March 1, 2021

"It’s been quite baffling and painful for me to have people assume I’m a racist and believe that I said the ridiculous things I’m accused of saying..."

"... that 'racism is over,' that 'white supremacy doesn’t exist,' or 'white privilege doesn’t exist,' or that I defended the use of blackface or said horrible things about black teenagers in general. I’m surprised by how quick some colleagues who barely know me were prepared to accept those accusations and even add more on a Times alumni Facebook page. Someone to whom I don’t think I’ve spoken since 1994 said 'calling him only a racist is being nice.' An editor I happily worked side by side with in 1989 and have had brief but cordial chats with maybe once every ten years when we bump into each other on the street said I seemed 'dismissive of people of color and their views' back then. Someone I thought I’d been very nice to when she left the paper attacked me for using the expression 'third world' in a story that was, as always, approved by several Times editors.... My girlfriend thinks I have a high-functioning Asperger aspect to my personality — I’m empathic about suffering but I also very much misread audiences.... [W]hat’s happened to me has been called a 'witch hunt.' It isn’t. It’s a series of misunderstandings and blunders. I may be the only living Times reporter who has actually covered a witch hunt — in Zimbabwe in 1997. They inevitably end worse for the accused. I’m at least getting my say."

From "NYTimes Peru N-Word, Part One: Introduction" by Donald McNeil (Medium). Interesting how he chooses to play the disability card with that "high-functioning Asperger aspect to my personality." I wonder how much of what the wokesters call "whiteness" (and maleness) could be repackaged as "high-functioning Aspergers" and received with some empathy as part of the rainbow of diversity. 

Here's the piece McNeil considers a story about a real witch hunt — "Zimbabwean Tribal Elders Air a Chief Complaint"

Chief Mabhena is the first woman to be a chief of the Ndebele tribe, and her nomination by her village caused a furor... ''A chief is a leader in war,'' said George Moyo, president of the Ndeb ele Cultural Society, ''and there are secrets of warriors, like tactics and intelezi, that a woman is not allowed to know.'' Intelezi is war medicine sprinkled on soldiers. Mr. Moyo, who lives in Bulawayo township 60 miles north of Nswazi, is a sangoma, or herbal doctor, and brewing intelezi is something he knows about.... Chief Mabhena says Mr. Moyo needs to realize that culture is dynamic and that the army, not chiefs, makes war nowadays....

183 comments:

wendybar said...

Racism is what the Progressives use to shut you up. We are all Racists and White Supremacists now...just because we think Progressivism is REGRESSIVE and dumb. Putting people in different boxes and then complaining when they try to step out of them. DUMB. HATEFUL. DIVISIVE.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

the left hide behind "everyone is a racist" because they are cheats and liars.

Gunner said...

In the old days, someone treated this badly by members of one political movement or party would switch to the opposing movement or party to get some kind of revenge. Yet liberals, no matter how betrayed, are incapable of doing this.

Achilles said...

Just replace white with jew and everything the left is doing makes sense.

Achilles said...

White male for bonus points.

Openidname said...

Wow. That Zimbabwe article is pretty racist. Because it's racist to portray Black people as believing in witches and "war medicine."

Achilles said...

It is interesting that members of the regime are openly talking about re-education camps on public tv and people still ask “do you really think they are planning to send people to re-education camps?”

Then you point out Coca-Cola’s try to be less white campaign.

Facebook and the other tech oligarchs apply labels to some speech and outright bans other speech.

The regime is moving much faster and much more aggressively than the Nazi’s did in the 1930’s.

Owen said...

Remarkable, how so many of McNeil’s former colleagues were able to summon decades-old memories of allegedly insensitive behavior and present it as gospel truth. But why should it surprise me? We had those witch hunts in the 80’s and 90’s over alleged abuse at child-care centers, where experts explained how 3- and 4-year-olds could be counted on for accurate eyewitness testimony about underground rooms full of cannibal clowns. And we have had decades now of #MeToo where complainants suddenly recover memories from 20 and 30 years ago, just in time to crucify some public figure with unimpeachable allegations.

So I guess this quality of corroborating evidence is more than good enough. But it bespeaks an attitude about “truth” that does not encourage me to buy their newspaper except for cleaning old paint brushes.

Gahrie said...

Wow. That Zimbabwe article is pretty racist. Because it's racist to portray Black people as believing in witches and "war medicine."

Maybe it's some type of holy water?

tim maguire said...

Let's count the claims, shall we?

1) I didn't do it! (It's quite baffling and painful! It's all just a big misunderstanding!)
2) I'm sorry for what I said (of course white supremacy is real! Mean people suck!)
3) I'm a victim too! (People are saying bad things about me!)
4) I'm a protected class! (I have a psychological condition!)

Nice work. How many bases could you cover in a couple hundred words?

Joe Smith said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rcocean said...

Well, he's so understanding about it. And so forgiving to those who betrayed him.

So, if its OK with McNeil, its Ok with me. No harm, no foul.

rcocean said...

Its not a witchhunt, and even it was, its OK with me, because I hate racism too.

Laughable. Frankly, this is Stalin destroying Trotsky and I find it hilarious! And these are the people who literally set the news agenda for 330 million people. All the Power elite from schumer/pelosi to the SCOTUS judges to althouse, read the NYT's and think they're A-OK 90% of the time.

Incredible!

Freder Frederson said...

It is interesting that members of the regime are openly talking about re-education camps on public tv and people

Please provide proof for this ridiculous assertion.

Just because you have repeatedly advocated killing lefties (which I guess is more severe than putting them in re-education camps) doesn't mean that I would claim that the Trump regime was advocating hanging its enemies from light poles.

rcocean said...

Reminds of Deberyshire when he was fired by National Review. "Derb" was so understanding and A-OK with being fired and called a racist, I couldn't get upset at National Review. I mean if the victim still loves the bully who am I to get upset on his behalf?

Michael K said...

Somebody finally understands what is going on.

Hilarious. A good laugh to get the juices flowing.

Gahrie said...

I've got him beat. I have Black friends that I have known for twenty years or more. Many I have both personal and professional relationships with. One of them I consider my best friend. These are people I've helped out both personally and professionally when they needed a friend.

This summer I was attacked and called a racist publicly. Not one of them came to my defense.

narciso said...

Crickets


https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-spencer/2021/02/28/henry-louis-gates-armenian-genocide-atrocities-exaggerated-because-islamophobia-n1428996

wild chicken said...

By God, he's earned the right to be a "racist" old crank and dispense with the liberal pieties. These kids are such pussies.

Old guys were always more interesting to me than the oh-so-earnest young.




Shouting Thomas said...

Racism is over, white supremacy doesn’t exist, and white privilege doesn’t exist.

Blackface is just theatrical makeup. Go ahead and use it.

Black teenage males are responsible for an extraordinary percentage of violent crime. That’s why so many of them find their way to jail.

Shouting Thomas said...

You can see in this madness why the urge to shout the “n-word” is so overwhelming.

The lying gets tiresome.

rcocean said...

"This summer I was attacked and called a racist publicly. Not one of them came to my defense."

Well, I guess some of your "best friends" weren't black after all.

Bob Boyd said...

"It’s been quite baffling and painful for me to have people assume I’m a racist"

Welcome to the club, cocksucker.

rcocean said...

"This summer I was attacked and called a racist publicly. Not one of them came to my defense."

Well, I guess some of your "best friends" weren't black after all.

rcocean said...

Thanks Dr. K.

That was funny. Little Fucking house on the praise.

tim maguire said...

Joe Smith said...I always joke that I am an idiot-savant with the emphasis on 'idiot' : ))

One of my favorite lines, from the otherwise forgettable "Career Girls": I'm not an idiot, I'm an idiot savant. I just haven't found my savant yet.

Joe Smith said...

The U.S. is the least racist country I have ever lived in/visited.

Maybe others who have travelled extensively can chime in...

Browndog said...

