That's the top-rated comment at the NYT on a column by Lindsay Crouse, "‘Cancel Culture’ Isn’t the Problem. ‘OK Culture’ Is."
[F]or their entire careers, [Gruden and other powerful men] have been beneficiaries of a different phenomenon, which permeates not only the N.F.L. but also many other institutions dominated by straight white men. Let’s call it OK Culture.
OK Culture is what allows the kind of noxious discourse in Gruden’s emails to continue for years. Here’s how it works: Do you have a sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic or fat-shaming thought? Are you smart enough to know you shouldn’t say it in public but want to say it anyway? Are you a powerful and successful person? If so, just make your mean remark or crass joke to a select group who hold similar views or at least wouldn’t dare challenge yours. Don’t worry. It’s OK!...
It’s time to stop litigating whether these punishments are fair and to start thinking more deeply about why the behavior they punish seemed OK in the first place.
Over-punishing infractions creates sympathy for those who've done wrong. It's especially bad to suddenly shift the standard and to punish retroactively. And — as the NYT commenter highlights — there's a chilling effect. When you have harsh punishments for saying the wrong thing, risk-averse people will "withhold anything that might be a mildly divergent opinion."
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One problem with adoption of "OK Culture" is that those using the hand sign for "OK" are already condemned as racist, for making a hand sign associated with white supremacist groups. Maybe "OK culture" could be rebranded into something using a different hand sign, like the American Sign Language letter "L" and the name "Loser Culture." Just a suggestion.
In headhunter culture, you get ahead by getting a head.
"OK culture" previously known as free speech ?
it is OK to say it is not OK = I do not agree and will not stay silent
- especially in academic circles
if a culture loses that then curtains
The time for catharsis comes.
“OK Culture” = “Gaslight Journalism” exactly as enthusiastically practiced by cnn talking heads (e.g. see Weiss v. Tater).
---It’s time to stop litigating whether these punishments are fair and to start thinking more deeply about why the behavior they punish seemed OK in the first place.
Being human is verboten to Ms. Feminist and other right-thinkers. We can be perfect, like Lindsay Crouse.
The cancelled and the unvaccinated are forming a new culture on the other side. They’re gonna be mad when you try and fuck with it…
“Who’s telling us not to say that?” is the tell.
That is not the actress Lindsay Crouse who was married to neocon playwright David Mamet. That Lindsay would have personal reasons for wanting to defend cancel culture. This Lindsay Crouse seems to have made complaining a second career.
What she calls OK Culture is simply freedom of expression. People should feel free to express themselves, subject to criticism by others.
Getting and keeping a job should be based on how well you do what the job requires. If Gruden coaches well, and his players are okay with him being the boss, that should be the end of the discussion.
Only if you put yourself up for election, as politicians do, should it matter what others think about your opinions. In politics, losing an election is equivalent to being cancelled. We shouldn't all need to be politicians, subject to approval polling.
Oh my. Feeling safe within your small in-group to say or joke about something you wouldn’t say or joke about to the wider world. We just can’t have that, comrades
Stop trying to fix all the broken institutions. Let them have their fun. Meanwhile, get with the others and start your own thing. It’s only a matter of time before there’s nothing but sludge left at the old place and then you can take it back…
OK culture people prefer a tasty grilled rat on a stick to another tasteless trip through the Taco Bell when they're with their closest friends who won't tell on them.
Lindsay's not OK with that. The purity spiral grinds on. Analysis shows traces of rat grease on your dress. Remember when you had that cleaned?
Only the paranoid could believe these things, right? AI never sleeps. The analysis was a simple job. The only barriers are imagination and will.
Dystopian fiction is as communicable as the 'Rona. Interesting times...
racist/sexist/homophobic language
He didn't write anything that was racist (that's purely in the racist little minds of the readers), but if -phobic were not the incorrect suffix I'd almost agree with that part. Almost.
Don't recall anything sexist, either, but that might be due to the coyness of the reporters who are too nervous to report.
Which reminds me, I get the impression that the MSM started, or "doubled down" on, "reporting" their own characterizations of someone's speech as "racist" or whatever, rather then reporting what the person actually said when they wanted to misrepresent Trump's speech.
I try to say only the wrong thing. Why waste people's time.
Let’s call it OK Culture.
A Soviet judge walks out of his chambers laughing his head off.
A colleague approaches him and asks why he is laughing. "I just heard the funniest joke in the world!" "Well, go ahead, tell me!" says the other judge. "I can't – I just gave someone ten years for it!"
"Are you smart enough to know you shouldn’t say it in public but want to say it anyway? Are you a powerful and successful person?" It may surprise the author to know that even us weak and unsuccessfully people also sometimes say things in private that we would not dare say in public. Decent powerful people - unlike the author - know that there's a difference between private and public.
“diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Unless you obey the leftist authoritarians in charge of your every thought.
Obey the Potemkin Crook for starters... and his awesome son.
Notice how blithely "thought" and speech are conflated into "behaviors," specifically in order to "stop litigating whether these punishments are fair."
Do you have a sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic or fat-shaming thought? Are you smart enough to know you shouldn’t say it in public but want to say it anyway? Are you a powerful and successful person? If so, just make your mean remark or crass joke to a select group who hold similar views or at least wouldn’t dare challenge yours. Don’t worry. It’s OK!...
It’s time to stop litigating whether these punishments are fair and to start thinking more deeply about why the behavior they punish seemed OK in the first place.
I want to see EVERYBODY's E-mails. I bet there isn't a player, or a coach (or any other person) who is completely innocent in all that they write.
"Instead of listening to whistle-blowers, organizations are often tempted to listen to the siren song of their own success, in some cases enabling real harm. The examples ricochet through recent sports history. In American gymnastics, the doctor Larry Nassar was able to sexually abuse more than 150 of the country’s most talented young female athletes over decades. At Nike, the track coach Alberto Salazar enjoyed godlike status and the support and funding of the apparel company, even after he was accused of abusing athletes and suspended for doping-related misconduct. The National Women’s Soccer League is facing allegations that coaches sexually and emotionally abused or harassed female players for years, after executives did not take reports of abuses seriously enough."
Covering up sexual abuse, to me any way, is a bit different than being a "jerk" in private as she describes Gruden's email behavior. He sent pictures of women wearing only bikini bottoms? Oh my!
Do you have a sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic or fat-shaming thought?
It's a good bet that Lindsay Crouse is fat.
Crouse — "a producer and athlete who focuses on gender and power"
Anybody want to bet that Lindsay Crouse's emails are 10 times worse than Jon Gruden's?
Perhaps it was not an “OK culture”, but a time when free speech, even offensive speech, was considered a right. In that context comments made over a medium then thought to be private would not have and should not have been a stimulant for career destruction.
Interesting that Krouse citing among other things “sexist” remarks or attitudes among “Gruden and these other powerful men” fails to notice the sexist implications of her own generalizations. But then what is a leftmediaswine without hypocrisy? (Would it be sexist to say “leftmediasow?”) Our betters, who are the arbiters of these things, consider themselves to be without sin.
We now know that blacks, feminists, homosexuals, lefty profs, etc., never engage in disparaging conversations about other groups, particularly white males and Christians because that would not be OK. Terms like “honky,” “whitey,” “male chauvinist pig,” “Bible humpers” and “xtians” were invented by white boys and Christians to deflect attention from their own behavior. Right?
I suspect she has a vision of America being like East Germany under the Communists where 1 in 10 people were Stasi informants, mostly about what was said in private. Spouses ratted on each other, children ratted out their parents. Lovely vision for society, don’t you think?
On a serious note, the only solution is to follow the teaching of Jesus Christ: love thy neighbor. You would not write what Gruden did if you followed that principle. And you would not punish people who violate the principle. You would rebuke them and attempt to convince them to change their ways by seeing the rewards in doing so. This is one of the fundamental principles underlying the belief in freedom of expression.
Is this like when black rappers call black women 'bitches' and 'hoes' and their best lyrics are rhyming 'cocksucker' with 'motherfucker.'
Really sophisticated stuff...
But their audience is other black people so it's OK.
Except when it's blasting at 100db from of a blacked-out SUV on the main street in your home town at lunch time...
"Mommy...what does 'motherfucker' mean?"
"It's especially bad to suddenly shift the standard and to punish retroactively."
I'd call it catastrophic. Talk about instilling terror. This is why the Founders wrote express prohibitions on "ex post facto" laws into the US Constitution.
'When you have harsh punishments for saying the wrong thing, risk-averse people will "withhold anything that might be a mildly divergent opinion."'
I think Ms Crouse might say, "They'd damn well better".
