Relevant in the context of the AP disclaimers that they had no idea they were sharing an office building with Hamas military forces.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/netzarim-junction-and-the-birth-of-fake-news

(Is that reaching a little too far for an analogy?)

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-hypocrites-at-apple-who-canceled

I’m biased, because I know Antonio Garcia-Martinez and something like the same thing once happened to me, but the decision by Apple to bend to a posse of internal complainers and fire him over a passage in a five-year-old book is ridiculous hypocrisy. Hypocrisy by the complainers, and defamatory cowardice by the bosses — about right for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style era of timorous conformity and duncecap monoculture the woke mobs at these places are trying to build as their new Jerusalem.
…
Again, this is not a passage about women working in tech. It’s a throwaway line in a comedic recount of a romance that juxtaposes the woman he loves with the inadequate set of all others, a literary convention as old as writing itself. The only way to turn this into a commentary on the ability of women to work in Silicon Valley is if you do what Twitter naturally does and did, i.e. isolate the quote and surround it with mounds of James Damore references. More on this in a moment.

After trying the writer’s life, Antonio went back to work for Apple. A few crucial points. One, he was recruited. Apple reached out to him, not the other way around. He sold his house in Washington State for the job and terminated his media work as part of what he expected would be a long-term commitment to Apple. In the hiring process they asked a slew of questions and checked with numerous references, including about “Chaos Monkeys.” The company was fully aware of the book and its contents. It was a bestseller for a month, and an NPR book of the year.

When Antonio entered the employment change on his LinkedIn page, Business Insider did a short, uncontroversial writeup. Then a little site called “9to5Mac” picked up on the story and did the kind of thing that passes for journalism these days, poring through someone’s life in search of objectionable passages and calling for immediate disappearance of said person down a cultural salt mine.
…
… the next step in the drama was similarly predictable: a group letter by Apple employees claiming, in seriousness, to fear for their safety. “Given Mr. García Martínez’s history of publishing overtly racist and sexist remarks,” the letter read, “we are concerned that his presence at Apple will contribute to an unsafe working environment for our colleagues who are at risk of public harassment and private bullying.” All of this without even a hint that there’s ever been anything like such a problem at any of his workplaces.

Within about a nanosecond, the same people at Apple who hired Antonio, clearly having read his book, now fired him, issuing a statement that implied a problem with workplace “behavior,” which was not remotely the case:
…
Apple by this point not only issued a statement declaring that Antonio’s “behavior” was demeaning and discriminatory, but by essentially endorsing the complaints of their letter-writing employees, poured jet fuel on headline descriptions of him as a misogynist. It’s cowardly, defamatory, and probably renders him unhirable in the industry, but this is far from the most absurd aspect of the story.

I’m a fan of Dr. Dre’s music and have been since the N.W.A. days. It’s not any of my business if he wants to make $3 billion selling Beats by Dre to Apple, earning himself a place on the board in the process. But if 2,000 Apple employees are going to insist that they feel literally unsafe working alongside a man who wrote a love letter to a woman who towers over him in heels, I’d like to hear their take on serving under, and massively profiting from a partnership with,the author of such classics as “Bitches Ain’t Shit” and “Lyrical Gangbang,” who is also the subject of such articles as “Here’s What’s Missing from Straight Outta Compton: Me and the Other Women Dr. Dre Beat Up.”

It’s easy to get someone like Antonio Garcia Martinez fired. Going after a board member who’s reportedly sitting on hundreds of millions in Apple stock is a different matter. A letter making such a demand is likely to be returned to sender, and the writer of it will likely spend every evaluation period looking over his or her shoulder. Why? Because going after Dre would mean forcing the company to denounce one of its more profitable investments

Matt then details some other hypocritical absurdities, including the use of slave labor in China, predatory commercial practices, and foreign tax dodge havens.

My point is that the Woke jackals have no qualms anymore about who they go after, because the drivers of the troikas will throw their comrades to the wolves every time.

(Maybe the “captains of the riverboats will throw their comrades to the alligators” would be more consistent with the flood on the mountain metaphor.)

Commenters contribute personal cancellation stories, and several women – some in IT – state that they found the offending passage ribald but not misogynist, and most observe that the pearl clutching is snowflake theater, as Taibbi concluded:

It’s all a sham. The would-be progressives denouncing Garcia-Martinez don’t seem to mind working for a company that a Democrat-led congressional committee ripped for using “monopoly power” to extract rents via a host of atrocious anti-competitive practices. Whacking an author is just a form of performative “activism” that doesn’t hurt their bottom lines or their careers.

Meanwhile, the bosses who give in to their demands are all too happy to look like they’re steeped in social concern, especially if they can con some virtue-signaling dink at a trade website into saying Apple’s mechanically platitudinous “Shared Values” page “isn’t just PR speak.” You’d fire a couple of valuable employees to get that sort of P.R.

When I was caught up in my own cancelation episode, I was devastated, above all to see the effect it had on my family. Unlike Garcia-Martinez, I had past writings genuinely worth being embarrassed by, and I felt that it was important, morally and for my own mental health, to apologize in public. I didn’t fight for my career and reputation, and threw myself on the mercy of the court of public opinion.

I now know this is a mistake. The people who launch campaigns like this don’t believe in concepts like redemption or growth. An apology is just another thing they’d like to get, like the removal of competition for advancement. These people aren’t idealists. They’re just ordinary greedy Americans trying to get ahead, using the tactics available to them, and it’s time to stop thinking of stories like this through any other lens.

