Transgender Activism Ethics Train Wreck

Transgender Activism Ethics Train Wreck Incident Report: Michelle Goldberg’s Unethical Op-Ed

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Goldberg op-ed

One of the unexpected benefits of the weekly Ethics Alarms Open Forum is that participants sometimes focus my attention on something important that I otherwise would have missed.

In yesterday’s forum, johnberger2013 raided the matter of Michelle Goldberg’s op-ed that appeared on the New York Times site,called, in a starburst of irony, ““The Right’s Big Lie About a Sexual Assault in Virginia.”

It is ironic because there is no “big lie,” but Goldberg’s op-ed is entirely spin, distortion and misdirection in the pursuit of a deceitful narrative designed to confuse the intellectually flabby and soothe those already biased like Goldberg. Her op-ed turned up in my print Times this morning: I never would have read it without the forum thread alerting me. Goldberg is as unethical and dishonest as the more famous Times op-ed demagogues like Krugman and Blow, but not as intelligent as either. For me, reading her woke blatherings is as enticing as reading “Nancy” in the comic section when I was over the age of 10.

The only way someone as unqualified as Goldberg could acquire her current platform is that she reliably expresses the Times party line. Now, if I were an editor, it would bother me that her thinking is so shaky and her persuasiveness is so weak that her only use is preaching to the choir, and only the dumber members at that. But this isn’t my problem, though it does reveal how far the New York Times has fallen.

Her topic is the rape of one student by another at a high school in Loudoun County, Virginia, which gained national prominence because the fury of the victim’s father at the school’s response (a cover-up, among other things) resulted in his arrest. This was, coincidentally <cough>just a few days before the school board association asked the Biden administration to protect them from “domestic terrorists,” aka outraged parents who object to school policies and curriculum choices that they see as inappropriate. Attorney General Merrick Garland dutifully responded with a memo that could be used in a law school course as an example of how the government can chill free speech.

Goldberg’s thesis is laid out on a cut line in my print version: “An attack in a school bathroom had nothing to do with trans issues.” That is, beyond question, on the facts, a lie, yet the Times printed it. The only question is whether Hanlon’s Razor applies: is Goldberg intentionally lying, or is she stupid enough to believe it? Tough call.

Facts:

Continue reading →

Trans Activist Ethics Train Wreck Update: The Dave Chappelle “Hate Speech” Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

From the New York Times front page today:

“Netflix…the tech company that revolutionized Hollywood, is now in an uproar as employees challenge the executives responsible for its success and accuse the streaming service of facilitating the spread of hate speech and perhaps inciting violence.”

Observations:

1. It’s time—way past time, in fact—to emphatically define what “hate speech” is. First of all, hate speech, whatever it is, is 100% protected speech. It is Constitutional, First Amendment, lawful, beyond all argument speech. Second, I use “whatever it is” because the phase is deliberately vague and subjective so those seeking to censor discourse, advocacy, non-conforming points of view, satire and insults can place the expression of ideas by someone else into a category that suggests malign agency and intent.Then, those crying “hate speech” can advocate silencing whatever it was they are labeling.

We’re on to them, or should be by now. Calling something “hate speech” is like the Southern Poverty Law Center’s dishonest “hate group” label. It’s a cheat.

2. Hate is not a good thing in human relations (there are exceptions), but it is legal and, like all emotions, not unethical. Acting on the hate may be unethical, but not hate itself.

3. I have watched “The Closer,”Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special now under fire, twice. There is nothing hateful in it, unless one thinks that all mockery, satire and jokes with an edge are hate.

I don’t think “The Closer” is very good, especially by Chappelle’s standards. It’s not especially funny, for instance. It’s also not very smart, and Chappelle, if nothing else, is smart and usually shows it. It’s not smart because the controversy over how society should regard transgender individuals is interesting, perhaps difficult, raises interesting ethical and practical issues, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s just not as important as the attention paid to it makes it seem. This is a tiny minority: yes, these issues are important to them. But Chappelle’s show is like a deliberate employment of the Streisand Effect: he’s obviously annoyed about having to deal with trans issues, so he spends a whole, high-profile special complaining, explaining, and riffing regarding it. Since he’s a comedian, this could be justified if he mined it for comedy gold, but he doesn’t.

If he isn’t going to be funny, then he has to be profound, or he’s wasting our time. Not only is the thing not profound, it’s barely coherent. Not that there’s anything wrong with that: stand-up is a high wire act, and the best comics sometimes fall hard. But the contrived controversy over “The Closer” is giving the performance more significance than it deserves, and allowing Chappelle to accept accolades for a performance that was really subpar.

Continue reading →