that fits the narrative" approach.

Re: Resignation Letter

#473

Post by [deleted] »

achileas wrote: post #454
mikece wrote: post #3

"Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at [the New York Times]: that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else." This is a very key point, and what are the consequences of "informing everyone of a truth" that doesn't accurately reflect -- of even contradicts! -- reality? Harm to the reput…

Bari Weiss doesn't realize it, but she's painting an accurate picture of herself here.

[deleted]

Re: Resignation Letter

#474

Post by achileas »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #439
mikece wrote: post #39

"And so self-censorship has become the norm." This might be the most ironic and most dangerous effect of this "right think" regime: that the free expression and exchange of ideas is thwarted in advance because one doesn't want to deal with drama, fight, or insults that come with saying something not in lock-step with the prevailing group-think. This blunts the curiosity of the intellect and silences all true disciple…

You can see this directly on Reddit, or even here, thanks to the downvote button. It doesn't matter how right you may be, how many sources you may have, if it angers a sufficient people to lead to your post being downvoted, no one will be able to read it. And though the points are made up, it's always annoying to look at a post you spent half an hour typing and researching just to have it get down to -6 with no furth…

So you're against people expressing their opinions in response to your own?

Re: Resignation Letter

#475

Post by m0zg »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #387
jrumbut wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noam Chomsky says a lot of interesting stuff but he published his writings on 9/11 a couple months after the attacks (and he certainly has his own ideological filters). He's an essayist, a linguist, but not a news source. I'm looking for the better alternative to the NYT here. Where would you go for information if I told you about some surprising event occurred and people on Twitter are posting very different stateme…

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Stop trusting outlets. Find journalists with integrity and follow everything they do, no matter the outlet.

I basically just trust two at this point: Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. Both biased to the left, but both are explicit about it, and neither would lie to suit a narrative, unlike the rest of their colleagues.

Re: Resignation Letter

#476

Post by dpbriggs »

rabidonrails wrote: post #452
srpablo wrote: post #423

"People were mean to me and other opinion writers who weren't fact-checked and frequently got facts wrong. I'm not considering these complaints Free Speech, but our hurt feelings mean that Free Speech was hurt. My boss, James Bennett, solicited a piece from Tom Cotton that called for the state to take arms against protesters (protesting might called… speech?), and didn't read the piece before publishing it. The peopl…

Are these quotes from something? I don't see these in the OP. I don't understand the "boosting" that you're referring to either.

It's an uncharitable paraphrase of the article, with some context added.

Stop Boosting is an annoying euphemism for 'take them out of the spotlight' aka cancel.

Re: Resignation Letter

#477

Post by joshuamorton »

Manfredo_1 wrote: post #468
slg wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the page you linked? The very first sentence of the body of the page states: >Harassment is a form of employment discrimination... It goes on to say: >Harassment is unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. They are defining harassment as requiring the behavior to be based on a protected clas…

So if a coworker goes to your workplace every day and says, "Slg is an idiot and a worthless human being who makes the company worse with his or her presence" that's not harassment? Because it's not based on race, religion, sex, etc? The article particularly highlights harassment in the basis of protected class. It does not say that harassment on the basis of things other than protected class is permitted. If what yo…

> Weiss has grounds to claim it on the basis of religion.

No she doesn't. The harassment isn't due to her religion, it's due to how she conducts herself as part of her job. (and it doesn't meet the line for harassment anyway, people expressing workplace disagreements isn't harassment, as much as she may want to dress it up).

> "Slg is an idiot and a worthless human being who makes the company worse with his or her presence" that's not harassment?

It could be criminal harassment (but even this is unlikely) it is not, however, workplace harassment. Speech protections in the united states are incredibly broad and protect many forms of assholery. This is not news to many people to have been subject to harassment that isn't legally harassment before.

Re: Resignation Letter

#478

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

acituan wrote: post #288
jrumbut wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have 1,600 journalists last year that were sent to 150 countries [1]. What other organization is doing anything like that effort to gather facts around the world? Who is doing more collective discovery (and making it accessible to the public at a price an average person can afford)? I can only think of a handful of organizations that are serious candidates (Reuters? The BBC? Wikipedia?). Weird puff pieces, drama…

> They have 1,600 journalists last year that were sent to 150 countries ... to gather facts around the world Journalism is not our fact gathering apparatus. It is our sense making and relevance deciding apparatus based on those facts. If we don't have good journalists providing those functions, we are left with the ersatz, AI based versions to decide what to pay attention to; twitter's, youtube's recommendation algor…

>Journalism is not our fact gathering apparatus.

Well then what is? I used to live next door to a journalist - by which I mean someone who went out into the world (haiti, israel/west bank, US immigration policy) and asked questions and collected facts. They didn't always get everything right, and their work seemed to encourage a deliberate sort of fence-sitting with respect to the issues and places that they covered, but they did work that nobody else is/was doing.

Those people on social media who appear to be the "fact gathering apparatus" ? they are just echoing the work of people like my old neighbor.

Without journalists, the ones we sometimes call reporters, we've got nothing to work with.

Now certainly, their job also extends into "sense making" and "relevance deciding". But the important ones - the reporters - are the ones gathering the material that the the rest of us - including the non-reporting journalists - are working with when we try to do the same thing.

Re: Resignation Letter

#479

Post by Manfredo_1 »

joshuamorton wrote: post #450
manfredo wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a hostile work environment does not require discrimination. A workplace that is entirely non-discriminatory but does nothing when one co-worker relentlessly bullies and harasses another co-worker is still a hostile workplace. You seem to be misled by the fact that anti-discrimination laws prohibit hostile workplaces, and that hostile workplaces are considered a form of discrimination, but there's no requirement t…

From that page: > Harassment is unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. So, yes, for it to be a hostile workplace under the laws you're talking about, it would need to be based on one of those aspects, not just because people disagree with her opinions.

The article specifically calls out harassment on the basis of protected class. But to read this as saying that unwelcome conduct, so long as it is not on the basis of protected class, isn't harassment is not a correct interpretation.

A shape with four equal length sides is a quadrilateral. Does it mean that a shape with four sides of unequal lengths isn't quadrilateral?

Put this in a more concrete scenario. You have a co worker that stops by your desk every hour and says, "Joshua you are a worthless idiot and your team is worsened by your presence" and relentlessly bullies you throughout the day. Is this not harassment because it isn't based on a protected class like race or gender."

Re: Resignation Letter

#480

Post by erentz »

mancerayder wrote: post #390
bhouston wrote: post #346

Bari Weiss is a problematic character in this area. She has played gatekeeper herself quite stridently and successfully. She is quite fine with her own "involvement in numerous campaigns to vilify and ruin the careers of several Arab and Muslim professors due to their criticisms of Israel" per Glenn Greenwald in the Intercept: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...

When she was a sophomore in college, in the early 2000's, right? It strikes me as certainly somewhat hypocritical, but on another level due to a large time gap and context. Did we have Twitter mobs and nervous HR departments in 2005?

Even last year she tried to get Eli Valley cancelled. She’s very much a hypocrite that wants to be able to criticize, and try to damage other people, but cry foul whenever she faces any criticism back. Even in this letter she is complaining at some points that she can’t say stuff without being criticized.
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