Patterico's Pontifications

3/7/2021

Constitutional Vanguard: NYT Reporter Fired for Using the N-Word Explains Himself

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 3:04 pm



Today’s missive is a bit shorter than usual and chock-full of quotes. It’s basically an ad for the Medium posts by fired New York Times reporter Donald McNeil about his firing. It’s fairly infuriating, as you might expect.

My takeaway is even firmer now that this guy was screwed by a bunch of hyperwoke millennials. We might have assumed that when kids who absorbed this sickening ideology left college, the reality of the workplace would transform them into sensible people with common sense. Instead, they are transforming workplaces into hyperwoke versions of the insanity we see on campuses. The utter unreasonableness of their New Ethic is going to transform society. It’s already starting.

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20 Responses to “Constitutional Vanguard: NYT Reporter Fired for Using the N-Word Explains Himself”

  1. The old people who still read printed newspapers are not going to be OK with this. Eventually it will infest the crossword and then the NYT is done.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  2. Alternative take: The crocodile is already turning on its “keepers”.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  3. We might have assumed that when kids who absorbed this sickening ideology left college, the reality of the workplace would transform them into sensible people with common sense.

    Colleges have been the indoctrination centers of the left-liberal elites for at least 60 years, if not longer. Look how easily their leaders gave in to the New Left Boomer college students during the 60s and 70s.

    Instead, they are transforming workplaces into hyperwoke versions of the insanity we see on campuses. The utter unreasonableness of their New Ethic is going to transform society. It’s already starting.

    Yep. Saw this coming two decades ago in grad school, a little over a decade after Peggy McIntosh introduced intellectual cancer the academic field with her essay on “white privilege.” While the US outside college campuses in the late 90s was on the edge of evolving into something resembling a post-racial society, “whiteness studies” had begun insinuating itself into the academic mainstream, as it provided opportunities for “new research,” the perpetual obsession of that industry. The 2000 election debacle, 9/11 and the subsequent security state, the Iraq War, the Great Recession, and Obama’s election put the pieces in place of an increasingly radicalized professoriate, as far-left Gen-Xers and even farther left Millennials began taking the spots of their New Left Boomer forebears as the latter retired. Academia is little more than a giant sociological purity spiral now.

    It’s also the result of democratizing college. When college was largely reserved for the truly intellectually capable, communist-symp ideologies remained the fringe beliefs of a few eccentric professors, and a college degree was a status symbol of the elite. Since the end of World War II, the goal of the educational-industrial complex has been to try and cram every single high school student into college so they can get a degree and have a better shot at gaining elite status of their own. Leaving aside the fact that when everyone is “elite,” no one is elite–and the larger socio-economic problems that causes–when you try and include as many people as possible in an institution, inevitably, they will demand that their own interests and experiences be given special consideration. This is why “woke” ideology is rooted in the last 25-plus years of intersectional academic studies on college campuses.

    There’s no real fix for this because these people are a modern People’s Liberation Army, today’s Cultural Revolution. The radicals and protestors of the 60s were fascinated with Maoist social control mechanisms used by the PLA’s enforcement brigade of Chinese college students, and we’re seeing the fruits of that very poisonous tree today. It’s not an accident that left-wing shibboleths like “restorative justice,” and government agencies such as Sandia Labs forcing workers to confess the sins of their whiteness, resemble the struggle sessions of that era.

    Factory Working Orphan (f916e7)

  4. Just don’t submit. Justice Thomas called it a “digital lynch mob” and he was exactly right. Destroy them back.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  5. Most of the time, I’m on the “don’t be like them” side of things, but this is now a war, and gentlemen DO read other gentlemen’s mail in wartime.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  6. Anyone can be come a teacher. Since joe mccarty they have tried to regulate liberal/leftist thought ‘but these are the type of people attracted to teaching. Back in the 1960’s Mario savio and the berkeley free speech movement which was not about obscene words but defense contractors on campus. My prolessor morris starsky was fired at asu (thats arizona state football 7 party school) for anti-war activities. Other professors and teachers have been fired from kent state shootings to the professor from colorado. What goes around comes around. Political correctness and intolerance are ways of striking back.

    asset (f610e1)

  7. @3, I work for a large company and it looks nothing like the hellscape you describe.

