Cancelling Dr. Seuss

[Caracal]

Slippery slope to what?

To flagrantly dishonest types like you running things.

I think you're safe from that. Can we go easy on the invective?

[Wahoo Redux]

Slippery slope to what?

I thought it was apparent, but maybe not.

I happily concede your points about employers which I have already alluded to several times---so no need to dredge it up again.  I also happily concede that these are terrible people with real problems----so no need to dredge that up again.

My issue is that we have entered a period of time in which people are being punished for speech and expressed beliefs.

I would think that the problem with this is fairly obvious.

I should say that this is not a black or white issue (no play on words) and I don't know what a happy medium is.

The slope should also be fairly obvious: where does it end?  Some of these people lost their jobs for off-the-job comments; some for poorly thought-out asides; some for simply expressing an opinion; some for misspeaks or mistakes; some for poorly worded phrases; some for exercising free-speech; some for private social media posts made public; some for losing their tempers; and, sure, some for being truly nasty human beings with execrable beliefs.

This strikes me both as problematic and part and parcel of the phenomenon we are seeing that produced voters who think Donald Trump is a great guy.

[mahagonny]

Slippery slope to what?

To flagrantly dishonest types like you running things.

I think you're safe from that. Can we go easy on the invective?

Do I actually have to explain? Read the thread again. You claimed that there is not a widespread phenomenon  of people being fired for saying things that someone states makes him or her feel uncomfortable. After a mountain of examples was provided to show that you are wrong, you don't have the sense to desist. Now your tack is 'yeah, but....even though I lied and it is in fact happening, it doesn't matter because of something else.' I hope you get fired by someone who ' might be overreacting' to something you said in a private conversation or when you're socializing away from the workplace.
We are not safe from dishonest people having wide influence. That's what the mania and denial of it are. And what the conversation is about out there in the world apart from your bubble.

[Caracal]

Slippery slope to what?

To flagrantly dishonest types like you running things.

I think you're safe from that. Can we go easy on the invective?

Do I actually have to explain? Read the thread again. You claimed that there is not a widespread phenomenon  of people being fired for saying things that someone states makes him or her feel uncomfortable. After a mountain of examples was provided to show that you are wrong, you don't have the sense to desist. Now your tack is 'yeah, but....even though I lied and it is in fact happening, it doesn't matter because of something else.'

Believe it or not, I don't think that a bunch of random news stories turned up using google constitute compelling evidence of some widespread trend. Bear with me here, but it might reflect the things journalists and editors are interested in and what they think other people are interested in. Crazy idea, I know.

It's funny, the people on these boards who go in for the personal attacks and overheated rhetoric on here (I don't mean Wahoo, who I often disagree with but is perfectly pleasant) seem to really lose it not when people disagree with them, but when they are faced with some mild skepticism.

[Wahoo Redux]

No need to wreck the train, folks.

Yes, this is a trend, Caracal, as evidenced by a very simple search on Google, and evidenced by the public interest in the story----if editors are pushing these stories it means people are excited the subject matter.  And read this thread.

Look, there is no simple answer here.  I don't want to work with any of the people I linked to, and (as I've said) I don't feel a bit sorry for them.

But come on, you have to admit there is something pretty alarming about corporate and governmental entities policing what we say and about our willingness to pillory people we disagree with, no matter how terrible their beliefs.

[Caracal]

No need to wreck the train, folks.

Yes, this is a trend, Caracal, as evidenced by a very simple search on Google, and evidenced by the public interest in the story----if editors are pushing these stories it means people are excited the subject matter.  And read this thread.

Look, there is no simple answer here.  I don't want to work with any of the people I linked to, and (as I've said) I don't feel a bit sorry for them.

But come on, you have to admit there is something pretty alarming about corporate and governmental entities policing what we say and about our willingness to pillory people we disagree with, no matter how terrible their beliefs.

'
Remember the black church burnings in the late 90s? It was a whole thing, every time another church burned it was added to the list and drove the story. The problem was that churches burn down a lot. They are empty, nobody lives in them. That causes more of them to burn accidentally, and it also makes them a convenient target for arsonists of various sorts. It turned out there was no epidemic of church burnings. It was just that these were stories getting a lot of press.

So I dunno. Are more people getting fired now for speech? Maybe in some areas? Is it really some thing that has become particularly common? I'm pretty skeptical and I don't think news stories are a good metric for measuring it.

[Wahoo Redux]

Actually no, I don't remember the church burnings.

I'd say this is considerably more pronounced than that.

What would be a good metric in this context?

[Caracal]

Actually no, I don't remember the church burnings.

I'd say this is considerably more pronounced than that.

What would be a good metric in this context?

I don't know, out of my expertise. Probably something for the social scientists. I'm a historian and I tend to think you don't want to assume that just because there's more reporting on something means it is happening more. It's like crime. Sometimes media focus on crime has been partly driven by actual increasing crime rates. However, at other times there has been lots of focus on the supposed increasing danger from crime even when it isn't actually rising. Sometimes that's because crime becomes linked to other fears and anxieties. It can also be linked to media dynamics. Often it is both.

Regardless, I also just think too many things get scrunched together in these discussions. Police officers being fired for racist statements seems like a very different issue than food service workers.

[Wahoo Redux]

See, I would say that police officers being fired for saying the wrong thing and food service workers getting fired for saying the wrong thing are different in degree but not in kind. 

They are both part of a dangerous trend in our culture to overtly punish people for thinking the "wrong" thing.  Very undemocratic.

I could get fired from some of the things posted on the anonymous message board, so could Mahagony.

You would be pilloried by, say, a Tucker Carlson for your views. 

