Live data from Hacker News

Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

newsweek.com

541–550 of 597 posts

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Communists and Fascists share a lot of the same authoritarian tactics.

It’s because they’re positing that it’s only people on the left that do this. I’ve heard it said that the enemy of extremists isn't the extremist on the other side, it’s the moderates. Extremists are itching for a fight, and they’ll continue fighting forever. Moderates and pragmatists stand in the way of that goal. If an extremist group were to win and completely eliminate the other side, they’d draw some other battl…

Those are good points.

I think however, cancel culture in particular, is a phenom of the Left right now.

Weaponizing conspiracy (QAnon, Elections, COVID) is a culture of the Right, no doubt.

Both sides are fully aware of what they are doing and leveraging it on purpose (not all, but many).

The thing is - if we have good institutions then we can hold out against QAnon. But cancel culture I think is actually a corrosion of our institutions.

QAnon and COVID conspiracies are not a problem at Harvard, whereas Cancel Culture is, in fact, it's being driven little bit from places like that.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#542
post #465
post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what will happen is that a larger percentage of the US will realize it and not like it. I think the US lives in a bubble but other parts of the world are feeling that shift already. I wonder how many Americans know that Europe trades more with China than the US. Or that Japan also trades more with China than the US. Same with Africa. The US is retreating into protectionism, internal struggle, and the opiate o…

The US and to a lesser extent the EU sold their manufacturing sectors to China without any idea of what to replace them with or what to do with the populations who relied on that work, we are feeling the pain of a self inflicted wound. They did this at the same time they dismantled the social safety nets that could have maybe kept people going. Now millennials are feeling the pain of those decisions in an economy tha…

Yes, but I think both are happening in the US. Hollowing out of manufacturing along with entrenched interests. Millennials get to feel both: expensive schooling ending up in low paid, dead end service jobs and gigs.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#543

Reminds me of Dawn Frederick, a literary agent who was "cancelled" for calling 911 on looters who rammed a van into the gas station on her apartment block: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/p... This happened during the BLM protests this summer in St. Loius. The looters she reported were blocks away from any BLM protest, and other looting bands were setting fires on nearby blocks. Frederick w…

This post is misleading and outright false in some respects. From the first article posted:

"By Claire Kirch | May 31, 2020

The civil unrest in the Twin Cities continues to take its toll on Minnesota's literary community—sometimes in unexpected ways. Thursday evening, the night before protesters set fire to two adjoining Minneapolis indie bookstores and destroying them both, the reaction to a St. Paul–based literary agent’s tweet ended up gutting the boutique agency she owns.

Three agents affiliated with Red Sofa Literary tweeted this past weekend that they have resigned in response to owner Dawn Frederick’s tweet, leaving one subsidiary rights executive besides Frederick still employed there. Frederick's official Red Sofa account on Twitter has been removed."

"Frederick, who founded Red Sofa in 2008, is a well-known fixture in Minnesota’s vibrant literary community, serving on the board of directors of the Loft Literary Center and having launched the MN Publishing Tweet Up social group. She also supervises the team of volunteers working in the galley room during the Heartland Fall Forum regional booksellers trade show each year."

So no, this was not during the BLM protests in St. Louis as the date of the article precedes when those began. Furthermore she is a "well-known fixture in Minnesota's vibrant literary community", and has been since 2008, which is something I would have expected someone who "worked in publishing for years" to be aware of.

Throwing her name combined with BLM into search engines like google only returns results after this event, so your assertion of her advocacy is unfounded and not to be believed by the above and what follows.

"Minneapolis attorney Marshall Tanick of the Meyer, Njus, Tanick law firm emailed cease-and-desist letters on Monday to two literary agents and an author on behalf of his client, Dawn Frederick of Red Sofa Literary. The two agents are Beth Phelan of Gallt and Zacker (the email was cc’ed to that agency’s two principals) and Kelly Van Sant, who until two weeks ago worked for Red Sofa. The author is Isabel Sterling, who writes YA novels. SFF author Foz Meadows also received an email, she tweeted, but it contained multiple factual errors and was recalled by its sender."

