Good Morning…
(Do you remember when Saturday morning was fun? Stupid, but fun…)
1. Your cultural literacy note of the day. The Charles Laughton classic “Ruggles of Red Gap” was on Turner Movie Classics last night. The movie itself is wonderful—I recommended it in an Independence Day post here—but it is also a cultural literacy triumph. In 1935, when the film was released, Lincoln’s Gettysburg address was in the process of falling out of the public’s consciousness. The film’s most famous scene, however, revived it. In a saloon, reference is made to “what Lincoln said at Gettysburg,” and all the cowboys in Red Gap ask each other, “What did Lincoln say at Gettysburg?” Then, quietly, unexpectedly, Ruggles the English butler (Laughton) and the only foreign-born man in the room, recites the speech. TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, in his post showing observations, revealed that when the film was first shown, audiences frequently stood and applauded Laughton’s rendition, and the Address itself became more widely known and quoted.
This is how popular culture works when it is in sync with national values, and not attempting to undermine them.
Here is the scene…for some reason YouTube doesn’t have it, but does have the entire film. The saloon scene begins at about the 56:09 mark:
2. The Atlantic-Kevin Williamson controversy. Unless you routinely plumb the depths of pundit wars and cultural bloodletting, you might well be completely unaware of this skirmish, but it is ultimately an ethics story.
Conservative writer Kevin Williamson was one of the National Review’s most quotable and flamboyant contributes. Like the magazine itself, but moreso, he is virulently anti-Trump, a NeverTrumper from the beginning. This apparently made him appealing to the relentlessly liberal magazine, The Atlantic, so in what was thought to be an admirable commitment to more ideological diversity, it hired Williamson away from the comfy conservative NR. Then it fired him less than a month later after only one column.
The provocation was a remark he made on a 2014 podcast reiterated in more recent tweet :
And someone challenged me on my views on abortion, saying, “If you really thought it was a crime, you would support things like life in prison, no parole, for treating it as a homicide.” And I do support that. In fact, as I wrote, what I had in mind was hanging.
Ethics Alarms 
The Left wants civil discourse only if they define what civil is.
And discourse is only one way.
“parrot our narrative or die” is where this ends up.
I feel like “don’t say women who have had abortions should be hanged” should be included in everyone’s definition of “civil.” Am I wrong?
So you don’t understand Douthat’s point then?
Here, I’ll make it clear: Saying Down Syndrome babies should be killed is ethically no different than saying those kill them should be hanged, if you believe that a aborted babies are human lives, which millions do.
I believe aborted fetuses are human lives, as you know, and I’m pretty sure the rest of the pro-choicers here do as well. I also think saying Down syndrome babies should be aborted is wrong. I still don’t think that is ethically equivalent to saying women who have abortions should be hanged. But if a right-of-center magazine fires a writer for saying Down syndrome babies should be aborted, I am not going to pretend that’s a free speech issue, because it absolutely would not be.
It’s not a First Amendment issue. Of course it is a freedom of expression issue: when you punish people for expressing opinions, you are chilling free speech, just like my Facebook friends do when they call me a racist or a fascist or a Breitbart follower for explaining why a progressive narrative is utter crap. The objective is to silence arguments and opinions they can’t deal with. That chills the speech of anyone who reads their responses.
(it doesn’t work on me, of course.)
It doesn’t work on anyone, least of all actual racists and fascists. Somehow, they keep speaking even after being called racists and fascists. That’s why I struggle to see name-calling as “chilling free speech.” If the president is name-calling you, maybe. But a magazine choosing to fire someone because of controversial comments? No. Not even a little.
An opinion magazine fires a writer for having the “wrong” opinion. That doesn’t chill speech. Right.
See, “chilling” means causing negative consequences for expressing an opinion that is only a problem because you disagree with it. In this case, the writer was fired for a pointed expression of seriousness—he seriously believes violent murder is worthy of violent capitol punishment, but is not lobbying for hanging. The idea is to make abortion fans consider the dichotomy Douthat laid out. The editor didn’t have the guts to enter that fray.
Let’s say a pundit says we should shoot illegal immigrants. He gets fired. The next pundit says that illegal immigrants should be sent home wit a chip in their head that explodes when they cross the border. He’s fired. The next: deport them all. He’s fired. When do you decide that the magazine is enforcing conformity of thought and political belief?