This, I would suggest, is bound up with our need to censor something like Dr. Seuss, even if I understand and even agree with the reasons I would not want my hypothetical kids to read some of the thinks Giles may have written.

[Caracal]

See, I would say that police officers being fired for saying the wrong thing and food service workers getting fired for saying the wrong thing are different in degree but not in kind. 

They are both part of a dangerous trend in our culture to overtly punish people for thinking the "wrong" thing.  Very undemocratic.

I could get fired from some of the things posted on the anonymous message board, so could Mahagony.

You would be pilloried by, say, a Tucker Carlson for your views. 

This, I would suggest, is bound up with our need to censor something like Dr. Seuss, even if I understand and even agree with the reasons I would not want my hypothetical kids to read some of the thinks Giles may have written.

None of these police officers got fired because they didn't agree with the BLM movement. These were people writing overtly anti-semitic and racist statements on social media. Do you really think that those are people who should be empowered by the state to enforce laws, with violence and force if necessary? It's only possible to think this is just about speech rights if you don't imagine yourself as being the potential target of a racist or anti semitic police officer.

[Parasaurolophus]

See, I would say that police officers being fired for saying the wrong thing and food service workers getting fired for saying the wrong thing are different in degree but not in kind. 

They are both part of a dangerous trend in our culture to overtly punish people for thinking the "wrong" thing.  Very undemocratic.

I could get fired from some of the things posted on the anonymous message board, so could Mahagony.

You would be pilloried by, say, a Tucker Carlson for your views. 

This, I would suggest, is bound up with our need to censor something like Dr. Seuss, even if I understand and even agree with the reasons I would not want my hypothetical kids to read some of the thinks Giles may have written.

None of these police officers got fired because they didn't agree with the BLM movement. These were people writing overtly anti-semitic and racist statements on social media. Do you really think that those are people who should be empowered by the state to enforce laws, with violence and force if necessary? It's only possible to think this is just about speech rights if you don't imagine yourself as being the potential target of a racist or anti semitic police officer.

Conversely, at least one cop has been fired for social media posts supportive of BLM.

[Wahoo Redux]

Do you really think that those are people who should be empowered by the state to enforce laws, with violence and force if necessary? It's only possible to think this is just about speech rights if you don't imagine yourself as being the potential target of a racist or anti semitic police officer.

Do you really want the state to dictate what you and I can or cannot say?  It's only possible to think this if you don't imagine yourself as being the potential target of a censorious government or culture.

I understand and I acknowledge your reasoning, Caracal, but you clearly believe you know what people should be allowed to say and why.  Very, very dangerous.

Their rights to be @zz holes guarantees our rights to be @zz holes.  Don't think it is a sword with only one sharp side.  From Parasaurolophus' link:

A Massachusetts detective has been fired over a social media post last month expressing support of her niece attending a Black Lives Matter rally.

According to a report from MassLive.com, Florissa Fuentes, who had recently joined the Springfield Police Department's Special Victims Unit, was fired on June 19 after a May post she made while not on duty.

"After I posted it, I started getting calls and texts from co-workers," Florissa Fuentes told MassLive.com.


Fuentes says she removed the Instagram post on June 1 and that she received a call from the head of the Detective Bureau, who said the police commissioner was upset with her.

"I was initially confused, but then I realized they thought I was being anti-cop. I wasn't," Fuentes told the news outlet. "I was just supporting my niece's activism. I had no malicious intent, and I wouldn't put a target on my own back. I'm out there on the streets every day like everyone else."

The photo that Fuentes shared was reportedly from protests that happened after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day.

[Parasaurolophus]

To be clear, I'm with Caracal here. It's just that to the extent the problem does exist--and I think it's fairly limited--the media narrative has the wrong end of the goat here.

[kaysixteen]

Since it has been, oh, well about 45 years since I have read/ looked at a Seuss book, I am wondering if anyone has any links to the images that have been denounced as racist, and caused the Seuss estate to withdraw publication?

That said, however racist or offensive these images may be/ have been, there is something that is crossing my mind-- in the fulness of time, likely very much sooner rather than later, these titles will enter the public domain, and the Seuss estate's actions more or less guarantee that someone will reprint them.   And that someone will not likely be someone we like.

[marshwiggle]

Do you really think that those are people who should be empowered by the state to enforce laws, with violence and force if necessary? It's only possible to think this is just about speech rights if you don't imagine yourself as being the potential target of a racist or anti semitic police officer.

Do you really want the state to dictate what you and I can or cannot say?  It's only possible to think this if you don't imagine yourself as being the potential target of a censorious government or culture.

I understand and I acknowledge your reasoning, Caracal, but you clearly believe you know what people should be allowed to say and why.  Very, very dangerous.

Consider this scenario.

When I get class lists, I can view them with or without information about what program each student is in. For years, I have avoided looking at that information to avoid any potential unconscious bias on my part; for instance, favouring students in the major over others. Suppose that after a course is over, and grades have been submitted, I decide to view that information and it turns out that all of the students in the Spoonbending program wound up in the bottom 20% of my class. I pass this information on to the chair, and possibly our academic advisor, and possibly even the chair of the Spoonbending department so that we can figure out if there's something going on that we can improve. If this information gets out into the wild, Spoonbending students see it, and get it written up in the student newspaper about the discrimination against Spoonbending students in my Basketweaving course. They call for my apology, or preferably firing. ("Because I said Spoonbending students were stupid".)

Should I be required to apologize? Should I be fired? (If so, what was my offense?) What if Spoonbending takes in a higher percentage of some identifiable group than Basketweaving?

In our current climate, increasingly people are being fired because someone felt hurt; not because of what the people actually did.