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After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

nytimes.com

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Re: After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

#41

Post by oceanghost »

zerb wrote: post #14
meri_dian wrote: post #2

Something she had to say about herself... "For those of you honestly concerned. I don't support weev, that's not given in how I define friendship. I believe white folks should engage with the racists in their life … and I believe all people are redeemable, and "all people" is all people." That's an admirable perspective. She is clearly not racist or anything else herself. She is a casualty of the reactionary zeitgeis…

Certainly. 2016 is evidence of what happens when you don't listen to people you disagree with. Lower class whites are disproportionally-likely to have "deplorable" views. Yet even as we as a society move to bring education to more and more people, still this demographic has become the last remaining group of people that it's "OK" to hate. So they've reacted. Disclaimers: Obviously, not everyone who's a lower-income w…

This is the problem with the big tent. My primary concern in the 2016 election was media propaganda. I voted for Trump in California, where it would never, ever, matter, as a protest vote. That makes me a deplorable racist? :)

Re: After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

#42

Post by reitanqild »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #31
azangru wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can barely deal with my racist in-laws in Texas, so I have no idea how you could be friends with a Nazi Aren't there lots of interactions that people can have with each other besides discussing topics such as race, or nation, (or gender, or sexuality)? Why are people so willing to define themselves by their stance on any of these particular topics, to the point of being openly hostile to people with other positio…

Because for people who define themselves in a certain way and literally watch Fox News from sun-up to sun-down its so core to their identity that you cannot discuss ANYTHING without it being about this stuff. I was told last time (Thanksgiving) that it wasn't fair that there wasn't a White Friday too the day after Thanksgiving. And god forbid we discuss sports, or the news, or the weather (climate change is a lie you…

If you take some of the advice given freely in this thread you might have a better chance at improving their lives.

Also, based on your performance in this thread I'm not sure the Texans should take all the blame in this particular case.

Re: After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

#43

Post by ghaff »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #40
ghaff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree but it's also understandable on the part of the NYT. She wasn't really even on board yet so this probably counts as one of those battles that isn't worth fighting even if they they wanted to. Not that it really pertains in this case, but personally, I'm pretty glad that there was no social media prior to my being an established adult professional in a role that made me very aware anything I wrote was o…

Indeed. I don't think Norton is a racist/homephobe, I do think she made poor choices with her social media presence for her career. And while I don't think she should lose her job because of five year old tweets that aren't the greatest, I understand where NYTimes would be at: Their first and foremost responsibility is to their brand and reputation.

>Their first and foremost responsibility is to their brand and reputation

Right. People with no skin in the game often want companies to do the right/heroic/etc. thing. Even leaving aside what the appropriate action in this particular case is, the reality is that when there's a mob or the likelihood of one that wants your head, your employer is probably going to think about it for about 10 seconds and then toss you off the deck. "It's just business" as Bill Belichick would put it. We can all think of plenty other examples over the past few years.

Re: After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

#44

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #23
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think it's inherently silly to believe you can't be friends with people you disagree with. Some of the more lasting memories in my life came from conversations I've had with people that I couldn't be further apart from in perspective and opinion, and some of them, I'd go so far as to say I was friends with.

Right, if we force ourselves to be declared enemies of anyone who does not share our world view, then nobody will grow, and people will just get more entrenched in their bubbles. This reminds me of a podcast, incidentally "The Daily" produced by NYTimes, where a former white nationalist tells a quite fascinating story about how he completely changed his mind about the white nationalist movement after being regularly…

Let me add that listening to his story helped me understand that white nationalism, or any form of bigotry really, is mostly about identity and belonging to a group, often their own family who subscribe to the same ideals. By offering your friendship to such a person, you also offer an alternative. By declaring your friendship over because of your differences, you not only lose a friend, you also validate that other person in his/her views and help him paint a picture of you and people who think like you as the enemy.

It saddens me that so many people think that it is unforgivable to have a history of friendship with a person like that, and I am genuinely scared that the fear of backlash from the internet means that public figures will be forced to reinforce a stereotypical good/evil picture of society. Then we will truly all lose in the end.

