Cancelling Dr. Seuss

[dismalist]

Just for the record, people, I'm for more legal immigration, a lot more, and a lot less illegal immigration.

Legal and illegal are set by policy. We can change policy. It's not like the law of gravity.

Precisely!

[marshwiggle]

The point is that the US has ALWAYS counted on steady immigration to provide a workforce. We are now in danger of becoming Japan in terms of the age demographic of our population. We simply don't have enough workers, and it has been self-inflicted by drastically cutting the pipeline of new labor.

Several years ago this was documented in a great documentary: A Day without a Mexican.

Basically all developed countries are below their natural replacement rate, so all developed countries need immigration to maintain a stable (and preferably, slightly growing, population).

So I guess that's an agreement with what I posted?

Sure. The small fringe on one end of the spectrum who think all immigration is bad and the small fringe on the other end who think open borders is a good idea both have no grasp of how immigrants fit in the economy. Most people are smarter than that and realize the need for  controlled, sustainable immigration.

[jimbogumbo]

The point is that the US has ALWAYS counted on steady immigration to provide a workforce. We are now in danger of becoming Japan in terms of the age demographic of our population. We simply don't have enough workers, and it has been self-inflicted by drastically cutting the pipeline of new labor.

Several years ago this was documented in a great documentary: A Day without a Mexican.

Basically all developed countries are below their natural replacement rate, so all developed countries need immigration to maintain a stable (and preferably, slightly growing, population).

So I guess that's an agreement with what I posted?

Sure. The small fringe on one end of the spectrum who think all immigration is bad and the small fringe on the other end who think open borders is a good idea both have no grasp of how immigrants fit in the economy. Most people are smarter than that and realize the need for  controlled, sustainable immigration.

Don't have the citation (sorry!) but the data I saw recently puts your no immigration tail at an (astounding to me) 31% in the US.

[Wahoo Redux]

Do not know if this belongs here.  I have a lot of sympathy for the Lakota peoples in this story.

NBC News: Native American Language Preservation controversy.

[marshwiggle]

Do not know if this belongs here.  I have a lot of sympathy for the Lakota peoples in this story.

NBC News: Native American Language Preservation controversy.

There's a lot of confusing stuff which raises lots of questions, above and beyond the "he-said-she-said" disagreements of fact.

For instance:

Gloria Runs Close To Lodge-Goggles said it was a great honor when she was chosen to keep the Calico Winter Count and its translations. Her ancestor Black Shield documented a multitude of events, including when he acted as Lakota Chief Red Cloud’s interpreter during a diplomatic visit to Washington, D.C., in 1870.

Goggles stored the audio and written translations at the Oglala Lakota College for safekeeping, only to be accessed by students with the family’s permission.

Meya got access to them while attending the college in the 1990s — without Goggles’ knowledge, she said — and he soon began writing and lecturing on their contents. Meya said he received them with the permission of the college’s archivist.

In 1998, Meya donated copies of the winter count translations to the University of Washington as source material to receive a grant.

I don't know how institutional archives work. Is that sort of arrangement common, where material is submitted but only to be shared with express permission?

Also, I can see that the dictionary of the language should be freely available in electronic form to the community (and the wider public), but the specific lessons produced by the institute wouldn't automatically be.

A lot of this is obviously complicated by the clash between a culture with oral history and a culture with written history, copyright law, etc.

[Wahoo Redux]

UNC-Ashville Professor Fired After Online Sex Sting

Don't know if this fits the "cancelling Dr. Seuss" category exactly, but it is an interesting demonstration of vigilante justice and the power of the Internet.  The actual YouTube "sting" is embedded.

George Heard, an inorganic and computational chemistry professor at UNC Asheville, is apparently the man featured in the sting video published by “Dads Against Predators – South Carolina.”

The video claims that Heard showed up at a mall to meet with a 14-year-old boy which he had met and been texting with using the social media app, Grindr. The video clip was posted late in the evening on Mar. 22 and has already been viewed over 25,000 times.

The students wasted no time in jumping on RMP:

https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=658777

[marshwiggle]

Felicia Sonmez fired by The Washington Post

The Washington Post has fired Felicia Sonmez for “insubordination” after the well-known reporter spent days publicly accusing fellow colleagues and leadership at the paper of fostering an environment unsupportive of female staffers.

Sonmez’s firing tops a whirlwind week for one of the nation’s most venerable media institutions, in which internal newsroom strife erupted into public view, affecting some of the most high-profile people on staff. It comes just days after the paper suspended a fellow reporter, Dave Weigel, for a month after he retweeted a crude joke about women.

Sonmez was highly critical of Weigel for the tweet, prompting Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee to put out a memo encouraging staff members to treat one another with respect and kindness, including on social media platforms, and reminding staff that criticizing fellow employees was a violation of company policies.

“We do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online,” the paper’s top editor said in a memo on Tuesday.

But the infighting continued from there. Another Post reporter, Jose A. Del Real, accused Sonmez of trying to publicly bully Weigel over a mistake for which he had apologized. Sonmez responded in kind: “When women stand up for themselves, some people respond with even more vitriol.”

In an interesting irony,

Sonmez continued to rail against the paper’s leadership from there, with lengthy threads arguing that it had done little to create an inclusive culture or protect reporters from internal and external harassment. The New York Times reported on Thursday that in its termination letter to Sonmez, Post leadership wrote that her conduct amounted to “insubordination, maligning your co-workers online and violating The Post’s standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity.”