"UPDATE: On Thursday afternoon, Laura Zats, a principal of Headwater Literary Management in Minneapolis announced that she received a letter from Frederick's lawyer, threatening legal action against the agent for re-tweeting tweets by others alleging that Frederick is racist. Zats is a former employee of Red Sofa Literary, who left it last year ago to found her own agency. She has joined Phelan, Van Sant, and Sterling in their GoFundMe campaign soliciting funds in case of a lawsuit. The campaign has raised almost $15,000 to date.

Several authors have announced that they are severing their relationships with Red Sofa Literary, including Margot Atwell, the head of publishing for Kickstarter. She tweeted Thursday afternoon that she has terminated her relationship with Frederick "due to the choice she made to call the police during the protests against George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, and her subsequent decision to threaten legal action against her critics."

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/p...

So Frederick decides to start suing people, which results in agents/authors not targeted in lawsuits to cut ties with her in part due to her legal efforts.

Had she stuck with the apology she released a few days after the tweet, instead of doubling down and even throwing lawsuits around, things would have likely been far better for her. Or even not publicly announcing she was calling the police during protests against police behavior.

In other words she's not the blameless martyr you make her out to be.

And finally cancelling is just a propaganda term on the political right to escape the negative consequences of their actions. This is evidenced by it not being applied when, say the (Dixie) Chicks criticized President Bush and had their careers largely ended. It's also not applied when the 'cancelling' is apolitical, such as a restaurateur who alienates their customers/community (think Cafe Hon from Kitchen Nightmares).

EDIT: Less than 2 minutes after this was posted it was down voted and flagged.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#544
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. The OP was maintaining because the brand changed hands that it was somehow a scam, that feels quite disingenuous.

Consider the anti-tracking browser extensions that gain enough popularity they get bought by ad tracking companies. Is that also legitimate?

Sure it is if it's a legal transaction, I'm really not sure why it's so difficult to understand.

The problem here is that many of you are projecting your own brand of morals on these deals, and many people may not share that perspective.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#545
post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s because they’re positing that it’s only people on the left that do this. I’ve heard it said that the enemy of extremists isn't the extremist on the other side, it’s the moderates. Extremists are itching for a fight, and they’ll continue fighting forever. Moderates and pragmatists stand in the way of that goal. If an extremist group were to win and completely eliminate the other side, they’d draw some other battl…

Those are good points. I think however, cancel culture in particular, is a phenom of the Left right now. Weaponizing conspiracy (QAnon, Elections, COVID) is a culture of the Right, no doubt. Both sides are fully aware of what they are doing and leveraging it on purpose (not all, but many). The thing is - if we have good institutions then we can hold out against QAnon. But cancel culture I think is actually a corrosio…

Cancel Culture is all over the right. They just don't call it that.

Mention the name AOC favorably, and you will be shut down. Parler censored people for supporting BLM. Many took pride in tanking Captain Marvel because of its lead's support for feminist causes. Any progressive action you take will cause you to be dubbed "virtue signalling".

It's all just cancel culture. They simply won't call it that.

There's a saying that for the right wing, every accusation is a confession. They're calling it out on the left (much of it nut-picking[1]) because it's a pervasive part of their own culture.

[1] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nutpicking

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The summary in Wikipedia may be correct but it is worth remembering that Wikipedia itself is hideously biased to the left at times in its coverage of political issues. I've generally taken that not to be down to malevolence but probably just down to the fact those drawn to editing it are most likely of a similar political hue to those from academia.

Honest question: Could you point to some examples of Wikipedia's "hideous" left-wing bias? Not trying to catch you out, I've just personally always been surprised by how neutral Wikipedia's political articles tend to be when I've read them, and I'd like to challenge my own perception here.

Not left-wing bias but rather US democrat bias see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Biden%E2%80%93Ukraine_con...