Re: After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

#45

Post by junkcollector »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #12
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to me that she was mostly using words which are offensive, but frequently used outside of their intended meaning. Definitely language I wouldn't use myself. But for example, "that's gay" has been relatively often used as an insult/derogatory, inadvertently by people not intending to be homophobic. I'd definitely call out it's use today, but I'm not sure I'd hunt someone down and try to ruin their career ov…

Edit: removed since apparaently it was a RT

You shouldn't remove it because it was a retweet, you should have removed it because it clearly meant the opposite of what you were implying it meant. Plenty often people get lampooned for statements that are later divorced from content but you are taking a single word and divorcing it from the content of the sentence it's in.

Re: After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

#47

Post by tasty_freeze »

Post some inflammatory things on your twitter account and it can come back to bite you. But it is funny that it disqualifies her from writing opinion pieces for a newspaper, while other people tweet far more outrageous things nearly daily and can be President.

I'm not sure why some people get teflon and others don't.

Re: After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

#48

Post by spoovy »

zerb wrote: post #14
meri_dian wrote: post #2

Something she had to say about herself... "For those of you honestly concerned. I don't support weev, that's not given in how I define friendship. I believe white folks should engage with the racists in their life … and I believe all people are redeemable, and "all people" is all people." That's an admirable perspective. She is clearly not racist or anything else herself. She is a casualty of the reactionary zeitgeis…

Certainly. 2016 is evidence of what happens when you don't listen to people you disagree with. Lower class whites are disproportionally-likely to have "deplorable" views. Yet even as we as a society move to bring education to more and more people, still this demographic has become the last remaining group of people that it's "OK" to hate. So they've reacted. Disclaimers: Obviously, not everyone who's a lower-income w…

I am very doubtful that 'lower-class' people are more likely to hold racist views. In my experience in the UK it's the opposite. Working class people here are constantly used as a scapegoat by the middle classes when it suits their pockets.

Brexit for example had nothing to do with race and everything to do with massive immigration distorting the housing market. The average house price in London is now around $750,000 USD, which is of course an enormous problem for the poor, but enormously profitable to property-owning middle classes. But the middle-class mainstream media paint a picture of a mob of racist working classes being the root cause.

Bully them into line with the worst kind of insults, and keep those house prices rising.

Re: After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

#49

Post by Vaskivo »

econnors wrote: post #13
meri_dian wrote: post #2

Something she had to say about herself... "For those of you honestly concerned. I don't support weev, that's not given in how I define friendship. I believe white folks should engage with the racists in their life … and I believe all people are redeemable, and "all people" is all people." That's an admirable perspective. She is clearly not racist or anything else herself. She is a casualty of the reactionary zeitgeis…

There's a difference between engaging with people who have different viewpoints and being friends with them. I consider friendship to be an endorsement of the other person. Same for "loving your enemies". MLK is advocating for peaceful protest here, not saying that you should excuse and forget your enemy's actions. I'm not sure I agree with any argument made in favor of being friends with white supremacists. Defend t…

> I consider friendship to be an endorsement of the other person.

In that case I have no friends. Nor I believe I'll ever have. All of my friends have some conflicting opinions. Not just with me but between all of us.

I don't think people should be valued as a sum of their parts. People are an aggregation of experiences opinions ans characteristics. We should evaluate each part individually.

Example: John Doe is an excellent programmer, a 10x programmer even. But he is known to have a neo-nazi blog. One thing is "good2 and the other is "bad". Does being a neo-nazi make him a bad programmer? No. Does him being a 10x programmer make his social ideas good? No. He is both things. One "good", the other "bad". And they can live side by side.

Based on John's opinions I probably wouldn't invite him to dinner at my house. But I would damn sure go to him if I had a programming problem.

Re: After Storm Over Tweets, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

#50

Post by fhood »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #47

Post some inflammatory things on your twitter account and it can come back to bite you. But it is funny that it disqualifies her from writing opinion pieces for a newspaper, while other people tweet far more outrageous things nearly daily and can be President. I'm not sure why some people get teflon and others don't.

> I'm not sure why some people get teflon and others don't.

In the unlikely case that that was not rhetorical, how much overlap do you think there is between the nytimes readership and Trump's base?

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