Remember during the Obama years when they started calling everything and everyone racist and people said well, if everything is racist then nothing is, so we don't give a fuck about being called racist anymore, we'll just ignore you so everyone just ignored them?

I can't believe we have to go through the "Oh no! they called me a racist---so what" cycle again.

Bob Boyd said...

This fuck is crying because he can't work at the NYT anymore. He misses being a part of a paper that spent the last several years pushing the narrative that half of Americans are racists, white supremacists and Neo-Nazis and that we need to be silenced, de-platformed and punished.
How do like it, asshole? Pull your head out, Mc Neil.

NCMoss said...

The old concept of privilege was the three H's; height, hair and Harvard.

CJinPA said...

A young Haitian-American colleague and friend who sat behind me for three years in Science news called me after the Beast story. I told him what I’d actually said in Peru. He said, **“Donald, you sound exactly like my father. He would also say ‘You can’t dress like a thug to a job interview and expect to get the job.’ But from you, it sounds racist.”**

See? This isn't about actual racism. This is about speech, the limits to it, and who gets to set those limits. Limits on speech aren't a new concept. What's new is the movement to restrict speech is coming from the folks who traditionally opposed it, journalists.

Bob Boyd said...

"Oh boo hoo hoo, they're saying I'm a racist, it's not fair"

Fuck off.

Achilles said...

Freder Frederson said...
“It is interesting that members of the regime are openly talking about re-education camps on public tv and people”

Please provide proof for this ridiculous assertion.

I am on my phone. but it was pretty easy to find this

Just because you have repeatedly advocated killing lefties (which I guess is more severe than putting them in re-education camps) doesn't mean that I would claim that the Trump regime was advocating hanging its enemies from light poles.

Are you going to deal with the fact that the regime mostly run by democrats are censoring political opponents and that you and your allies have committed thousands of acts of political violence over the last 5 years?

Francisco D said...

Achilles said...Just replace white with jew and everything the left is doing makes sense.

Yup.

Bob Smith said...

Now Mr. McNeil knows something he didn’t know before. Lots of young people are entitled jerks. Part of the learning curve Dude.

Rory said...

About 15 years ago, the Economist had a story about Congo families that had grown so poor that they had cast some of their children into the street, claiming they were witches. The article quoted a public official who lamented the practice, because it wasn't always easy to distinguish between the abandoned children and the country's real witches.

So, analogy time: McNeil's the abandoned child, and I'm still a witch.

Gusty Winds said...

What made this asshole think he was exempt from a shitty system he helped create and support?

Too bad. STFU. It’s happening to a lot of people who don’t deserve the “racist” label. Like 75 million plus Trump supporters.

Kiss my ass dude.

Fernandinande said...

Just replace white with jew

"Jews will not replace us" said the MSM.

Achilles said...

Gusty Winds said...
What made this asshole think he was exempt from a shitty system he helped create and support?

Too bad. STFU. It’s happening to a lot of people who don’t deserve the “racist” label. Like 75 million plus Trump supporters.

Kiss my ass dude.



This pattern is so repetitive in history. McNeil and Althouse are in the same category. They are always the first to go.

But there is also a lesson in this pattern for you Gusty Winds and the others that are gleefully watching McNeil get torn apart.

The pattern never turns out well for any of us.

I believe we need to be more welcoming of the people like Althouse and McNeil. Once they see the truth we need to be more accepting. We need to learn to turn the other cheek.

Markoni said...

We already know that racists are everywhere, and that everyone's a potential racist. Now it's just a matter of rooting them out.

Bob Boyd said...

[W]hat’s happened to me has been called a 'witch hunt.' It isn’t. It’s a series of misunderstandings and blunders.

That's the part where he doesn't want to cast any aspersions on witch hunting by calling it witch hunting.
He doesn't want to think about all the witches he's participated in burning in the past and he wants to reserve the right for himself and his ilk to continue designating other people witches in the future. And mostly he doesn't want anyone to think he wouldn't fit in at the Times anymore if he's absolved of the charges of witchcraft.

Of course you're a witch, McNeil. Of course you are.
When they pointed at you and screamed, "Witch!", what part of "Witch!" did you not understand?
Being designated a witch is what makes one a witch.

Carol said...

No doubt I could get "diagnosed" as Aspie too, but god I had all these excuses people use now. I was disappointed to see McNeil reach for that one.

I've never seen people so eager to be pigeonholed.

Achilles said...

We need to help Mr. McNeil along the path Bob.

I understand the positive feelings we get seeing a person who maligned us be torn down by his own tools.

But it is still a net negative until he becomes an ally.

We should make it more appealing to him to join us.

Gusty Winds said...

Achilles said…But there is also a lesson in this pattern for you Gusty Winds and the others that are gleefully watching McNeil get torn apart…The pattern never turns out well for any of us.

Guilty as charged. You’re right, it’s not turning out well. I am 100% guilty of watching the woke, get boiled by the woke. Can I at least tell Mr. McNeil “I told ya so?”

I think you’re a stand-up guy Achilles. Usually agree with you. But, do you think that McNeil would come to your defense? If it would save his ass he’d say, “Oh yea…[insert ANY white guy’s name here] was always a racist. Never really liked him.”

I don’t feel admiration or sympathy for those that participated and made a living in the University Systems and Journalism. They all watched and helped this bullshit grow to the point it was ok to burn Kenosha, WI.

With all self-awareness I’m having a hard time feeling sorry for the woke who wake up and find themselves injured under the bus they used to drive.

Yancey Ward said...

"This summer I was attacked and called a racist publicly. Not one of them came to my defense."

I again (probably for at least the 100th time) call on John McClain.

Fernandinande said...

Because it's racist to portray Black people as believing in witches and "war medicine."

"Prominent and not so prominent talkers from the American Black population come out with similar [to African witchcraft] theories of vague and invisible forces that are oppressing people, like “institutional racism” and “white privilege”."

Bob Boyd said...

@Achilles

I'm not gleeful. I'm angry. That's not a positive feeling for me.
I'm not enjoying his getting torn down either. I'm just completely unsympathetic because I don't see any sign the guy has seen "the truth", as you put it. Far from it. He just thinks they got the wrong guy this time. He doesn't see the big picture.

I agree with you on the rest, completely.

Gusty Winds said...

Bob Boyd said… He doesn't want to think about all the witches he's participated in burning in the past and he wants to reserve the right for himself and his ilk to continue designating other people witches in the future.

Yep.

It’s like watching Robespierre go to the guillotine face up. Dude had in coming.

Achilles willingness to forgive is admiral and correct. I’m just not there yet.

Nonapod said...

I’m publishing my thoughts here on Medium because I know journalists.
We make America what it is — without a free press, democracy dies. But we’re still jackals.


It takes more than a "free press" for American democracy to live. It takes a press that is honest.

And we haven't had a mostly honest press in years. Instead we've had a press that has turned against the peopel of America. We have a press that instead of "speaking truth to power" has spoken lies to the powerless. We have a press that speaks less for the common man and more for the elite plutocrat.

And as this fellow has evidently found out much to his chagrin, we have a press that is made up of cowards, betrayers, quislings, and other people of low character.

Achilles said...

I think you’re a stand-up guy Achilles. Usually agree with you. But, do you think that McNeil would come to your defense? If it would save his ass he’d say, “Oh yea…[insert ANY white guy’s name here] was always a racist. Never really liked him.”

I know he wouldn’t.

Ann still bans me every now and then. It was about a week ago last time she did it unless I have completely last track of time.

I know that when it comes down to it I am going to be all alone. Even most of you all will stand aside when they come for me. I also realize I would have stood aside when they nailed Jesus to the cross.

I am trying to avoid that.

This path gives me a higher probability of succeeding.

DanZenner said...

Michael K at 11:49am

That is excellent! Made my morning! Thanks

rcocean said...

"We should make it more appealing to him to join us."