    Time123 (b4d075)

  8. Back in the 1960’s Mario savio and the berkeley free speech movement which was not about obscene words but defense contractors on campus. My prolessor morris starsky was fired at asu (thats arizona state football 7 party school) for anti-war activities. Other professors and teachers have been fired from kent state shootings to the professor from colorado.

    What you wrote here only confirms what I wrote earlier–that these ideologies were held largely by a bunch of fringe eccentrics rather than the mainstream professoriate, and only became the dominant ideology after the New Left Boomers started taking over those jobs in academia.

    Starsky got fired because the prevailing sentiment back then was that colleges needed to teach content that reflected the views of the community–and at the time, Tempe specifically and the East Valley in general, like a lot of post-war suburbs, was dominated by Republican-voting, white collar professionals. Savio didn’t even become a professor until well after Berkeley, and Ward Churchill–the “professor from Colorado” you refer to–operated amongst a claque of notoriously race-appropriating white leftists in the Denver metro area (Glenn Morris of Denver University is the other big name in that group. This piece of work can’t even confirm his Native ancestry other than through Elizabeth Warren-type innuendo, but he’s been running this grift for so long now that no one at DU is going to call him out on it), who have been part and parcel of pushing this race-based grievance model of academic thought since the late 60s. Churchill also claimed to have been some kind of pipe-hitting commando in the military, but his records show that he was nothing more than a services troop.

    Read Bryan Burrough’s book “Days of Rage,” and it’s easy to see that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the screeds that the Weather Underground wrote, and what you can find in an average social science or humanities college course these days. Or what’s being pushed by race hucksters like Tim Wise, who actively promote an ideology that specifically and maliciously targets white people. Wise’s livelihood specifically focuses on speeches at college campuses, because he knows this is fertile ground for the new Woke Religion, even though he lives in one of the whitest neighborhoods in Nashville.

    Factory Working Orphan (f916e7)

  9. @3, I work for a large company and it looks nothing like the hellscape you describe.

    Time123 (b4d075) — 3/8/2021 @ 6:01 am

    When did I mention “large companies” in that post?

    Factory Working Orphan (f916e7)

  10. @9 you didn’t. But this part Instead, they are transforming workplaces into hyperwoke versions of the insanity we see on campuses. The utter unreasonableness of their New Ethic is going to transform society. It’s already starting. hasn’t hit where I work yet.

    There have been some changes. The first factory I worked in commonly had pornography on the production floor. That doesn’t happen any more. The managers who ignored female employees unless they flirted have all moved on and it’s been 15 years since anyone suggested to me that the root cause of a technical problem might be the race of person who worked on it. People still talk politics in the office. I think it’s less common but I never found it that common. I know on the sales side they’re a little more focused on woke culture / being inclusive. But when those conversations happen the purchasing power of non-white households is part of the discussion. It’s not the only part. But it’s clear that we want to bring in those consumers.

    I’m not trying to argue that my experience is representative, just offering it up.

    Time123 (b4d075)

  11. Intent. The problem with this journalist’s situation is that there was no clear intent to offend. He used the N-word in a discussion about using the N-word. This is far removed from Eagle’s receiver Riley Cooper’s drunken tirade use of the word….and intent and context have to matter. Here, the reporter was attempting to have an adult conversation. The same with cultural appropriation.