Lots of magazines enforce conformity of thought and political belief among their writers. Virtually all political mags do. This isn’t the “everybody does it” rationalization, because it isn’t unethical. It’s unethical when mainstream newspapers refuse to hire any conservatives within the mainstream of American politics because they are conservatives. But the New York Times doesn’t have to hire birthers, and the Wall Street Journal doesn’t have to hire Louise Mensch. Deciding what views are too far outside the mainstream to tolerate is part of the job of any organization that publishes people’s views—they literally could not function without this ability.
The question is where the line is. You simply don’t see calling for the hanging of women who have abortions as too far outside the mainstream to tolerate. I find it strange that so many on the pro-life side who have spent the past few years insisting that they don’t want to punish women for having abortions now saying that Williamson’s firing was a rejection of mainstream pro-life views—which is it?
That is the problem: there is nothing too extreme to tolerate, but progressives think there is.
And THEY get to determine what that is.
“Too extreme to tolerate,” in this context, clearly means “Too extreme to publish.” Unless you’re telling me that if you owned a magazine, you wouldn’t have any problem hiring a writer who has argued that all conservative men should be chemically castrated, then you agree with me that there are views too extreme to tolerate.
And the idea that only progressives get to decide is absurd. As if conservative outlets don’t decide who to hire and which views to publish every damn day.
“now saying that Williamson’s firing was a rejection of mainstream pro-life views”
Quotes in context, please.
It’s literally quoted in Jack’s article:
Concludes Reason: “The Atlantic is essentially declaring that it cannot stomach real, mainstream conservatism as it actually exists in 21st century America.”
Let’s try this again, since the author of the Reason article (a Libertarian publication) is Katherine Mangu-Ward, a pro-choice Libertarian. Can you find me quotes, please, in context, that fulfill this assertion:
“…so many on the pro-life side … now saying that Williamson’s firing was a rejection of mainstream pro-life views…”
Make no mistake, I kind of appreciate what you are doing here, or at least what I think you are doing here. It looks like you are trying to parallel the conservative bemusement at vast swathes of accepted Leftwing spokesmen revealing the final end state of “common sense gun control” being repeal of 2A and confiscation of firearms despite years of assurance that no, that is not what those spokesmen want.
But, to make that parallel, you’ve really got to find ALOT of quotes of conservatives making such change in message regarding the mothers who abort…and not merely concern over what is essentially a bait-and-switch hiring and firing of a conservative voice for making a hyper-conservative assertion on a single topic.
Thanks for pointing out that the Reason writer isn’t a pro-lifer.
I assume you don’t agree with her that Williamson’s firing represents a rejection of mainstream pro-life views.
I hope you’re right.
Here’s a thread documenting pro-lifers who made just that argument:
Regarding Almaqah
#2 I wonder if Mr. Williams has grounds for a wrongful termination case. I bet his employment was “at will”, but maybe, he can argue that he was fired because of sexual discrimination. Would they have fired a black woman writer with the same views and credentials? I can’t say. I think it would be interesting if he was to sue them for $1, so they could at least admit that they are weenies, on the record. It would be a great teaching moment about integrity, lack of it, how organisations that purport to stand up for high ideals succumb to mob rule/peer pressure, because their support of the ideals was lip service instead of a mission statement in the first place.
Stuff like #2 is why we got President Trump.
Stuff like #2 proves Kurt Schlichter right. I wonder, Jack, how you would view the columns of his you discussed last year in light of this and other events.
My view of Kurt hasn’t changed. He’s a skilled polemicist, and verges on satire. Those who claim the sky is going to fall have their uses.
I’m going to have to check my sources but my understanding is that Kevin Williams, though conservative, is actually opposed to the death penalty. If this is accurate, this would lend a notion that his idea about hanging mothers who kill their unborn babies was made somewhat flippantly and tongue-in-cheek.
(This could be completely wrong)
Cast of Characters (mostly from their twitter profiles):
@_Almaqah –
Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) – “Oklahoman. Attorney. Contributor at @FDRLST, @dcexaminer, and other places. Keep reminding me that I’m supposed
to be rising above.”
@Elwampito – “petty bourgeois”
Mollie Hemingway (@MZHemingway) – “Senior Editor, @FDRLST”
Katherine Mangu-Ward – Editor in Chief of Reason Magazine
Fyodor – Possibly a libertarian & probably anti-Trump… (judging from a quick scan of tweets)
@MsBaileyGurl – “fundamental human rights and fast wifi. So easy to please.”
