Spending my first 35 years in communist Poland I can attest to the fact that however brilliant Doreen St. Félix is, she certainly is a fanatical moron.
Great analysis describing how and why respected publications like The New Yorker lost their bearings and even moral compass. For years The New Yorker was my favorite magazine. In embracing progressive pieties it became a lot more predictable, less interesting, and I eventually let my subscription lapse.
I keep my subscription for the one great article every two weeks that seems to vindicate the decision. They still remember what they are about now and again.
Two things can be true at once: Ruffo exaggerated some points and so did St. Felix. Except the author goes to pains to skip over the latter’s intersectional contortions and Judith Butler-like gibberish to get at Ruffo. And those tweets still live in St. Felix mind as the quote shows. Weak piece.
"Sentiments like 'I hate white men. You are the worst,' while shocking and offensive to the un-Tumblred ear, were simply what was fashionable during the first Trump administration. 'Whiteness must be abolished' was the 'globalize the intifada' of its time. It was meant to signify style, not, you know . . . meaning. The only people making a big deal of it were out-of-touch oldsters with no understanding of intersectional power systems. Talk about cringe."
This observation simply does not excuse the New Yorker or the author in question.
Public statements like 'I hate white men. You are the worst' are indefensible. And if, as this column suggests, the New Yorker really did hire someone because of (rather than in spite of) those comments, that would seem to strengthen (not weaken) Rufo's case against the New Yorker.
If and when a given subculture adopts and promotes an evil ideology (such as "Whiteness must be abolished"), the proper response is not: "That's just how things are done now."
The proper response, rather, is this: we have a serious problem, so how can we best address it? Is this proper response anywhere in this column? Is the whole column meant as some kind of satire? I don't get it.
Good article at the end. I fully agree that the New Yorker is not relevent anymore.
But as the author said: "St. Félix was born in 1992, which means she would have been around 22 years old and recently graduated from Brown University when she sent those tweets. "
OK, so St. Felix was 22, and graduated from an Ivy League University where she had four years of full time higher education, supposedly the best in the world. Ivy graduates are supposed to be mature, well educated and ready to take on responsible jobs. At least they should have the intelligence after four years at Brown, not write anti white racist tweets just because it was fashionable during the BLM moment. Especially if they want to go into journalism!
In my grandmother's time, 22 was also old enough to be raising three children while your working class husband had held a full time adult job years. Twenty two today is old enough to vote for FOUR years. But not old enough to know those tweets are wrong ?
Be honest, the liberal world has gone after white men for much less.
Really nice piece. In 2020-21 I was a fan of Rufo's, because his muckraking journalism--see his piece on Sandia National Labs white-male shame-training (https://reason.com/2020/08/13/sandia-laboratory-nuclear-white-male-privilege-training/)--pinpointed and exposed the illiberal madness that was happening on the social justice left. But when he charmed Trump enough to achieve something like real cultural power, he turned out to have notable authoritarian impulses of his own. Anybody closely attending to his cancel-campaign against St. Felix can see that he made no attempt to clarify that these were 10-year-old tweets. He's an astute student of history but also a manipulative one, somebody wholly invested in an instrumental rationality designed to increase his power--the better to counteract bad ideas, he would claim. Yet his attack was on (10 year) old tweets and the bad ideas they contain, not on St. Felix's current writing about Sweeney, and the whole point of his attack is to leverage Then against Now to get St. Felix fired and/or shame The New Yorker precisely by blurring the difference between Then and Now. Daum elegantly unmasks this strategy by filling in the historical context and delineating the actual power dynamics at work on the left side of the dial, then and now. Nice job! The only thing I would add is that those who dislike what Rufo has become would do well to investigate the career of Andrei Zhdanov, the Stalinist cultural commissar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Zhdanov
You make it sound like you’re some sort of rational centrist with your “vague and circular” critique. Let me “show you my work” then. Rufo has the awesome power of government behind him. That’s such a power advantage that we have rights of the accused just to level the playing field. Being a friend of the US’ most corrupt government is an even more awesome power advantage. Rational centrists don’t jump to conclusions, like you did. I didn’t even know the writer was Black. And I clearly noted in the original post that I had no time for either of them. Not personally but because I abhor the orthodoxies of the right and left. And I’m not big on heterodox bullshitters either.
Spending my first 35 years in communist Poland I can attest to the fact that however brilliant Doreen St. Félix is, she certainly is a fanatical moron.
