Monthly Archives: April 2019

You probably remember that back in January the video of some white kids confronting a Native American went viral. In the ensuing debate, someone said on Twitter that the kids were only in hot water because they’d been caught on video — and seriously, how many of us wouldn’t be in trouble if our teen years had been videorecorded?

I’m not interested in writing about the incident itself here, but about that assumption. Because it’s simultaneously reasonable and not so reasonable.

It’s reasonable because for most of us it’s true. We’ve probably all said and done things that would embarrass us if they went viral tomorrow. Some of my jokes, in hindsight, were quite inappropriate for work; the coworkers I joked too would have been entitled to complain if she’d wanted. I would hate it if this wound up being shared on YouTube or Twitter as proof of what a horrible jerk I must be.

And I’d also have to live with the knowledge that lots of people have said much worse jokes (or threats. Or come-ons) and get away with it because the interaction wasn’t caught on video, and nobody filed a complaint or went public. If it were me, that would sting too.

But “everyone was doing it, the others just didn’t get caught” shouldn’t be a get out of jail free card. That was the standard defense of Nixon among my Republican friends in high school, that all the politicians did what he did, they just weren’t caught. Even if that were true (and I believe Nixon was an extreme case by the standards of the time), that would be an argument for restricting presidential power in some fashion, not just letting people get off scot-free. After all, you could say the same thing about any murderer, burglar or rapist — lots of people did the same thing and weren’t caught! Why should this guy suffer? Heck, that is what people say about rapists, all the time: boys will be boys, it’s just horseplay, a little sexual assault when you’re young shouldn’t affect your future.

Or consider some of the coverage of the Steubenville rape case, in which one news station described two students raping a passed-out classmate as “a cautionary tale” about the modern “digital world,” as if the big issue was the rapists discussing their actions on social media, not that they’d raped a passed-out classmate.

Then there’s the question of how something fits into the person’s entire life. If someone Tweets something offensive or does something wrong but they’ve had a stellar record otherwise (I don’t mean just that they’re important or rich, but that they’ve shown themselves otherwise good or moral), does that one wrong thing erase the good stuff? Is it something they deserve to lose jobs for or a mistake we should forgive? Again, the answer is “it depends.” Just how bad was the offense? Was it in fact a one-off or part of a pattern? Were they young and stupid or old enough to know better? If it was bad, have they worked to redeem themselves?

In short, there’s a definite dividing in between “stuff we should be forgiving about, even if it’s caught on video/captured in Tweets” and “stuff that is unacceptable, even if it’s common.” I don’t know where exactly to draw it, though rape and harassment fall solidly on the unacceptable side of the tracks (and if you commit rape or assault as a teen, you . Perhaps I’ll eventually have a grand theory, perhaps it’ll always be case-by-case.

But “we’ve all done stuff we wouldn’t want caught on video,” while a fair point, definitely does not resolve the argument.

In many cases, where dealing with right-wing hatemongers, the link is not direct. I don’t like giving them the clicks.

“This is exactly the reason why lynching used to exist.”

“In its most extreme form, this idea of ‘ignore them and let’s hope they just go away’ twists itself into a time-traveling logic that reverses cause and effect, blaming critics of hateful demagogues for those demagogues’ very existence.”

“If women dress the way Powell wants them to, will they attract men like him? Because that argument isn’t as effective as he seems to think it is.”

“So if Trump intended to commit a crime but was thwarted, it wasn’t a crime. And if committed what could be regarded as a crime but didn’t intend it as a crime, it wasn’t a crime.”

“It made clear that won’t include vendors that work with candidates challenging incumbent Democrats.”

“It’s really quite remarkable to see an entire country crumble under such a comic confidence game, perpetrated by a world-class clown”

“Demand not only the production of renewable energy, but the ethical production of that energy.”

“I understand and to some extent endorse the point that Trump’s policy is just Republican policy on steroids, but those steroids are really making it worse,”

“The N.R.A. has been looted to the point of near financial collapse by the very people who are, in theory, supposed to be making it a successful enterprise.”

“In the white evangelical subculture in 2019, the fringe is larger, louder, and more influential than the former ‘mainstream.'”

“Sure, no one’s mass-murdering [conservatives] — over here, that seems to only happen to schoolkids and black people and victims of gun fetishists — but liberals are insufficiently respectful of them, and try to make them bake wedding cakes for homosexuals, which is just as bad.”

“Mike Huckabee blamed the existence of transgender people on the Christian church not doing enough to teach a ‘biblical standard of maleness and femaleness.'”

“To truly stop these treasonous acts, it’s going to take executing some of these people,” i.e., people who question Donald Trump, America’s god-appointed savior.

“Arendt’s warning that an expansionist Israel would never realise the dream of Herzl and the founders, and become a ‘normal’ state, has lost its charge because its abnormality is the new normal.”

“Fox wants advertisers to believe that it isn’t what it actually is — a channel that feeds paranoia and rage to bubble-dwelling liberal-haters all day and night.”

“I mean that conspiracy theorizing today dispenses with the burden of explanation. In fact, sometimes, as in Pizzagate, there’s absolutely nothing that needs to be explained, and there’s no real demand for truth or facts. There are no actual dots that need to be connected to form a pattern.”

“Brown says that opponents of marriage equality ‘are not out campaigning against gays and lesbians for ‘who they are’’ and that his cause is ‘not condemning homosexuals, it’s upholding marriage.'”

“I think a lot of Republicans are making a mistake picking on her. I think we need to be very prepared when we debate her on issues that we’re having a hard time with.”

“While advocating realistic and Christian migration policies, the Church must not forget that the most important migration is that of souls into heaven. ”

“Wait, what? The hippies forced Catholic priests to rape children?”

“While Gov. Edwards said he didn’t know what Matthews’ alleged motive was, ‘it cannot be justified or rationalized. It was an evil act.'”

“President Trump’s older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has retired as a federal appellate judge, ending an investigation into whether she violated judicial conduct rules by participating in fraudulent tax schemes with her siblings.”

“Four hundred dead in multiple bombings, the wrong phrase used in a tweet — yup, pretty much the same level of evil.”