By the way, Ms Crouse is not fat.
https://www.google.com/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=lindsay+crouse+new+york+times&client=firefox-b-1-d&fir=RlLHPY09fyFycM%252CSINLmv0SevqF8M%252C_%253ByX9pa8sWqUrDSM%252CPYVjVcRc8mhp5M%252C_%253B7ee3N2kn2JTqYM%252C6TA1XruxvgvY1M%252C_%253BR7HbHVcVEU3b9M%252CwBIm9Wy1F-KcsM%252C_%253BhQUyqyO1MAilEM%252C6TA1XruxvgvY1M%252C_%253BlpQJ9DFIzUBiaM%252CYyhZCcLq-pIDWM%252C_%253B3pOO4fZPeAnfNM%252CcumZp9FG7A3XBM%252C_&usg=AI4_-kReNLPEk3sdXNn8WG9G-cq3gRuikg&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjiqK3nNnzAhXWsZ4KHaxsAVwQiR56BAhPEAI&biw=1760&bih=850&dpr=1.09
I thought you people were all in favor of society policing itself. Cancel Culture Okay Boomer are free market lazy faire features of a free and open society where you have to fight for your ideals.
Thanks to Christ the Libby lefty Marxists are rising up to challenge cancellation.
Is Crouse's article being shared on Twitter and Facebook? I ask because it concerns personal leaked information via Ben Crouse's emails, and I'm pretty sure social media companies developed a policy against sharing those sorts of things around this time last year. Just curious if that rule is still in effect.
"When you have harsh punishments for saying the wrong thing, risk-averse people will 'withhold anything that might be a mildly divergent opinion.'"
Isn't that the point? It is so much more peaceful that way.
Let's revisit Fahrenheit 451, where Montag is hearing why books have to go:
“If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag."
There are factions of society that say people with opinions I don't like shouldn't have jobs. There are factions of society that say people with opinions I don't like shouldn't get medical care.
You know where it ends.
"Do you have a racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic or fat-shaming thought?"
Me? Usually.
How in the world can this be constitutional? Requiring Businesses to check your papers before you buy a Hamburger? Must violate any number of Admendments.
But, as shown before, its completely irrelevant what the Case law or actual constitution says, only what the Judges sitting on the bench say. The SCOTUS is a never ending Constitutional Convention, rewriting the text as it sees fit.
You wonder why the Right wing puts up with it, but most of them are so dumb they don't even know the difference between a State Court and a Federal District court.
"it is OK to say it is not OK = I do not agree and will not stay silent ..."
Just picture the kind of people who pepper their speech with "It's not okay." I've been hearing that in conversational speech for years. In some people, it's a tic.
"I want to see EVERYBODY's E-mails. I bet there isn't a player, or a coach (or any other person) who is completely innocent in all that they write."
Au contraire. We are now being assured that of the 650,000 e-mails surveyed, Gruden's and ONLY Gruden's exhibited speech crime.
Be it Jon Gruden or female Afghan judges, everyone must be punished when times change.
Be it Jon Gruden or female Afghan judges, everyone must be punished when times change.
Ten years earlier he made some crass comments and now his career is over. I have lots of non-pc thoughts and I sometimes share them with others. As time goes by, some of my views have changed--evolved, I guess, is now the proper word. Times change, people change, opinions change. What's really "noxious" is the urge to cancel people for bad jokes that they made ten years earlier...Here's another noxious thing. Some people get cancelled, but others, whose behavior was far more noxious, continue to prosper and thrive. Bill Clinton, Howard Stern, Gov. Northam walk on through the valley of death....There's something Jacobin or Red Guardish in the behavior of these leftists. The history of imperialism and racism is disgusting and only now being openly discussed. The left has an equally disgusting history, but it is not discussed. The French revolutionary state within a single generation both ended slavery and then went on to try to re-institute slavery in the West Indies. They were successful in Martinique and Guadalupe but not in Haiti. That was a crime worse even than slavery, but, from what I see, Jefferson has caught more flack for screwing around with a slave than Napoleon has for sending an army of fifty thousand men to force emancipated humans back into chains.
I like Okeydoke Culture myself. The "It's not okay" thing is indeed irritating but what drives me bonkers is, "And that's a good thing." Martha Stewart has a lot to answer for.
The "athlete" is a tip off that she probably isn't fat. She is very easily triggered, though.
In February 2020 Crouse wrote a New York Times op-ed on her reaction to being told her ex-boyfriend, Michael Polansky, was Lady Gaga's new boyfriend. Marie Claire magazine quoted extensively from Crouse's op-ed, suggesting its readers could learn from her reaction. Crouse described viewing paparazzi pictures of Gaga and Polman, and feeling intimidated, before remembering being sent a candid photo another attendee had snapped of her dancing with her own fiancé. Many of the commentaries on her reaction ended with quoting her comparison between the paparazzi pictures with her putting the candid snapshot of her and her fiancé on her Instagram.
Everybody has their own OK culture. OK culture in her milieu most likely is okay with making derogatory comments about straight, White, fat men.
As Lehrer wrote 56 years ago:
Oh, the poor folks hate the rich folks,
And the rich folks hate the poor folks.
All of my folks hate all of your folks,
It's American as apple pie.