How is he going to "join us"? And join "We" in what? He's a libtard who hates racism and racists. He hates anyone to the Right of Hillary and was OK with others being fired or de-platformed for being "racist". In fact, he probably approved.

Your statement is akin to an American Bourgeoise in the 1930's saying we shouldn't gloat over Trotsky being expelled and attacked by Stalin because "Trotsky may join us".

Total gibberish. You either secretly agree with him, or you're some wimp who doesn't like anyone to suffer for anything.

Howard said...

Quitting peanut butter and McDonald's fast food has worked wonders for Achilles attitude.

I'm Not Sure said...

The only way you convince someone like this that he should join you is to convince him you'll soon have the power to identify and punish witches.

Iman said...

Hey! Wake the fuck up! Jackals gonna jackal.

dwshelf said...

McNeil was at one with the mob, until his time inevitably came.

Now he wants sympathy?

The solution is to reject the mob before they reject you.

tommyesq said...

Remarkable, how so many of McNeil’s former colleagues were able to summon decades-old memories of allegedly insensitive behavior and present it as gospel truth.

Shouldn't they all be fired for tolerating, and thus encouraging, such racist behavior?

dwshelf said...

It takes more than a "free press" for American democracy to live. It takes a press that is honest.

A free press is sufficient.

An honest press is utopian.

dwshelf said...

Shouldn't they all be fired for tolerating, and thus encouraging, such racist behavior?

They will be. One by one.

Iman said...

I will not tolerate intolerance!

Achilles said...

I'm Not Sure said...
The only way you convince someone like this that he should join you is to convince him you'll soon have the power to identify and punish witches.

I agree with this.

I just want to point out that if you do not give your enemies a chance to surrender and retain some dignity and a path to redemption they will just fight harder.

I would also like to impress upon the people like Howard that I would much prefer they gave up their racism and attempts to seize power over us and censor us and their use of violence against us and that it is possible for Howard to be a decent person and overcome his basic tribal tendencies and move to a more mature view of humanity.

In the end if these people continue their efforts then we will be in conflict at some point. While they act like Nazi brow shirts this must be called out.

The real decision has to be whether it is more effective to use the tactics of MLK and Ghandi or not.

The answer to that is how much control the regime has over the armed forces.

Jerry said...

Narrative requires sacrifice, Comrade.

You've been chosen.

JAORE said...

"We need to help Mr. McNeil along the path Bob.
I understand the positive feelings we get seeing a person who maligned us be torn down by his own tools.
But it is still a net negative until he becomes an ally.
We should make it more appealing to him to join us."

If I thought there was any chance at all of this conversion, I'd agree with the sentiment.

But, I suspect if McNeil and eleven more were placed in front of a wall for execution, McNeil would help make sure the line was straight and the spacing consistent.

Bob Boyd said...

This guy is horrified that he could be mistaken for someone like you and I, Achilles.
He will demonstrate how innocent he is of these charges by reiterating how much he loathes us as he begs for mercy from a rush to judgement.

Rabel said...

"[W]hat’s happened to me has been called a 'witch hunt.' It isn’t. It’s a series of misunderstandings and blunders."

That statement is contradicted by what he writes in the four articles.

The people who did this to him knew exactly what they were doing.

The Red Guards of Andover called him a witch and his "friends" at the Times put him to the torch.

Sow and reap.

I'm Not Sure said...

"I just want to point out that if you do not give your enemies a chance to surrender and retain some dignity and a path to redemption they will just fight harder."

Hard to argue with that. Unfortunately, the only redemption people like this are likely to be interested in is hearing "Sorry for the misunderstanding" and being allowed to get back to their witch hunts.

Nonapod said...

A free press is sufficient.

Given the current state of affairs, I disagree. I believe that one of the biggest reasons our current culture has become so divided and derranged is our media, our press.

And I don't believe it's unrealistic to hope for at least some general sense of honesty in the reporting of events. If you're going to argue that an honest, or at least mostly honest press is an unrealistic impossibility, I guess we'd have to first have a definition of what a generally honest press would look like versus whatever we've had over the years and currently have now.

dwshelf said...

We should make it more appealing to him to join us.

I've not seen any reason to believe that he's desirable. He begs sympathy when the mob turned on him, but he does not express any regrets for when he was among the mob which crushed others.

For example, if he were to hope to lead some kind of right wing mob in crushing his newly identified enemies, I don't have any use for him. Not that he's indicated any such thing, but his history isn't reassuring.

JPS said...

I do feel bad for McNeil. I can believe he's a decent guy, and I don't doubt he's been treated unfairly.

But I'm thinking how much more upset the decent intellectuals of the center-left were by Stalin's purges than by his treatment of the kulaks. I mean, face it, some of those kulaks were pretty sketchy, but the purges – he had loyal party members shot!

And McNeil can't quite believe this happened to him.

Bob Boyd said...

I call it poetic justice.

dwshelf said...

Given the current state of affairs, I disagree. I believe that one of the biggest reasons our current culture has become so divided and derranged is our media, our press.

And the biggest reason we're collectively obese is the soda industry?

People buy what they buy. Don't blame the merchants.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Repackaging as an Aspie would not help in the slightest. You are again trying to apply consistency and common sense to the reasoning of the wokesters. It will only make you unhappy to do that.

BobJustBob said...

As someone who Achilles called a racist and a troll for having the white privilege to disagree with one of Cracks temper tantrum I find this all very amusing.

dwshelf said...

And I don't believe it's unrealistic to hope for at least some general sense of honesty in the reporting of events. If you're going to argue that an honest, or at least mostly honest press is an unrealistic impossibility, I guess we'd have to first have a definition of what a generally honest press would look like versus whatever we've had over the years and currently have now.

You and I find ourselves in the same location among the vastness of the American press.

I suspect we're up to a similar goal: sorting truth from lies.

Althouse is helpful in that.

rcocean said...

I see no evidence that he's "a decent guy".

Asserted without evidence.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

dwshelf said... [hush]​[hide comment]

I've not seen any reason to believe that he's desirable. He begs sympathy when the mob turned on him, but he does not express any regrets for when he was among the mob which crushed other.

His article is a work in progress. I suspect that by the time he finishes it we will see that it is nothing but an attempt to beg back into their good graces. He is far from anything close to the point of surrender and even farther from a time when he could be trusted as an ally.

n.n said...

Narrative requires sacrifice, Comrade.

You've been chosen.


The very model of a "burden".

Human sacrificial... cancellation rites. The labels change, the judgments liberalize, and the executions progress.

Narr said...

The Gulag was full of good Communists serving time for nothing (standard sentence for Nothing was 12 years with an option to renew), who just knew (as good Communists) that their fellow prisoners were feudal remnants, wreckers, Trotskyites, Fascists, and all around Nogoodniks.

McNeil strikes me as that type, and if nothing else his rather abject apologia indicates that he's still in thrall to the narrative of the struggle.

I hope we don't get to the place Achilles predicts @148, but he ain't wrong about the possibility. As one of the Mahatma's grandson's used to say (our paths crossed when he lived here), Non-violence is a tool, and just as the military has to know how to use their weapon-tools properly, so do peaceful protesters.

One thing I've noticed about peaceful protests for conservative or non-left causes or issues is that they REALLY incense a lot of Lefties. As far back as the 80s anti-Abortion vigils and such, some of my more lefty friends and acquaintances would wax livid at the notion that retrograde and deplorable people like that could master "their" tactics.

Narr
Gandhi said the cause must be just in itself

Leland said...

I made it two sentences into the quoted section and gave up. His chosen defense is far to complicated to explain and therefore will fail. Also this:

He will demonstrate how innocent he is of these charges by reiterating how much he loathes us as he begs for mercy from a rush to judgement.

Nonapod said...

Regarding our press and honesty, just for laughs I went to the Google News front page. I was greated with these headlines:

"Governor Cuomo Updates New Yorkers on State's Progress During COVID-19 Pandemic"

"Biden to allow migrant families separated under Trump to reunite in the U.S."