> I've just personally always been surprised by how neutral Wikipedia's political articles tend to be when I've read them

My experience so far is that they manage to polarize even articles unrelated to politics, I think that it is partially caused by the toxicity of the community.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#547

The Left is using psychological projection as a technique. They accuse their opponents of doing exactly what they themselves are doing. They'll call you a fascist while they burn books. They'll call you racist while accusing you of "white privilege". Like you say, they'll destroy people's lives, based on racial hatred, while accusing those people of racial hatred. Domestic terrorism.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25922953.

Please don't use HN for ideological battle or post generic ideological comments or flamewar comments to HN. All that leads to internet hell, which we're trying to avoid here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We ban accounts that do those things:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

especially if they're using HN primarily for those things:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Looking at your recent commenting history, it looks like you either are, or are perilously close to the line. Please stop.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#548

The Left is using psychological projection as a technique. They accuse their opponents of doing exactly what they themselves are doing. They'll call you a fascist while they burn books. They'll call you racist while accusing you of "white privilege". Like you say, they'll destroy people's lives, based on racial hatred, while accusing those people of racial hatred. Domestic terrorism.

[deleted]

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#549
post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree cancel culture exists, and is taken too far in plenty of circumstances. I also fully believe that it is a term that's abused to the point of losing all meaning - a bit like "fake news" became just "facts inconvenient to me". Everyone facing consequences for their shitty actions - including Donald Trump's impeachment trial is being dubbed "cancel culture" by those facing those consequences. Do I believe…

Ok, yes - except that with Rowling it's 100% cancel culture - and it has to stop, now. Rowling's views are not 'dated' (that's your opinion) - they are thought out, and reasonable. They are controversial, possibly. Of course, nobody has to buy her books. It's a little infantile, but it's fine. I don't. The issue is not 'people not buying her books' - the issue is that people are trying to suppress and silence her, an…

> Rowling's views are not 'dated' (that's your opinion)

They are. Bigotry is not static. It's a dynamic reaction to progress being made in the rest of society.

Her views are not a reaction to fringe whackjobs on twitter screaming for some rights that the rest of society is not willing to give them.

Her views are a reaction to changes in government policy that do not happen overnight, are themselves a result of decades of progress made in conjunction with medical and scientific subject matter experts.

> they are thought out, and reasonable.

They are not. They are based on strawmen interpretations of trans people's lived experiences, and their desired outcomes. It would take a really long time to go through all her points and point out the various logical flaws in it, but the main issue is they are founded on her own personal beliefs, anxieties, and prior trauma, not a reasonable detached view of the status quo. Contrapoints just did a pretty thorough deep dive analysis[1].

> The issue is not 'people not buying her books' - the issue is that people are trying to suppress and silence her

An author's interaction with their audience, and their "platform" goes far beyond the books they publish. They have other channels, and other ways to reach people - in Rowling's case millions of people, primarily children.

While not everyone would agree with me on this, but if Rowling was quietly harboring transphobic beliefs, and made no further follow-up, I wouldn't care, and there would be no uproar.

Instead, she is using her notability, credibility, and large reach to post long essays promoting an opinion that is intended to regress social progress, and make life harder for trans youth (including lack of access to medical resources, increased bullying, and the corresponding increase with depression/suicide)

So, again, what you're calling suppression and silencing is simply consequences to her explicit actions - not just beliefs.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us [2] https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-...

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can describe it. I'm Brazilian, very white, green eyes, brown hair that was lighter when I was younger. About 30 years ago (wow!), in my late teens I organized a party on a house my aunt recently bought to become her medical practice. We had lots of drinks, some drugs, a DJ, live music and some guests walking over the roof of neighboring houses. Police got called. When they saw me, young and privileged, they wanted…

> they'd most likely arrive shooting, as they do when there are parties in slums. Can you please link to the news articles about these slum parties that are broken up by officers who start shooting the moment they arrive? Seems like something that would definitely get reported on. In all my time living in low-income housing, I never witnessed something like this. And I had plenty of sleepless nights when neighbors wo…

You can read about one such case, one that created enough social repercussion that the cops involved had legal trouble, here:

https://recordtv.r7.com/fala-brasil/videos/mpsp-ira-indiciar...

Most often nothing happens.

Post reply on HN