Ann Althouse said...
"it is OK to say it is not OK = I do not agree and will not stay silent ..."
Just picture the kind of people who pepper their speech with "It's not okay." I've been hearing that in conversational speech for years. In some people, it's a tic.
---------
my locution would be "I do not agree" and explain if asked.
... so the tic is prevalent in academic circles? are they ready for follow up question : why do you say that?/explain yourself
Crouse is trying to make 'OK Culture' happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pubd-spHN-0
"It's not going to happen."
Cancel culture is real and eternal. OK culture too. It’s just that the ones calling either out has changed. The new cancelers are woke, angry, college-educated, mostly female, slightly above average IQ (but not near what they think it is), often overweight, owner of many failed relationships, white (for the most part), and generally unfun people to be around. They are all named Karen, btw. They’re the judges in Paris in Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities,” oafs but dangerous and owning the seat of justice very temporarily.
The day will come when today’s cancelers will be canceled. Robespierre was one of the last to be guillotined. I await that day with anticipation.
I recall being told by our resident lefties/LLR-lefties that Cancel Culture did not exist. At all. In any shape manner or form.
Of course, those same idiots said Antifa is a myth, there is no inflation, there were no riots last summer, there is no crisis at the border, there is no supply chain problem, there are no Americans trapped in Afghanistan, Biden's Earpiece is always happy to take questions from press, men and women are interchangeable simply by wishing it were so, etc.
Howard: "Thanks to Christ the Libby lefty Marxists are rising up to challenge cancellation."
There are precisely ZERO marxists rising up to challenge cancellation. They are, in fact, its biggest proponents along with their NeverTrump and LLR lap poodles.
The marxists are the CRT/identify/Maoist Struggle Session instigators and they are only accelerating their activities.
The fact that you come on Althouse every single day and gaslight about what is happening, about what we all know is happening, simply marks you as one of their most reliable rubes.
Has anyone actually even seen Gruden's quotes in full and in context or are they just relying on characterizations in the media? If we are going to cancel someone, I at least want the full information.
I am puzzled by "the NFL and many other institutions dominated by straight white men." IS the NFL "dominated by straight white men"? Because I look at the team rosters and think, nope. I am not seeing the whites-'n'-Asians dominance here, no sirree. I see a sport well more than half of whose participants are cis-Black, in a country where about one in eight people are cis-Black.
OK Culture is what allows the kind of noxious discourse in Gruden’s emails to continue for years. Here’s how it works: Do you have a sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic or fat-shaming thought? Are you smart enough to know you shouldn’t say it in public but want to say it anyway? Are you a powerful and successful person? If so, just make your mean remark or crass joke to a select group who hold similar views or at least wouldn’t dare challenge yours. Don’t worry. It’s OK!...
No, freedom of speech is what allows people to say things you don't like.
The fact that you think you have the right to destroy people's lives for thought crimes, or for saying things you don't like, establishes that you Lindsay Crouse are an evil scum bag.
"fat-shaming"? FOAD
"Because I look at the team rosters and think, nope."
Michelle, look at the coaches and owners, not labor.
Also, hey free speechers -- any concern about the free speech of gay NFL players? Or the free speech of players who want to protest?
You don't actually care about free speech.
Daniel12 said...
Also, hey free speechers -- any concern about the free speech of gay NFL players?
Free speech to say what?
Or the free speech of players who want to protest?
You don't actually care about free speech.
Freedom of speech is something you use when you're not at work.
Should a player be fired for going to protests in his free time? I say no. you say "hell yes, if he went to the 1/6 protest!"
Should a player be fired for hijacking his team's voice by protesting while on the payroll?
Yes, he should.
You lefties are fascist scum because you work to destroy people's lives for their private activities (and emails between two consenting adults are private activities, unless they're part of criminal behavior). If you can't see the difference between private activities, and what you do on the job?
Well, that right there is why you are fascist scum
I'll take Daniel12's bait--
Who is suppressing the free speech of gay NFL players? (I'll grant you probably know more about gays and football*, but I'm asking for specific instances.)
Who is suppressing the free speech of players who want to protest? (I don't follow athletainment myself, but I'm pretty sure if coaches and players were being sacked for being too protesty someone would have told me.)
My working hypothesis is that a lot of people across the political spectrum mistake robust criticism and even disapproval for threats to their welfare.
* I do know that the big $$$ in the big sports stay mostly among the mostly W/white owners. The loudmouth billionaire players that cause mass swooning are presented as working-class heroes and credits to their species, and as superior humans. And though few of them could correctly place ten states on a map of the country, their political opinions are given more than respectful consideration by the professional fawning class.
Speak, while it's free.
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