"Newsom strikes deal to reopen California schools amid COVID"

"Richest 100 Americans Would Pay $78 Billion Under Warren Tax"

"The Supreme Court finally rejected Sidney Powell's election conspiracy theory lawsuits"

There's certainly some truth in all those stories, but they're larded with half truths, lies, and misinterpretations couched in weasel words. On some level, it's sort of funny. I mean, you have to laugh, what else can you do?

Where to start? The fact that a 3rd(!) woman has now alleged sexual misdeeds about Cuomo isn't even headline worthy evidently. Instead we get some puffy headline about Cuomo updating New Yorkers. And that's just the first headline.

Jon Burack said...

I went to McNeil's site and read his entire post there. I cannot make anything of it except that he is still trying to exonerate himself for something he should never have apologized for to start with. I am broken record on this myself, but here is what I posted to him on that site.

You were totally unfairly attacked for a use of the magic dread word and you caved to the Maoist pressure, and as far as I can see you are still trying to obtain absolution for what never was a crime at all. AT ALL! Look, I produce school history materials. One of my booklets is on Huckleberry Finn, one of the greatest anti-racist novels of all time. But the novel includes that word about 200 times, and so many schools today will not allow it to be used in classes. This is an unmitigated disgrace. You have some obligation to try to mitigate that disgrace by simply and loudly saying NO, NO, NO. It is time to stop. No, to what was done to you. NO apologies at all because no apologies are or ever were called for.

Bilwick said...

The "moral" of the story? "Liberals" and "progressives" are scum. If you're just realizing that, welcome to reality.

jaydub said...

Joe Smith: "The U.S. is the least racist country I have ever lived in/visited.

Maybe others who have traveled extensively can chime in..."

I've been to 62 countries, lived in three and worked for extended periods in 8 others. I've also believe that is the US the least racist, and the majority of the world, particularly the Third World and Asia, are so tribal in their outlook it's difficult to know whether they are really racists or just perpetually xenophobic - every member of a different tribe is considered to be an alien, hence all equally suspect. That said, the most racist country I have ever spent much time in is unquestionably Japan. It doesn't matter whether you're White, Black, SE Asian, Chinese or Korean you are merely Gaijin and will never be fully accepted as a member of their community. On the other hand, they will treat you graciously and respectfully so long as a) you don't date their daughters, b) you don't try to go into business there and c) you don't compete for resources. Americans, particularly Black Americans, don't travel enough to appreciate how well Americans get along (or at least once did.)

n.n said...

But I am progressive (i.e. [unqualified] monotonic change). That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one.

rhhardin said...

I'm accused of saying that 'racism is over,' that 'white supremacy doesn’t exist,' or 'white privilege doesn’t exist,' or that I defended the use of blackface

That would all be correct if he said it.

n.n said...

"Liberals" and "progressives" are scum

Scum and scummier? Divergent and monotonic, respectively.

n.n said...

' or 'white privilege doesn’t exist

And before that leftists brayed about Jew privilege. That said, the Constitution, other than under the Twilight Amendment, does not indulge diversity dogma to discriminate by color.

Michael K said...

Americans, particularly Black Americans, don't travel enough to appreciate how well Americans get along (or at least once did.)

Absolutely. Black kids coming here from Africa or the West Indies know this. Maybe that's why Kamala Harris doesn't get along with her father.

Jim at said...

Fine. I'm a racist.
What else you got?

Unknown said...

"And before that leftists brayed about Jew privilege."

Really? When?

Meade said...

"I call it poetic justice."

Yes. We could do with fewer social justice warriors like McNeil and more poetic justice warriors like Boyd.

n.n said...

The rainbow of diversity dogma and exclusion of black, brown, and featuring a gay pride in the shredded remains of white. No lions, lionesses, and cubs included.

Rory said...

"That said, the most racist country I have ever spent much time in is unquestionably Japan."

One of the little-understood aspects of WWII is that the Nazis weren't No. 1 in the racial purity game.

n.n said...

A dark sarcasm. Social justice anywhere is injustice everywhere.

Robert Cook said...

"You can see in this madness why the urge to shout the 'n-word' is so overwhelming."

No, I can't. Speak for yourself. I was taught by my (Republican) parents when I was very young that the n-word is a very bad word that is never to be used, and I have never used it or felt any impulse to do so, (much less any "overwhelming" urge to shout it).

n.n said...

Black kids coming here from Africa or the West Indies know this.

50 shades of post-apartheid Progressive South Africa. They will be the first people... persons... colorful clumps of cells to be lynched... aborted... cancelled.

Robert Cook said...

"All Nazis are leftists."

Hahahaha!

RMc said...

I’m surprised by how quick some colleagues who barely know me were prepared to accept those accusations and even add more on a Times alumni Facebook page.

Hey, somebody's gotta be Emmanuel Goldstein...and you've been elected, Don!

YoungHegelian said...

@Unknown,

"And before that leftists brayed about Jew privilege."

Really? When?


Oh, let's start at the source, shall we? Just read part 2 if you're in a hurry.

Then, acquaint yourself with the Doctor's Plot in 1951-52 in the Soviet Union. Or, the installation of the postwar Communist regime in Poland as described in the 12th chapter of Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands. Or, the fate of those Jews involved in the creation of Birobidzhan, the Soviet Jewish Autonomous Homeland, who all ended up dead at Stalin's hands. Here's a good read on the topic.

Don't ever come here and play stupid about the existence of Lefty antisemitism. That's old news to this crowd.

tim in vermont said...

Crocodile didn’t eat him last. He’s shocked.

tim in vermont said...

“Hahahaha!”

So you don’t have any substantial arguments that he is wrong. Mussolini basically designed fascism as a way of making socialism palatable to voters. Of course once in power, the voters no longer mattered to Benito, same as all leftists.

rhhardin said...

The white supremacists are mostly blacks in Africa trying to get to a white-run country.

Robert Cook said...

"'Hahahaha!'

"So you don’t have any substantial arguments that he is wrong."


He doesn't present any substantial argument to support his silly assertion.

tim in vermont said...

On numerous occasions, Benito Mussolini identified his economic policies with “state capitalism”—the exact phrase that Vladimir Lenin used to usher in his New Economic Policy (NEP). Lenin wrote: “State capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic.”2 After Russia’s economy collapsed in 1921, Lenin allowed privatization and private initiative, and he let the people trade, buy and sell for private profit.3 Lenin was moving towards a mixed economy. He even demanded that state-owned companies operate on profit/loss principles.4 Lenin acknowledged that he had to back away from total socialism and allow some capitalism.

Mussolini followed Lenin’s example and proceeded to establish a state-driven economic model in Italy.


https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2015/Samuelsfascism.html

Fascism is just socialism of a different color.

DavidUW said...

Joe Smith: "The U.S. is the least racist country I have ever lived in/visited.
>>
There's the classic when I lived & worked in Germany, in a business meeting:

Boss asks a question.
A couple Germans say something.
I say something.

Boss says in German, "Oh, the darkie has something to say" He didn't use the true German equivalent of N- but close enough.

I quit a few months later and went work in Luxembourg.



I Callahan said...

He doesn't present any substantial argument to support his silly assertion.

You obviously have an opinion about it. Why is it "silly"? Share.

Robert Cook said...

"Mussolini basically designed fascism as a way of making socialism palatable to voters."

Well, Mussolini was not a Nazi, and the Nazis did not follow him. Nazism shared certain authoritarian elements in common with Mussolini's fascism, but they were not identical to each other by any means. Mussolini started as a socialist, but he was expelled from Italy's Socialist party and later renounced it. (Besides, how would fascism make socialism more palatable to those who were not attracted to it to begin with? That makes no sense.)

YoungHegelian said...