[Wahoo Redux]

NBC News: James Patterson apologizes for saying white male writers face "racism"

[Langue_doc]

NYT article on "inclusive" terminology for pregnancy, breastfeeding, and related words:

Progressive groups and medical organizations have adopted inclusive language, which has led to terms like “pregnant people” and “chestfeeding.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/us/women-gender-aclu-abortion.html

Other reports on this trend:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-56372118
https://www.mamamia.com.au/gender-neutral-terms-mother-father/

[apl68]

NBC News: James Patterson apologizes for saying white male writers face "racism"

In an article published Sunday, The Sunday Times paraphrased Patterson as worrying “that it is hard for white men to get writing gigs in film, theatre, TV or publishing.”

The Sunday Times quoted Patterson as saying the alleged problem is “just another form of racism. What’s that all about?”

“Can you get a job? Yes. Is it harder? Yes. It’s even harder for older writers. You don’t meet many 52-year-old white males,” Patterson told the outlet.

Tuesday afternoon, Patterson shared an apology on Twitter.

“I apologize for saying white male writers having trouble finding work is a form of racism. I absolutely do not believe that racism is practiced against white writers,” he wrote. “Please know that I strongly support a diversity of voices being heard—in literature, in Hollywood, everywhere.”

If the bolded is all he actually said about the matter, then it sounds like they misquoted him pretty badly in their paraphrase.  The bolded looks like it might have been intended more as a complaint about ageism.  But he did have to put the "white" and "male" in there, and that's always inviting pushback whenever somebody is complaining about having a hard time getting consideration of any kind.

High-profile writing gigs and publications are like breaking into academia--it's hard for anybody to do, no matter how much "privilege" or "reverse-privilege" they allegedly have.  That's part of the reason why so many of all colors, ethnicities, and genders seem so prone to feel that "others," whoever they may be, have some unfair advantage. 

The statistics cited in the last paragraph do indicate that white writers still don't really have anything to complain about in terms of "discrimination" in their particular profession.

[Wahoo Redux]

Cleveland Officer of the Year Under Investigation for Over Alleged Antisemitic Social Media Posts

Cleveland Division of Police officer Ismail Quran was moved to administrative duties pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation.

A Cleveland police officer who was once recognized as officer of the year is under investigation after he was accused of glorifying Adolf Hitler and spreading antisemitism in old social media posts that have resurfaced.

<snip>

The alleged social media posts were dug up by Canary Mission, which documents people and organizations that spread hatred against Jewish people. Quran either deleted the posts — which date back to 2012 — or made them private.

[apl68]

Cleveland Officer of the Year Under Investigation for Over Alleged Antisemitic Social Media Posts

Cleveland Division of Police officer Ismail Quran was moved to administrative duties pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation.

A Cleveland police officer who was once recognized as officer of the year is under investigation after he was accused of glorifying Adolf Hitler and spreading antisemitism in old social media posts that have resurfaced.

<snip>

The alleged social media posts were dug up by Canary Mission, which documents people and organizations that spread hatred against Jewish people. Quran either deleted the posts — which date back to 2012 — or made them private.

Well, if it's a whole ten years ago, and there's been nothing to cause concern more recently than that...people do change, and have things left behind that they regret.  I don't blame them from being concerned about a history like that, though.  His record needs to be checked out.

[Wahoo Redux]

This guy sure seems like a jackass and brings his problems on himself.  It will be interesting to see what happens to him.

Canadian Professor Ripped After Trying to Mask-Shame Flight Attendant in Unhinged Twitter Rant.

On a side note, I am always interested when professors are publicly called out for their behavior.  Would this jerk be called out in this manner if he were a barber or used car salesman?

[Wahoo Redux]

Yup, here's the flip side of cancel culture

ProPublica: The Other Cancel Culture: How a Public University Is Bowing to a Conservative Crusade

With a rising national profile and donor base and relatively little state funding, Boise State University should be able to resist pressure by the Idaho Legislature. Instead the university, led by a liberal transplant, has repeatedly capitulated.

The convocation was to be virtual, because of the pandemic. Fillmore put on beaded Native American jewelry and recorded an eight-minute video on her phone. She began by naming the “rightful owners of this land,” the Boise Valley Indigenous tribes, and then described her own “complicated” background. Her father was Hunkpapa Lakota, her mother white. “I can trace eight generations of my Lakota ancestors being removed from the land of their lifeblood to the reservation, just as I can trace seven generations of Norwegian and English ancestors taking that land,” she said.

<snip>

Across the country, elected officials in red states are seeking to impose their political views on public universities. Even as they decry liberal cancel culture, they’re leveraging the threat of budget cuts to scale back diversity initiatives, sanitize the teaching of American history and interfere with university policies and appointments.

[marshwiggle]

Across the country, elected officials in red states are seeking to impose their political views on public universities. Even as they decry liberal cancel culture, they’re leveraging the threat of budget cuts to scale back diversity initiatives, sanitize the teaching of American history and interfere with university policies and appointments.

It's pretty clear that people from both sides who engage in "cancel culture" are more driven by the desire to promote their own ideology than anything else; otherwise they could band together with people from the other side to support freedom of speech for everyone.

(In other words, if they really felt they were just responding in kind to threats to free speech from the other side, then they should be able to negotiate some sort of mutually acceptable policy of defending free speech.)