I carried a multi-function knife with me ever since getting one with Girl Scouts, until every place i worked reminded us what they considered weapons in the office and the TSA. It became a hassle and risk to carry one.
If you are Peckhams finest yout are hanging around PFC with your fellow roadmen and you have a multifunction knife, you aren’t carrying it for the phillips screwdriver and bottle opener. The police will arrest you for carrying a dangerous weapon.
If you are 55 year old Norman Normal and out on a country walk with your penknife in your knapsack alongside your sandwiches and flask of orange squash wont be arrested without really good reason.
McArdle misses a huge factor in this article:
While conservatives are right about media skew, they frequently talk as if it is some sort of conspiracy. It isn’t. I’ve worked in mainstream media my whole career, and the overwhelming majority of my colleagues have been lovely, generous people who are deeply and sincerely concerned with seeking truth.
No, liberal hegemony in media, academia and entertainment works by the same mechanisms that produce systemic bias against other groups: People are more comfortable with other people who are like them. And thus, they reproduce themselves in the institutions they control without ever consciously thinking: “Time to shore up the power structure!”
The thing McArdle completely misses in her point here is the same factor in teaching. Conservatives generally don’t go into those professions, and that probably accounts far more for the hegemony than any reinforcing bias.
That was Bernard Goldberg’s point in his first book. Since then he has gotten a little more conspiratorial.
Yeah, she should probably clarify her remark about conservatives being right about media skew to something like (some) conservatives, given that the whole “Fake News” epidemic that so-called conservatives rant about is more about conservative fact-denial than actual targeting.
The skew in social science academia is far more pronounced than that in academia as a whole, so unless you’re going to argue that right and centrist people are intrinsically less interested in social science(*) than other kinds of academics then I don’t think your argument holds up.
(*: You can argue they are less interested in the kinds of social science that are taught by the current academics in those fields, but that’s actually reinforcing the argument that those fields are discriminatory).
I’m actually going with the theory that conservatives are far more likely to be majoring in Business/Management than Social Sciences/Liberal Arts degrees.
My understanding was that left-to-right, it was liberal arts->natural science->social science->engineers-- but this is based on a vaguely-recollected study from years ago, so it could be total BS.
That order doesn’t even make sense. Natural science is more “hard” a science than social science.
Free speech is indeed a dogwhistle for the far right, but fuck those guys. They don’t get to commandeer the first amendment.
Free speech has become the new I can say whatever I want and you can’t do anything about it mantra from the far-right. And then they find out you are not going tor go to jail for screaming racists things in a store… but you might be fired for it.
And nothing far-right about having Flemming Rose on your panel, amirite?
Oh please. If you are upset that innocuous terms have become politically loaded, then you are clearly not paying attention to contemporary discourse.
An event described as “pro-life” will be assumed to be about abortion, even it’s meant to refer to biology. Likewise, don’t spout off about “choice” unless you understand the implications. Or “Zion”. Or “green”. Or “diversity”. Or “illegals”.
Language means what other people think it means, not what you want it to mean.
EDIT : And of course @antlers nailed it. If you don’t want to be associated with the right, then don’t invite speakers associated with the right.
In the realm of 2016-2018:
9 times out of 10 when someone brings up “Free Speech” the next utterance out of their mouth is some white supremacist or antisemitic bullshit.
This guy, proving that racism and antisemitism absolutely exists on the left. Apparently his aides are also anti-Semitic imbeciles too.
I question why that individual calls himself a liberal, but yes, that is an example of human stupidity. Are we sure he can even read?
Once again: stop quoting, following, or otherwise repeating the nonsense of Seth Abramson.
Meh. This is yet another example of the wrongheaded notion that Twitter is above the law.
If you write something to someone via Twitter, then you should be held to the same standard as writing something to someone via US mail. And yes, repeatedly sending mail with intent to annoy someone can constitute harassment. The same is true of email btw.
The rest of his argument is also bogus. The tweets were clearly meant to be read by the victim, that’s precisely why you add a tag. The fact that the victim had to physically click a link to find those tweets also makes no difference, you have to physically look in your mailbox to find harassing snail-mail as well.
The last part of his argument is especially amusing. It amounts to “Won’t anyone please think of the Twitter trolls?!”
At some point Twitter users are going to have to take the same care when writing as everyone who used to write stuff before the age of social media. They don’t get a pass just because it’s easier.