@Robert Cook,

While I don't particularly care for those on the American right who call National Socialism "left wing", I can't say I care much for those on the left who see Fascism as

1) a "unitary" phenomenon, as if Italian Fascism & German National Socialism were in any way the same. Most scholars of "Fascism" believe they were very different political movements.

2) On a political continuum with sort of "Conservative" or Free Market Liberalism, e.g. from Center to Right, Free Market Liberalism -> Toryism ->Aristocratic Autocracy->Fascism.

The Marxist categories of Left/Right break down when applied to Fascism. For example, the Marxists believe that Fascism/Nazism are based on the takeover of the state by finance capital. That's just abject nonsense, and far stupider & more historically destructive than the conservative idea that National Socialism is 'left-wing".

It is a question of serious contention among scholars just what constitutes the essential similarity among European "Fascisms". This is called the question of the Fascist Minimum.

And, at least one well known scholar of Italian Fascism does consider it to be a "Marxism".

rcocean said...

...that 'racism is over,' that 'white supremacy doesn’t exist,' or 'white privilege doesn’t exist,' or that I defended the use of blackface or said horrible things about black teenagers in general

Notice that none of these things are actually....y'know RACIST. I'm going of course by the standard meaning of the word prior to say...2000.

Calling someone "racist" has become such a joke, the Left had to move on to "White Supremacy" as their go-to smear word. Anyhoo, none of this will change until people start fighting back against the SJW's instead of agreeing with their premise and assumption that they - the SJW - get to sit in judgement and decree punishments.

McNeil should have said "Fuck you. I don't hate black people. case closed". Just like all the "good stalinists" should said "Fuck you" to any show trial. Instead, they did what McNeil did, and whimpered and said they clapped harder for Comrade Stalin than anyone else. And they got it it the neck. Just like McNeil did.

Banjo said...

Seems to me being called a racist isn't all that bad. Why all the fuss?

Ken B said...

We need to listen less to 17 year old scolds. Everyone needs to stop running from Twitter mobs.

Robert Cook said...

"You obviously have an opinion about it. Why is it 'silly'? Share."

He doesn't define his terms, for one thing, or make any attempt to describe how "All Nazis are leftists." What does he mean by "leftists?" Who is he referring to? What does he mean by "Nazis?" Who, exactly, is he referring to? There are some nitwits here who actually think Barack Obama and--holy smokes!--Joe Biden are leftists. This just shows that, for them, and for him, "leftist" is simply a meaningless all-purpose term of opprobrium.

Jupiter said...

"[W]hat’s happened to me has been called a 'witch hunt.' It isn’t. It’s a series of misunderstandings and blunders."

He does seem to be confused, and to have blundered. But that's entirely normal behavior for the accused during a witch hunt.

rcocean said...

Except I never saw this coming. I’d expected an attack from the far right, since I’d suffered one in May after I said on Christiane Amanpour’s show that the American response to the epidemic had failed because of poor leadership. I’d suggested that C.D.C. director Robert Redfield resign, called Mike Pence a sycophant and said President Trump lacked a third-grade understanding of science. I was told off and ordered to stay off TV. A formal letter of reprimand went into my file. The liberal/moderate coverage was favorable. The right’s was not.

this is the guy people are defending.

rcocean said...

What a gold mine McNeil's post is. What an insight into the Left-wing NYT's worldview. Thanks Althouse!

Deiphobus said...

DJD

Some usage questions from today's NYT:

1. No disciplinary action was taken against Mr. Cuomo, who has ruled New York for more than a decade. Ruled?

2. The governor, however, did address his own behavior, conceding that he had often teased and bantered with his underlings, “being playful” while working in what he called “a very serious business.” Underlings?

3. Now, in a surprising twist, prosecutors have accused Ms. Pollok of being a willing accomplice who assisted Mr. Ray, 61, in various criminal schemes, even helping him collect millions of dollars in profits from one of her former classmates whom prosecutors said he had forced to become a prostitute. Whom?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Your opinions about black Americans is no good here. Keep them to yourself.

If you value your standing, in wherever the hell you call home, heed this warning.

It's getting to be more and more difficult to spear sympathy for people who should know better by now.

Just shut the fuck up about it. Nobody is interested.

narciso said...

well remember syme in 1984, dutifull minitrue drone, turned in by his kids

YoungHegelian said...

@Robert Cook,

What does he mean by "leftists?" Who is he referring to?...Who, exactly, is he referring to? There are some nitwits here who actually think Barack Obama and--holy smokes!--Joe Biden are leftists

But, Cookie, isn't that what they say of themselves? That they're on the democratic Left, that they see themselves as political kin to Britain's Labour Party?

All of Barack Obama's influencers throughout his career were either Euro-socialist Left or even harder American New Left. In what sense could he be considered "right wing"? And, who were Joe Biden's big early supporters? The Labor unions. Are unions right wing?

I'm sorry, Cookie, but you've been here a long time, and I'm telling you that it's you who have an idiosyncratic and weird idea of what constitutes the Left/Right divide. It just seems to boil down to some pissiness about how the corporations run things.

You are not alone in this. Indeed, the whole Counterpunch crowd is lost in this same fog. It's too fuzzy-headed to be rigorously Marxist, it's too statist to be rigorously anarchist, and it's just too pissed off at the reality of modern life in general to be sympathetic to any Euro-socialist regime that actually needs to get the dirty details of day-to-day governance done. So, the corporations become the object of its spleen, without any real analysis (e.g. as with a Marxist labor theory of value critique) of why they're so evil.

Yancey Ward said...

YH,

Cook is basically to the left of everyone in the US. Yes, his position is idiosyncratic to the rest of us, but it is what it is.

YoungHegelian said...

@YW,

Yes, his position is idiosyncratic to the rest of us, but it is what it is.

I actually would prefer to say that it is what it isn't. I actually think his position defines itself by negation rather than any coherent underlying ideological analysis.

chuck said...

"Mussolini basically designed fascism as a way of making socialism palatable to voters."

That's sexist. Everyone knows fascism was the invention of his Jewish mistress/mentor, Margherita Sarfatti :) You go, girl.

tim in vermont said...

Whatever “minimal fascism” is,it is collectivist and it is far closer to collectivist socialism than it is to free market economics.

"to construct economic policy around issues like race, gender equality and climate change, rather than around traditional indicators like gross domestic product or deficit ratios,". - Biden Administration

Throwing out traditional economics, if that isn’t “left” I know for certain it is not anything associated with the center right that Trump represents.

n.n said...

The governing spectrum runs from anarchist on the right to totalitarian on the left, and the left-right nexus that is leftist (i.e. pro-totalitarian).

That said, libertarianism is self-organizing. Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is monotonic. Conservativism is moderating. Principles matter.

tim in vermont said...

This sounds like the Biden Administration

No action is exempt from moral judgment; no activity can be despoiled of the value which a moral purpose confers on all things. - Mussolini

YoungHegelian said...

@tim,

...to construct economic policy around issues like race, gender equality and climate change, rather than around traditional indicators like gross domestic product or deficit ratios. - Biden Administration

That is a textbook example of Corporatism.

Now, while all Fascists are corporatists, not all corporatists are Fascist. Still, not a road I'd like to travel...

Amadeus 48 said...

I strongly recommend reading McNeil's entire piece defending himself on the Peru trip. He comes across as an experienced reporter who has many attitudes that many commenters here share.

Although I wouldn't agree with him on many things, he clearly believes that all people have agency and are responsible for their own lives and that life cannot be simplified by adopting an ideology. His interchanges with the student about climate change and about standardized tests are are practical and realistic.

He obviously is prickly, but in a good way.

Narr said...

Since I said nothing about race earlier: the USofA ("even" the South) is the most racially tolerant (not to mention racially and culturally mixed) country I know of, personally.

The notorious racial purity obsession of the Japanese has been mentioned, and when I grow weary of lefty complaints about American racism I ask, "Would you rather be the wrong color here or the wrong tribe there?"

Narr
I wouldn't even want to be the right tribe there

LordSomber said...