    But this reminds me of the recent brush up at Creighton with its basketball coach twice using the word “plantation”, trying to emphasize that the players had to stay on the same page. Now I can see how that could be offensive, but was his intent to disparage the athletes or did he simply make a bone-headed reference? Would your first instinct be to embarrass your coach and take it to the media….or would it be to go to his office and respectfully tell him that it was an inappropriate reference that he should reconsider? The coach has since been suspended with other remedies being considered. The basketball players made a video highlighting the “outrage”. Really? This is snow-flake-ism to the highest degree. We’re losing touch with fundamental fairness and sense of proportion. The reporter should not have been fired…the Creighton coach should not have been suspended (absent other examples of conduct).

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  12. Intent. The problem with this journalist’s situation is that there was no clear intent to offend. He used the N-word in a discussion about using the N-word. This is far removed from Eagle’s receiver Riley Cooper’s drunken tirade use of the word….and intent and context have to matter. Here, the reporter was attempting to have an adult conversation. The same with cultural appropriation.

    But this reminds me of the recent brush up at Creighton with its basketball coach twice using the word “plantation”, trying to emphasize that the players had to stay on the same page. Now I can see how that could be offensive, but was his intent to disparage the athletes or did he simply make a bone-headed reference? Would your first instinct be to embarrass your coach and take it to the media….or would it be to go to his office and respectfully tell him that it was an inappropriate reference that he should reconsider? The coach has since been suspended with other remedies being considered. The basketball players made a video highlighting the “outrage”. Really? This is snow-flake-ism to the highest degree. We’re losing touch with fundamental fairness and sense of proportion. The reporter should not have been fired…the Creighton coach should not have been suspended (absent other examples of conduct).

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74) — 3/8/2021 @ 10:47 am

    I agree, intent and tone and reasonable interpretation based on context all matter. What I mean, and what you hear are two different things. If I’m at work when i say it my boss may have to make the call based on what they think I should reasonably have thought you would hear.

    Time123 (36651d)

  13. My takeaway is even firmer now that this guy was screwed by a bunch of hyperwoke millennials. We might have assumed that when kids who absorbed this sickening ideology left college, the reality of the workplace would transform them into sensible people with common sense. Instead, they are transforming workplaces into hyperwoke versions of the insanity we see on campuses. The utter unreasonableness of their New Ethic is going to transform society. It’s already starting.

    “The New Ethic” :

    “I said, why do we have to tell the people what they need to hear? Why can’t we just tell them what they want to hear?” – Ron Burgundy [Will Ferrell] ‘Anchorman 2- The Legend Continues’ 2013

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  14. @8 So you say they won? You are right arizona was fascistic back then and still some what to day. But 100 latinx turning 18 every day (130 a day if you count dreamers) is turning red arizona blue! I remember gov. jack williams threatening to arrest caesar chavez and republican legislature passing anti farm workers laws. then we had mecham the nazi. Finally jan “janbo” brewer.

    asset (20df0a)

  15. You are right arizona was fascistic back then

    “Anything I don’t like is fascist.”

    But 100 latinx turning 18 every day

    Being someone who’s actually descended from Indo-Hispanic Colorado beet-pickers, I find that term to be hilariously pretentious.

    Factory Working Orphan (f916e7)

  16. Beet pickers? I thought the correct term was beet diggers.

    The mascot of Jordan High School in Utah is Beetdiggers.

    norcal (72c45c)

  17. Beet pickers? I thought the correct term was beet diggers.

    I doubt my great-grandparents really cared about the semantics.

    Factory Working Orphan (f916e7)

  18. Trabajadores temporales.

    nk (1d9030)

  19. Grievance culture isn’t going to go away soon and it isn’t just political and/or on the left. Oh no, Biden called people Neaderthals (which he didn’t do). My son’s teacher called him an idiot (no, he said the class was acting idiotic). The history teacher said that Trump lost the election!!!!! WHY ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT THE ELECTION (in a US history class, right after the election)??!!?

    It was popular a few years ago it was popular to call liberals snowflakes. In my experience a large number of snowflakes exist in this country and it has very little to do with political affiliation.

    Nic (896fdf)

  20. (er sorry about the syntax weirdness, no edit button)

    Nic (896fdf)


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