…and not a moment too soon!

(What a scoop!)

One possible start might be to try to resist making a mountain out of a mohel-hill.

True, it’s all the rage to show that one is offended, victimized, hurt, aggressed, micro-aggressed (with no doubt nano-aggressed coming down the pike).

To the point where even if one is offensive or obnoxious—and is called on it—one will, often as not, respond with wails of victimhood (along with all the necessary righteous indignation).

Far preferable—and entertaining for that matter—is head-on offensiveness, tit-for-tat cussedness, ram-butting repartee. Honest no-holds-barred argument. (Might even learn something, if only juicy imprecations.) Sure beats whining in any event, though one’s tastes may vary.

Regarding Maoris, in my limited experience, there is a refreshing waft of WYSIWYG, of brute honesty, at least on the rugby pitch. Or the battlefield, for that matter. (Arthur Janov had nothing on these guys.) Moreover, given the current (or not so current) global zest for tatooing and, might one say, sexual, um, creativity, could it be—actually be—that “We are all Maori now”?

But oh dear, that does smack of white, colonialist, cultural appropriation. Still, I’m sure it’s one huge reason why Kiwis—of all stripes—are different from you and me…. (Or maybe it’s just the isolation. Gosh, things sure can be complex….)

At any time I’d be interested in a discussion of why we as a civilization feel the need to sacralize the Primitive of late. Plenty to chew on there.

Good night!

It could have been interesting.

If anyone changes their minds …

I think that the exchange between Copperdawg (who I seem to remember was a regular commenter some while ago) and Zaphod could be turned into an edifying exchange, if the actual ethical suppositions could be ruthlessly exposed.

Toward this end, I would ask that copperdawg make the effort to place aside his annoyance for a moment, and instead make an argument as to why Zaphod’s sneering vituperation is wrong; on what fundamental grounds it is wrong, and based on what principles do we know – or are we to presume – that those are secure grounds?

And me again:

“Bigotry and prejudice aren’t defensible.”

That could be a good start.

It is a proposition that we have assumed to be true for a couple of generations now.

But the reasons that once were given for believing so, the psychic unity of mankind and a common moral heritage based in natural law yada yada yada, are rejected by a plurality of the human race, if not by an outright hostile majority.

So, how does one argue in defense of forbearance for the sake of a common X, when there is no longer thought to be a common X?

Zaphod, with a hopeful start:

@DNW:

I could go along with Bigotry and Prejudice being indefensible were there an Omnipotent Deity who stated this to be so. I’d be even more inclined to Tremble and Obey were I sure that everyone else I was likely to encounter were also in the Tremble and Obey Camp.

A very crude formulation. I probably don’t need to tell you that such rarefied things as Deontological Ethics are pretty much outside my ken.

Failing some very powerful Outside Context Moral Force, it seems to me that of our present Creed of Tolerance and Politeness is a form of Slow Suicide. …”

[Deontological ethics are ultimately a thinly disguised exercise in circular reasoning so I think we can ignore them anyway]

Copperdawg,

” I CAN NOT countenance dopey bigots that make fanciful erudite(?) justifications and professorial excuses for their careless remarks. Explicating the meaning of savage…hopeless determination to intellectualize an absolutely intolerable remark about a current high office Minister in NZ. See ya. BTW, red pilled about 9 years ago. And I’m not a man. Buhbye.”

Yeah, OK. Well, that did not work very well.

People seem able enough to say why they are – perhaps justly – offended. But they seem to have a much greater difficulty in explaining why they have a right to be offended, and how that offense comports, if it does, with a particular scheme of justice.

We don’t know what justice is anymore. Claims of forbearance have mutated into positive rights which lay active claims on others to do, or participate … yet no universally valid arguments are adduced, or even attempted.

How is this any different from a Nietzschean will to power and domination?

The fact that a supposed victim makes the claim does not mean it must not be argued if we are to have any alternative to violence in the arbitrative force of reason.

Yet, rather than make that universal claim and then state the grounds for making it … it seems people would rather just let things go till we get down to settling matters with the knife. (Not that copperdawg is an example of this).

Maybe everyone has gone Rorty while I was not looking.

I could go along with Bigotry and Prejudice being indefensible were there an Omnipotent Deity who stated this to be so. I’d be even more inclined to Tremble and Obey were I sure that everyone else I was likely to encounter were also in the Tremble and Obey Camp.

A very crude formulation. I probably don’t need to tell you that such rarefied things as Deontological Ethics are pretty much outside my ken.

Failing some very powerful Outside Context Moral Force, it seems to me that of our present Creed of Tolerance and Politeness is a form of Slow Suicide.

You are right to point out to Copperdawg that I’m unlikely to be a willing actor in an Auto da Fe. But, since we’re attempting to go meta here for a moment, putting myself aside, there is a broader point:

What moral argument could any of us make which would turn a Leftist aside from putting us up against a wall?

Godwin makes his late appearance:

“When I hear the word ‘Kultur’, I reach for my Browning” — and the man who said that could have expounded at length on the Categorical Imperative. At that point in history he just didn’t care.

There comes a point when societal stress reaches breaking point where moral arguments simply have no meaning. No amount of wishful thinking changes this. By banning prejudice and vituperation, all we do is knock down some of the fences which help to keep societies away from the cliff’s edge. Because things go on ok for a long time before going nastily non-linear, we never seem to learn from history or see it coming. And so the wheel turns.

This is what I believe. No claims of any virtue being made. Just the facts as far as I can tell.