One of the little-understood aspects of WWII is that the Nazis weren't No. 1 in the racial purity game.

From afar, westerners tend to unnecessarily see this as a race issue.

The Japanese sense of superiority (which still exists today) comes not from racial purity but from whether one is Japanese or not.
It's really that simple.

Rabel said...

"He comes across as an experienced reporter who has many attitudes that many commenters here share."

You're saying he's a grumpy old bastard?

William said...

The Asperger Ploy sounds like a cool move. Maybe Cuomo should try it. He could claim that his variant of Asperger's doesn't allow him to read women's reactions. When he asks whether they are wearing silken undergarments and whether those garments tend to excite them while in conversation with him, it is something that he was legitimately curious about. He had no idea that such curiosity could be interpreted as sexually harassment. He now recognizes the misunderstanding and forgives the woman for jumping to conclusions about his motivation. It's worth a shot

rcocean said...

"He comes across as an experienced reporter who has many attitudes that many commenters here share."

Actually he doesn't. Unless you mean Chuck and R. cook.

gadfly said...

"I wonder how much of what the wokesters call "whiteness" (and maleness) could be repackaged as "high-functioning Aspergers" and received with some empathy as part of the rainbow of diversity."

Andrew Sullivan writes about the "roots of wokeness" wherein wokeness is a concept of "Social Justice" today. I have shortened his explanation.

The idea of objective truth—even if it is viewed as always somewhat beyond our reach—is abandoned. All we have are narratives, stories, whose meaning is entirely provisional, and can in turn be subverted or problematized.

During the 1980s and 1990s, this somewhat aimless critique of everything hardened into a plan for action. Analyzing how truth was a mere function of power, and then seeing that power used against distinct and oppressed identity groups, led to an understandable desire to do something about it, and to turn this critique into a form of activism.

After all, the core truth of our condition, this theory argues, is that we live in a system of interlocking oppressions that penalize various identity groups in a society. And all power is zero-sum: you either have power over others or they have power over you. To the extent that men exercise power, for example, women don’t; in so far as straight people wield power, gays don’t; and so on. There is no mutually beneficial, non-zero-sum advancement in this worldview. All power is gained only through some other group’s loss.

There is no such thing as persuasion in this paradigm, because persuasion assumes an equal relationship between two people based on reason. And there is no reason and no equality. There is only power. You have to measure the power dynamic between you and the other person first of all; you do this by quickly noting your interlocutor’s place in the system of oppression, and your own, before any dialogue can occur. Within critical theory, the very concept of a “diversity of ideas” is a function of oppression. What matters is a diversity of identities that can all express the same idea: that liberalism is a con-job. Which is why almost every NYT op-ed now and almost every left-leaning magazine reads exactly alike.


Now if we could only get to the bottom of the hold that Donald Trump has over so-called GOP conservatives without any apparent power.

Unknown said...

Achilles - "Ann still bans me every now and then. It was about a week ago last time she did it unless I have completely lost track of time.

I know that when it comes down to it I am going to be all alone. Even most of you all will stand aside when they come for me. I also realize I would have stood aside when they nailed Jesus to the cross."



I had a comment I wanted to make, but Achilles pretty much sums things up.

In this world, not of it.

William said...

The Soviets killed Jews at a brisk rate but never for anti-Semitic reasons, or, anyway, that's what the Jews there thought. I read the Applebaum book, Gulag. She talks about one Jew whose small herring business was made state property. He shrugged it off because his daughter was allowed to attend the university--something that the czarist regime would have never permitted. Then he was allowed to manage his old business. Then at the next turn of the wheel, he was arrested and sent to the Gulag. Well, his daughter got a good education and isn't that what really counts in the end.

h said...

I spent some time in Zambia in the 1990s and at that time there was a fairly widespread belief in witches, even among people with college degrees. That's a fact. Personally, I don't believe that a fact can be racist. I don't recall anyone actually reporting a "witch hunt" but people in rural areas especially were concerned that they might be perceived as witches. So a big problem in rural areas was destruction of stored corn by corn borers. And an easy solution is to store the corn in metal silos. In the US, there is in almost every small midwestern town, a cooperative grain storage facility in which farmers deposit their corn, get a receipt for the amount deposited, and can withdraw and sell that quantity at any time. (Of course they don't get in withdrawal the exact same corn that they deposited.) This approach was rejected in Zambia, because no farmer wanted others to know how much corn he had deposited. A farmer who deposited "too much" would be suspected of witchcraft.

n.n said...

Maybe Cuomo should try it. He could claim that his variant of Asperger's doesn't allow him to read women's reactions.

Blind eye to the feminine perspective, which is not a sex-specific deficit. However, the normal distribution of men and women is characterized by a moderate, reconcilable outlook.

Marcus Bressler said...

McNeil's piece is reminiscent of the Russians quoted in The Gulag Archipelago: "What, what? Why are you taking me? I've always been a supporter of the Party! Ask anyone. THERE MUST BE SOME MISTAKE."

There are no mistakes with these people (until they put someone on a List who goes postal on them). Have another 8, comrade.

THEOLDMAN

Lewis Wetzel said...

The significant thing about early modern witch hunts is not that witches did not exist. Certainly some people did believe that they were witches.
The significant thing is that they always found witches, certainly many more than there actually were. When suspected witches were tortured to produce a confession, there was no end where the suspected witch refused to confess & so was given their freedom. They tortured people until they confessed or they died. There was no point where the persecutors said "Gee whiz, we have tortured the daylights out of this person, and they have not confessed, so I guess we gotta let 'em go."
The one thing that seemed to stop the witch hunts was when the local authorities refused to cooperate with the witch hunters.

YoungHegelian said...

@LordSomber,

The Japanese sense of superiority (which still exists today) comes not from racial purity but from whether one is Japanese or not.

And the Koreans & Chinese find this attitude on the part of the Japanese so incredibly aggravating because each knows that it's them, not those fucking Japanese, who are in reality the cat's meow!

rcocean said...

Here's an odd paragraph from McNeil's essay:

Some of today’s woke youth eager to “correct” us greybeards have no idea how normal it once was in America to slip into racism. I went to an all-male and nearly all-white Jesuit high school. It was, and still is, a good school. But it was the kind of place where it was much safer, for example, to be known as a racist than as a homosexual.

One afternoon, in an unprovoked confrontation on a city bus with four public school students, I had my face slashed with a straight razor. I still have the scar. The next day, a classmate who had always ignored me — yes, a thug — offered to help me take revenge at random with baseball bats from his pickup truck. I walked away. If you don’t learn from your scars (I also have a tattoo from my second marriage) you don’t learn.


Its hard to understand what McNeil is trying to say here. First, his father was wealthy real estate investor who went to Yale. So his "Good school" was probably more than that. And he went to school in the SF Bay area.

Second, when I first read this, I thought he was Gay and that's why he was attacked. But then I thought about it, and realized HE'S WRITTING IN CODE. He was attacked by four black students. And his "Thug" friend wanted to take "Revenge" by attacking black people. And McNeil nobly refused. So, give him a cookie and a gold star. OR maybe they just attacked by whites who couldn't stand his face. In which case, why bring it up?

rcocean said...

Another laughable thing about McNeil is he's labeled a NYT "Science Reporter". And he used those credential's to call Trump an idiot and Pence a sycophant. But McNeil wasn't a scientist, he graduated from Berkeley with a degree in RHETORIC! He then went straight to the NYT and worked as a Foreign correspondent in Africa, before covering the AIDS epidemic and HIV in Africa and in the USA.

IOW, he doesn't know any more about science, or medicine, or CV-19 than you, me, or the lamp post. And he certainly knew less than Trump or Pence who getting daily briefings.

Lewis Wetzel said...