Mark Hemingway (@Herminator) – “Senior Writer @WeeklyStandard. Husband of @MZHEmingway”
Jacob T. Levy (@jtlevy) – “Tomlinson Prof of Political Theory, McGill. RPF http://amzn.to/1osWYDC Niskanen http://tinyurl.com/gpu3rzw Opinions
here are mine not McGill’s.”
Alexandra DeSanctis (@xan_desanctis) – “Buckley Fellow at National Review. Co-host of “Ordered Liberty” with @DavidAFrench. @NotreDame alum. ”
Bre Payton – “the culture and millennial politics reporter for The Federalist”
@JackFromAtlanta – possibly a conservative & possibly an Eastern Orthodox Christian (judging from a quick scan of tweets)
@UrbanAchievr – probably a leftist, most probably anti-Trump (judging from a quick scan of tweets)
Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) – “senior media reporter, @CNN. writing at the intersection of media & politics.”
Kirsten Powers – “USA Today Columnist / CNN Political Analyst / Cohost of @thefaithangle podcast”
I think this is an informative tweet dialogue on a handful of levels. For one, it reveals some informal fallacies that inetivably ruin any discourse and are especially ruinous tendencies in any summarized forum (which twitter represents the extreme end of the spectrum). It also reveals what I think is the fundamental problem with the discussion here. I think we’re operating on two different meanings of “mainstream”. Simultaneously this reveals two different attitudes regarding the Overton Window.
As for the term “mainstream”, Almaqah below, seems to mean it as “anything someone is willing to hear another person discuss”. I presume your friendliness toward Almaqah’s opinions implies you generally believe the same. When I use it, and I think when most others use the term, we use it as more of a quantitative assessment. Where “mainstream” means “anything that a sufficient percentage of people believe”, to which it might be effective to add “that it holds enough weight to begin to sway policy discussions” (but that’s not necessary).
I think Almaqah’s subsequent side-bars reveal a somewhat concerning attitude towards diversity of opinion as well as tolerance of that diversity. He seems to think that acceptable discourse should be extremely narrow and that anything outside of that window should not be tolerated one bit.
Here’s the opening salvo, as Almaqah responds to Gabriel Malor (which “El Wampito” rapidly jumps into).
Here, Almaqah subtly shifts the accusation. The topic is the specific stance that women who kill their unborn children should be executed. Almaqah expands this to “Punishing women who seek abortion”. There’s a significant difference here where his latter use of “punish” compels the person he’s arguing with to either agree or disagree to a general assertion which may or may not reveal an actual attitude towards the specific assertion. This isn’t rhetorically responsible dialogue.
Molly Hemingway, is playing the typical journalist role of saying something triggering to her base, “Fired for being pro-life”, when she knows he was fired for having a stance about how to enforce those who have abortions. She isn’t being responsible with her tweet, and Almaqah capitalizes on this. But in reality, we know he wasn’t fired for being pro-life, but standing up *for* him and his right to hold opinions, is not an endorsement of those opinions NOR is it a claim that the opinions are “mainstream” (unless you insist on the Narrow Overton window definition of mainstream).
Almaqah, relying on the narrow, intolerant view of the Overton Window, again shifts the term from the specific “execution” to the broader term “punishment”.
Fyodor does a great summary rebutting him here.
Almaqah’s reponse is to belittle the notion of tolerating an individual, who generally in agreement with most actual mainstream opinions, holds one or two more extreme ideas. This is problematic. If Almaqah’s attitude is to reign, we cannot tolerate individuals having anything other than exactly the same lock step views on every opinion we grant “mainstream” status…we must, upon discovery that one of our “orthodox” fellows, when holding even a single “out of whack” viewpoint, must be shut up and sent out of the camp.
Almaqah has jumped onto someone else’s sidebar with Mark Hemingway. Not alot of new takeaways here.
Ah dang it…I miffed some of my close blockquote commands…
And a few twitter links…dang it.
Terrific and helpful post, MW, and a Comment of the Day once I figure out how to format it. I’m sorry I took so long to get it out of moderation.
By the way, my guess is that many readers don’t know the Overton Window concept. For their benefit: Joe Overton described the Overton window for a think tank in Michigan, theorizing that politicians can only hold position within a narrow band inside the left to right political spectrum. Any politician who voices an opinion outside this range of acceptable opinions will see their career come to an abrupt end and be ostracized.
Two observations on that:
1. Trump’s election undermines the concept
2. The Overton Window isn’t supposed to apply to pundits, scholars, artist and writers.
Thanks! Though I wish I had dived into it a little more in depth. The hyperlinking burned me out and turned that into a multi-evening affair.
It wasn’t in moderation long…just over night.