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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm aware of the Taibbi accusations. I read about them when they came out.

I know that there are other issues about other things he said. Focus the specific way that he treated a specific reporter. From her article, there's not a lot of room for doubt that he did what she says he did. He set her up, and lied about her in a way designed to belittle and damage her. Not for laughs. Why are you trying to diminish what he did?

Why? On the other side, the #metoo side, they were all lumped together. Recall Aziz Ansari being thrown in with Weinstein and Moonves just for being a shitty, borderline creepy date?

So fucking what? I'm sure a bunch of morons said dumb stuff on Twitter this morning, but I'm not pretending that you are somehow responsible for what they said.

Taibbi has been accused of making fun of fellow reporters who were females. He's been accused of running a column called "Fat Ankles" that made fun of a critic. His co-author was accused of writing a tasteless column satirically bragging about sleeping with 15 year olds.

Was he punching down? Sure. But that's just juvenile horseshit better ignored than made the subject of a witch hunt. Journalists are notorious for treating each other terribly.

That's great. I'm delighted to hear that he acted terribly in ways other than the one I was talking about. But so what? Why don't you respond to the thing I'm talking about instead of changing the subject?

If I edited the Guardian, I wouldn't bring up his past given the weakness and thinness of the alleged transgressions. There's simply not much there there, and I noticed the Post article worked hard to try to make it seem there was a lot more to the story. That's pretty much the Post's calling card these days. It's the biggest abuser of clickbait of the big three papers, as transparent in its slanting of reporting as the WSJ is in its OpEd pages.

It was a first-hand account by the person he treated poorly, and maybe you should read it before you minimize it. He published lies about her.

That's a bizarre assessment. You'd think Taibbi would want to avoid having a debate on his past as it could put him at risk. By taking shots at call out and cancel culture he's putting himself in the dock. The more likely conclusion is he truly believes cancel culture is toxic grievance porn that's ruining the public square. And degrading the limited intellect of the public that consumes it (and those that enjoy it have few points to spare). Which it is.

It's not either/or. In the same way that many of the people who signed the Harper's letter were accused of doing so in order to downplay or evade responsibility for things they have said and done, it's entirely possible that Taibbi sincerely believes that there is a "cancel culture" on the left and that no one else should pay attention to those people. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that discrediting "cancel culture" in that way also minimizes the bad stuff he's done. Or perhaps it's no coincidence at all, and Taibbi is complaining about "cancel culture" to play the victim. But if the Guardian doesn't give its reader more context, it's not informing them.

To further discount your point, consider Andrew Sullivan's critiques of cancel culture. He's milqueoast. He's written nothing that could get him cancelled.

Oh, you naive, oblivious person.

Your suspicion regarding Taibbi makes no sense.

I'm also still perplexed by your deeply strange moral stance. You also wrote the Taibbi should "own" his past. What does that verb, frequently used by social justice aficionados, mean? Seems to be a desire for some form of justice - that Newton's 3rd law should apply and no person having been mean or bad should escape it being revisiting upon him or her. Cotton Mather would like this idea. It's perfectly Puritan... and perfectly at odds with the randomness of reality, in which people acquire all sorts of things without deserving them and scoundrels get away with being scoundrels far more often than they face adverse circumstances.

In short, I think he's an asshole and his inability to apologize for behaving poorly shows it. If he wants to play the victim of "cancel culture," the context of his past is obviously relevant. Did I say anything about "justice"? No.

And you're confused about Puritans.