"High functioning aspbergers" is the new "ADHD."
There is a continuum of human personality, and that continuum has no center. There is no "ideal" human personality from which we all fall short in some measurable way (outside of religion).
Where does it end? Are women who are normal but who enjoy lots of sex "high functioning nymphomaniacs"?
Autistic people have a mental disorder because it damages them. They cannot live a normal life. Ditto nymphomaniacs. So when you say "high functioning aspbergers" it is a meaningless statement. It is not a disease unless it hurts you, it is a smear used to diminish the humanity of perfectly normal human beings.

Bob Boyd said...

We could do with fewer social justice warriors like McNeil and more poetic justice warriors like Boyd.

Hey, I didn't fire the motherfucker. I just refuse to feel sorry for him. The guy didn't have a problem with tarring me as a racist, did he?
Which is worse, calling someone the N-word or calling someone a racist? Nobody ever got fired because somebody called him the N-word.

n.n said...

"All Nazis are leftists."

Hahahaha!


Diversity [dogma]. Wicked solution. Redistributive change. Single/central/monopolistic economics. Political congruence. Ostensibly "secular" faith, religion, and ideology. Nationalist, globalist... a weak correlation.

Not all leftists are Nazis.

n.n said...

We could do with fewer social justice warriors

Yes, the karmic irony of relative justice.

Sebastian said...

Haven't read all the comments, sorry.

"It’s been quite baffling and painful for me to have people assume I’m a racist"

It's quite baffling but not painful to me to have progs be so naive about the ways of fellow progs.

"that 'white supremacy doesn’t exist,'"

It exists in prog fantasies, sure. How else?

"I’m surprised by how quick some colleagues who barely know me were prepared to accept those accusations"

Why the surprise? If true, this means he is an ignorant fool; if false, he is an opportunistic liar.

"Someone I thought I’d been very nice to"

As if that makes a difference. So I guess he is an utterly naive and ignorant fool.

"It’s a series of misunderstandings and blunders."

WTF? It's no blunder; it's a prog success story: another scalp. It's a minor episode in progs scorching the earth and flaunting their power.

"received with some empathy as part of the rainbow of diversity."

Trolling, right?

rcocean said...

I sincerely doubt that a man who majored in Rhetoric at Berkeley, had a father who went to Yale and was in Real estate, who got a job as a NYT copy boy, was a foreign correspondent in Africa and won awards, and was married twice and now has a female partner....

Now has "Asperger's syndrome".

rcocean said...

A must say that I found McNeil's rhetoric rather unconvincing.

Doug said...

And he probably sat by, smiling smugly, as NYT and its ilk destroyed the lives of other people who didn't speak in politically correct parlance.

William said...

Isn't it a form of white supremacy to declare that white supremacy is the supreme form of evil in the world today? In the last fifty years, white supremacists have a relatively low body count compared to other forms of evil and bigotry.

Terry Ott said...

I’m sure everyone waits with great anticipation to learn what I have to say about this crucial matter, but I need to confess to a few things even though doing so will disappoint so many. So, here goes:
(1) I have no idea what any of this discussion is about;
(2) I care not one whit that I don’t know;
(3) The names of none of the people mentioned ring even a faint bell;
(4) I think I should be happy their names don’t take up any space in my head; and,
(5) Even if I DID know something about whatever this is, I am reasonably sure I would nevertheless have a heartfelt belief there are approximately an infinite number of things afoot in the world about which I would/should/could care more..

In the eyes of some, I suppose, this list proves I am a racist. Could be, who really knows? What would be the point of presenting my defense against that charge? If anyone has an opinion about why I should care, please let me know..

MadisonMan said...

Those McNeil pieces were awesome -- all 4 of them. I can only think: Why would anyone want to work at the Times. And what a cesspit Reed College must be. It turns out people who don't know anything.

chickelit said...

wendybar said...Racism is what the Progressives use to shut you up.

I experienced this last night when the Brecht Girl tried to shut me up being calling me a racist.

n.n said...

There was a time when you could call someone a nerd, and only the geeks would be perturbed.

Sebastian said...

Achilles:

"we need to be more welcoming of the people like Althouse and McNeil"

I'd like to agree, but would it make a difference? Would either of them take the anti-prog side in the culture war, in the legal battles, in regular elections?

McNeil is in denial. Althouse observes but still has a hard time seeing. She has changed a bit, so there's some hope: we get less of the "why does so-and-so say such a ridiculous thing? it's terrible!" BS, and even cruel neutrality seems to have run its course.

But strategically, an alliance with "liberals" who turn against progressivism, out of personal pain or a desire to face reality, makes sense. Trump will make it harder.

Tina Trent said...

Well, look at what you elitists write about the lower classes. You're a hog like the rest of them.

Doug said...

"You're a RACIST!"

"Okay. Now what?"

Markoni said...

Being able to say what you want, while others are restricted to expressing only approved ideas and words, has got to be the ultimate rush.

Openidname said...

Jim at said...

"Fine. I'm a racist.
"What else you got?"

and Doug said...

"'You're a RACIST!'"
"'Okay. Now what?'"

Hate to burst your bubble, but this is NOT a good strategy. When they come for you, such posts will be deemed to be admissions and used against you. Good luck with "I was only kidding" or "I was trying to make a rhetorical point."

You better hope they can't penetrate your anonymity.

Unknown said...

Terry Ott - "I need to confess to a few things even though doing so will disappoint so many. So, here goes:
(1) I have no idea what any of this discussion is about"


Terry, I was reading along wondering what this discussion was about, and then got to your post. Not disappointed.

Birches said...

What a long story....it's like the Iran Iraq War....there were no heroes in that piece.

Narr said...

I have been under the impression that the Japanese tended to be, in our lingo, racist towards non-Japanese. But other commenters, much more familiar with Japan and Japanese culture than I am, argue that it's not really about race-race, but something else.

Please help me understand the distinction. Certainly the Japanese had no Jew-equivalent or "Anti-Jap" (pardon the abbreviation) figure and they planned no particular genocides, but how does their militarized sense of general superiority to others, manifested from the 1930s to 1945, escape the label of racism?

Narr
Racist is as racist does

Caroline said...

The thing is, nobody thinks MacNeil is a racist. Kabuki.

Unknown said...

Magic word...Racist. All deficiencies recede in the power of that word.

Who wouldn't like to have a magic word. In time, magic words wear out.

Satan gives another magic word: Equities. The label says it's good for 20 more years.

Amadeus 48 said...

"Interesting how he chooses to play the disability card with that "high-functioning Asperger aspect to my personality.'"

I think this is a startlingly obtuse comment by Althouse.

The girlfriend's comment is a throwaway line in the long narrative of this whole mess. He never uses the Aspergers idea as crutch. He never mentions it again. He only uses it as a jokey way of accounting for a long series of blunders and misunderstandings by many of the players in this drama that say a lot more about the culture of the NYT than they say about the personality of Donald McNeil.

His involvement in union negotiations and his desire to get the students to think more deeply about the platitudes that underlie their ideals both have more to do with his separation from the NYT than a smart-alecky comment by his girlfriend.

Achilles said...

Sebastian said...

Achilles:

"we need to be more welcoming of the people like Althouse and McNeil"

I'd like to agree, but would it make a difference? Would either of them take the anti-prog side in the culture war, in the legal battles, in regular elections?

That would be nice. But it is not the primary motivation of the act. The primary motivation of the act is to be Human, while our opponents are monsters.

McNeil is in denial. Althouse observes but still has a hard time seeing. She has changed a bit, so there's some hope: we get less of the "why does so-and-so say such a ridiculous thing? it's terrible!" BS, and even cruel neutrality seems to have run its course.

They have no choice but to know. They just don't really have anything they are willing to defend. They think the left is going to win and they would rather survive on their knees.

But strategically, an alliance with "liberals" who turn against progressivism, out of personal pain or a desire to face reality, makes sense. Trump will make it harder.

Trump is the only reason we are still in this game. I do not think he is the answer to 2024 for several reasons.

I don't have much faith in people when they have space to make a bad decision. People like Ann and McNeil have demonstrated terrible reasoning and system analysis.