Great analysis describing how and why respected publications like The New Yorker lost their bearings and even moral compass. For years The New Yorker was my favorite magazine. In embracing progressive pieties it became a lot more predictable, less interesting, and I eventually let my subscription lapse.
I keep my subscription for the one great article every two weeks that seems to vindicate the decision. They still remember what they are about now and again.
Two things can be true at once: Ruffo exaggerated some points and so did St. Felix. Except the author goes to pains to skip over the latter’s intersectional contortions and Judith Butler-like gibberish to get at Ruffo. And those tweets still live in St. Felix mind as the quote shows. Weak piece.
Not sure I get this:
"Sentiments like 'I hate white men. You are the worst,' while shocking and offensive to the un-Tumblred ear, were simply what was fashionable during the first Trump administration. 'Whiteness must be abolished' was the 'globalize the intifada' of its time. It was meant to signify style, not, you know . . . meaning. The only people making a big deal of it were out-of-touch oldsters with no understanding of intersectional power systems. Talk about cringe."
This observation simply does not excuse the New Yorker or the author in question.
Public statements like 'I hate white men. You are the worst' are indefensible. And if, as this column suggests, the New Yorker really did hire someone because of (rather than in spite of) those comments, that would seem to strengthen (not weaken) Rufo's case against the New Yorker.
If and when a given subculture adopts and promotes an evil ideology (such as "Whiteness must be abolished"), the proper response is not: "That's just how things are done now."
The proper response, rather, is this: we have a serious problem, so how can we best address it? Is this proper response anywhere in this column? Is the whole column meant as some kind of satire? I don't get it.
Good article at the end. I fully agree that the New Yorker is not relevent anymore.
But as the author said: "St. Félix was born in 1992, which means she would have been around 22 years old and recently graduated from Brown University when she sent those tweets. "
OK, so St. Felix was 22, and graduated from an Ivy League University where she had four years of full time higher education, supposedly the best in the world. Ivy graduates are supposed to be mature, well educated and ready to take on responsible jobs. At least they should have the intelligence after four years at Brown, not write anti white racist tweets just because it was fashionable during the BLM moment. Especially if they want to go into journalism!
In my grandmother's time, 22 was also old enough to be raising three children while your working class husband had held a full time adult job years. Twenty two today is old enough to vote for FOUR years. But not old enough to know those tweets are wrong ?
Be honest, the liberal world has gone after white men for much less.
Really nice piece. In 2020-21 I was a fan of Rufo's, because his muckraking journalism--see his piece on Sandia National Labs white-male shame-training (https://reason.com/2020/08/13/sandia-laboratory-nuclear-white-male-privilege-training/)--pinpointed and exposed the illiberal madness that was happening on the social justice left. But when he charmed Trump enough to achieve something like real cultural power, he turned out to have notable authoritarian impulses of his own. Anybody closely attending to his cancel-campaign against St. Felix can see that he made no attempt to clarify that these were 10-year-old tweets. He's an astute student of history but also a manipulative one, somebody wholly invested in an instrumental rationality designed to increase his power--the better to counteract bad ideas, he would claim. Yet his attack was on (10 year) old tweets and the bad ideas they contain, not on St. Felix's current writing about Sweeney, and the whole point of his attack is to leverage Then against Now to get St. Felix fired and/or shame The New Yorker precisely by blurring the difference between Then and Now. Daum elegantly unmasks this strategy by filling in the historical context and delineating the actual power dynamics at work on the left side of the dial, then and now. Nice job! The only thing I would add is that those who dislike what Rufo has become would do well to investigate the career of Andrei Zhdanov, the Stalinist cultural commissar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Zhdanov
Daum is on point, as usual.
I have zero time for either of them. However, Rufo’s power advantage and weaselly attacks makes her point better than she does.
He has actual power = Power advantage.
You make it sound like you’re some sort of rational centrist with your “vague and circular” critique. Let me “show you my work” then. Rufo has the awesome power of government behind him. That’s such a power advantage that we have rights of the accused just to level the playing field. Being a friend of the US’ most corrupt government is an even more awesome power advantage. Rational centrists don’t jump to conclusions, like you did. I didn’t even know the writer was Black. And I clearly noted in the original post that I had no time for either of them. Not personally but because I abhor the orthodoxies of the right and left. And I’m not big on heterodox bullshitters either.