But in the end the monsters give them no choice. But if they have a choice between monsters on the left who will subjugate them and monsters on the Right who will leave them alone they will stupidly choose the left.

There is also easily the majority of people who don't care either way as long as their xbox works or they can buy pot/beer.

You have to keep them in mind too.

Achilles said...

There are also reasons outside of trying to win a political battle to being, to save words, more like Jesus.

He said some smart things.

I would really like to avoid violent conflict. Not so much I would let the tyrants win. But enough to do these things.

Gahrie said...

Please help me understand the distinction. Certainly the Japanese had no Jew-equivalent or "Anti-Jap" (pardon the abbreviation) figure and they planned no particular genocides, but how does their militarized sense of general superiority to others, manifested from the 1930s to 1945, escape the label of racism?

Because they feel the same way about other Asians as they do everyone else. It's the same thing with the Chinese. We aren't lesser beings because we're White, we're lesser beings because we aren't Chinese.

Doug said...

Opinidname, my response may not be one that you personally would use. Maybe you've got a lot to protect. Maybe you like to go along to get along. Maybe you are timid by nature.
And don't worry about bursting my bubble. That's my concern, and I know what I'm doing. You just protect your precious little hide.

Danno said...

This guy should have known the code word for third world is turd whirled.

Birches said...

Rcocean. Thanks for the interpretation of that story. It was weird and I didn't get it either.

I thought through most of the piece that he really needed an editor, especially when reading through his emails.

Those emails...if that's what working at the NYT is like, I think I'd jump out a window.

TreeJoe said...

RCOcean & Others:

I really appreciated McNeil's long form writing of his story. Yes, it's weird. Yes, there's alot of reasons to basically say the guy is a high functioning intellectual asshole.

But, assuming his story hews closely to the truth, that's the point: You can be a high functioning career asshole and say a few things taken out of context and be aggressively pushed out of your organization by people with entrenched, opposing interests.

This is nothing new of course. It's just been elevated. His anecdotes used to be exactly how professors taught young students - to take their cherished beliefs and challenge them with real life examples of how others do things; blackface in South Africa, the ridiculous nature of cultural appropriation, etc.

I don't care he hated trump, et al. - he didn't deserve the fate he got. They could've pushed him out because he was a caustic asshole. The idea it was for things he said to rich pampered students on a exotic trip to Peru is ridiculous.

Butkus51 said...

You all brought this shit upon yourself. Deal with it.

wildswan said...

McNeil, ever the reporter, is trying to show that a non-racist, known to be a non-racist by his employer, can be fired when accused of being racist and how it happens. Moreover, he is showing the process as it happens to a liberal, an NYT reporter. Implication: This could happen to you who matter, not just to dirty Trump supporters who do not. And McNeil is also telling a story about the NYT. There, the editor is run by "the newsroom," hiring and firing by the trend of opinion within the newsroom. The sentence pronounced on McNeil is "You have lost the newsroom." By telling that story, McNeil is hinting that Baquet's position is insecure as shown by how he handled the McNeil issue and hinting that Baquet is on the way out. Danton predicting the future to Robespierre.
McNeil is reporting a scuffle for position conducted in terms of the struggle for justice. Is he right?
Consider vaccinations in the black community in big Dem run cities like New York City. Vaccinations are lagging because the black community suspects vaccination is a trick of white supremacy even as all the members of the white community engage in a fierce scramble to be vaccinated. How could two groups in the same city interpret things more differently? And why can't "the newsroom" which can get a senior reporter fired so easily for something said years earlier get the vital truth about vaccinations out to the black community. Is "the newsroom" preoccupied with internal struggles to out of touch to be listened to? And consider the closed schools in New York City in the black community. Not something "the newsroom" is frenziedly working to get open the way it worked to get McNeil.
Well, I don't know. I just know the schools should be open in my city and others to the kids of the black community and I wish the NYT newsroom felt the same passion about how bad those kids feel about closed public schools as it felt about how bad some private school kids felt about whatever McNeil said, thought, meant or did not mean.

Mike Litoris said...

"Not all leftists are Nazis."

But most are preening, pretentious, predictable, pseudo-intellectual bores.

DaveL said...

Reading through his explanations and description of the context of the remarks that apparently prompted various people to complain about him, I found myself taking mental notes about all the things he "did wrong."

Fundamentally this guy doesn't understand anything about the atmosphere he is breathing. He does not realize that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia and that 2+2=5. He, like Winston Smith, is relic of a different time. Just as Parson's kids turned him in to the Thought Police, the kids on his trip turned him in to the Woke-ist, Safety-ist, privileged true believers who control the NYT.

I agree with wildswan that what McNeil is writing is a cautionary tale for anyone who has to interact with Party members. Either "don't" or "don't say anything" or "don't challenge their delusions" and you might survive.

Van Wallach said...

The lesson I took from McNeil's epic: when you are undergoing an NKVD-style interrogation by gimlet-eyed undergrads, start projectile vomiting and immediately leave the room to end the discussion.

Narr said...

Gahrie, OK but--

Japanese racism as a historical phenom has a peculiar geographical and cultural twist, Chinese or Han racism as a historical phenom, same-same. They are still at root racisms out of tribalism out of pride of blood.

Nazi racism arose from peculiar historical circumstances of Europe, and was distinguished by a veneer of science (veneers of science a specialty in the age of democratic empires); in practice it was conveniently flexible but was still racism etc., and echoed for instance old Spanish "limpieza de sangre" obsessions.

Racism seems the best catch-all term for these phenomena, IMO.

Narr
Movin' on

Jon Burack said...

It is unfortunate that the focus here is on one part of the first of McNeil's four essays. It may be as some here seem to think that McNeil does not fully understand the ringer he has been put through. Still, if you go through all four of the essays, you get as complete and detailed a look at how the Times has corrupted itself and how truly insane cancel culture has become. His story will condemn the Times for a long time to come. More so in the future than now, I believe.

Also his story, as with the Jodi Shaw saga at Smith exposes the class divide and conquer aspect of critical race theory and its outcroppings.

In the third essay, the NYTs corporate types and lawyers who called McNeil to account on this Peru caper0 in are the same individuals he had earlier antagonized by taking a visible stand in defense of employees in labor conflicts with the NYTs management. The people in charge of bargaining with the union are also the ones intimidating the union defender. His cancellation over a bogus racial issue works for corporate management to squelch a trouble maker, done in by the same SOBs as found him dangerous in their labor negotiations.

In the fourth essay, McNeil details what happened to him in Peru with the student group he was accompanying. As at Smith college, these are pampered elite kids thoroughly immersed in the current "systemic racism," anti-Western Civ mindset. A few of them are apparently also little "Lord of the Flies" commissars-in-the-making, stooping to comment and misquote and slander a man who worked for the NYT's for 45 years before being fired for a single word.

The Crack Emcee said...

People think all kinds of things about me that ain't true. I've lost jobs over things white people suspected me of doing.

Y'all are so late to the life I've been leading - which seems to be spreading - it's hard to feel anymore sympathy for others than you there-are-no-victims types showed me.

Bite on it - HARD.

Bunkypotatohead said...

"If anyone has an opinion about why I should care, please let me know.."

Most of the "news" is finding out someone you never heard of just died recently.

Lurker21 said...

In the thirties and forties, the Japanese thought that they were a race. "Racism" as the word is used today isn't always about skin color (though even in Japan today, it often is). You could call it ethnocentrism, but the line between that and racism is a thin one.

*

The Asperger's thing is clearly a dodge, but it does indicate that the things that people say can't always be explained simply and straightforwardly. Sometimes people can't help blurting things out. That's not necessarily a sign of a deep-seated racism. Race may have been very much on his mind, perhaps ever since he got beat up in high school. Does race being on his mind make him a racist? If so, who isn't a racist now?

Maybe he should have gone with "racial Tourettes" or something like that, though.