Will Wilkinson, cancelled for tweeting, "If Biden really wanted unity, he'd lynch Mike Pence."

If cancelling is something that is going to be done, why should Will Wilkinson be an exception? It's got to be that the attempted cancellation of Will Wilkinson reverses the course of cancel culture. 

I'm reading "Cancel Culture Comes for Will Wilkinson/The Niskanen Center fired a senior staffer for tweeting an offensive joke about Mike Pence, and hypocrisies abound" by Robby Soave (at Reason). 

Wilkinson apologized, describing his tweet as a lapse in judgment. "It was sharp sarcasm, but looked like a call for violence," said Wilkinson. "That's always wrong, even as a joke." ...

And thus a noted doubter [that cancel culture exists] has been canceled for a problematic tweet—ironic, but also regrettable, in my view. 

Both the Niskanen Center and The New York Times are private organizations and free to associate with whomever they wish, of course; a think tank that intends to influence public policy by lobbying legislators may find it inconvenient to employ someone who threatened violence against Mike Pence, even in jest.... 

By the way, I once did a Bloggingheads episode with Will Wilkinson, but I don't remember it, and now the video won't play. Here's the audio. It was July 2010, and the topics included: "Re: Shirley Sherrod, Ann defends taking things out of context" — remember Shirley Sherrod? — "Do we deserve to know what was on Journolist?," "Are ordinary people becoming savvier media consumers?," and "Ann’s and Will’s tips for summer road trips."  The road trips bit begins around the 1-hour mark.

Is it foolish to think this painting of union workers killing strikebreakers expresses something about homosexuality?

I'm reading ""Modern Art Critic Assumes 1939 Painting Is All About Homophobia. It's About Murderous Union Thugs."/Paul Cadmus's Herrin Massacre is 'The Painting Our Art Critic Can't Stop Thinking About.' If only he'd thought harder" by Robby Soave (in Reason).

The Herrin massacre had nothing to do with homophobia; it was a labor dispute that ended with union workers massacring a bunch of people who had been hired to replace them....

This is a fascinating chapter in the history of American labor, and one that we don't often revisit. For modern progressives, unions are generally the good guys—an important branch in the tree of intersectionality. (Though they occasionally cause trouble. Trump attracted some union support.) Cadmus reminds us that they could be thuggish; in his painting, he portrays the unionists as ugly, sullen, drunken, murderous brutes.

It's not that the painting is devoid of gay content—the victims are shirtless and ripped—but to portray it as an obvious metaphor for anti-gay violence is to insert modern grievances where they don't belong....

Gay content? By that standard, all the paintings of the Crucifixion have gay content.



The art critic, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is Jerry Saltz. To be fair, he's looking at a painting that was included in a show called "The Young and Evil," which is (as Saltz puts it) "on the homosexual body in America as rendered by gay and bisexual artists from 1929 to 1957." Saltz is clear that "The actual event pictured was a 1922 massacre of strikebreakers by laborers that left 23 dead in an Illinois mining town." I don't think Saltz is confused about what the painting depicts and why the murders happened. It's just that it's a painting by a man who was gay (or bisexual), and it highlights male bodies, and it was included in the "Young and Evil" show. Saltz doesn't say the actual murders had to do with homophobia. He only says it shows "American violence, secular fundamentalism, crazed crowds, execution, martyrdom, the starvation of the spirit, and a complete lack of amazing grace."

Who knows what Cadmus really intended to express? Cadmus was commissioned by Life Magazine, but he got to pick the historical moment he depicted. He could have chosen this scene because he thought of it as a picture of some other kind of murder, and he could have chosen in because, as Soave concedes, it let him paint a bunch of beautiful reclining male bodies in a state of physical extremity. Who know what is in the artist's mind? And any viewer of the painting can meditate on these things without being a fool. Soave would like to forefront union thuggery, but Saltz doesn't have to, and the people who put the "Young and Evil" show together also obviously didn't.

Let's think about all the great historical paintings that hang in museums. Are they really about the specific event they depict or are they often about something else entirely? And where does the reality lie? In the mind of the dead artist? The painting matters and is on the wall now because it has some capacity to live in our own minds. And there are so many murder scenes in paintings that are, it seems to me, really about fleshly sensuality. And that includes some of those Crucifixion paintings.

"These strong claims—cultural Marxism! SJW jackals! Leftist social priorities!—should strike anyone who actually watches the ad as fairly ridiculous."

Writes Robby Soave in "The Gillette Ad Tells Men Not to Hurt People. Why Is This Offensive?/'Toxic masculinity' is sometimes a scapegoat for the left, but this particular commercial makes no grand anti-male claims" (Reason).

I agree. The ad is full of men stopping other men from doing bad things. That's one of the best things men do, and it's what the ad highlights. The ad ends with shots of beautiful boys and — in the logic of the sequence of images — they are learning — from men — how to be good men.

"Black Lives Matter Students Shut Down the ACLU's Campus Free Speech Event Because 'Liberalism Is White Supremacy.'"

Writes Robby Soave at Reason.com:

At first, [American Civil Liberties Union's Claire Gastañaga, a W & M alum] attempted to spin the demonstration as a welcome example of the kind of thing she had come to campus to discuss, commenting "Good, I like this," as they lined up and raised their signs. "I'm going to talk to you about knowing your rights, and protests and demonstrations, which this illustrates very well. Then I'm going to respond to questions from the moderators, and then questions from the audience."

It was the last remark she was able to make before protesters drowned her out with cries of, "ACLU, you protect Hitler, too." They also chanted, "the oppressed are not impressed," "shame, shame, shame, shame," (an ode to the Faith Militant's treatment of Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones, though why anyone would want to be associated with the religious fanatics in that particular conflict is beyond me), "blood on your hands," "the revolution will not uphold the Constitution," and, uh, "liberalism is white supremacy."...

These students have clearly made up their minds about free speech: they don't want to share it with anyone else—especially Nazis, but also civil liberties lawyers who happen to be experts on the thing they are willfully misunderstanding: the First Amendment. Their ideological position is obviously incoherent—Liberalism is white supremacy? What?—and would not stand up to scrutiny, which is probably why they have decided to make open debate an impossibility on campus. They really shouldn't get away with this.

I wouldn't assume the "ideological position is obviously incoherent," but chanting is not an attempt to provide a coherent explanation. Why doesn't William and Mary stage a debate on the proposition "Liberalism is white supremacy" and have a speaker who will try to present the idea coherently? Or are debates and demands for ideological coherence the stuff of white supremacy?

The liberals in my town did a tremendous amount of chanting during the anti-Scott-Walker protests of 2011. A favorite chant was "shame, shame, shame, shame," which Soave calls "an ode to the Faith Militant's treatment of Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones." That's not the association the "shame" chant has for me, and by the way, I am so sick of references to "Game of Thrones."

Anyway, chants have their place and can be very effective persuasion. I'm thinking of "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Did that have — did that need — ideological coherence?

I'd love to hear debate on these topics, but I know they'd probably just get shouted down. When you stage in-person events, you create opportunities, and some people will grab what they can. To say "They really shouldn't get away with this" is not to prescribe a remedy to this persistent phenomenon, which is part of living in a free society, as Claire Gastañaga seemed to be trying to say before she gave up on controlling the stage that was set up for her.

One might say the freedom of speech is obviously incoherent. But freedom is good, incoherent or not.

Here's Bill Maher interviewing Milo Yiannopoulos last night.

I thought that went very well for both men, and it was surprising and nice how much they agreed, notably about the power of comedy to transcend political lines and recombine people in new ways. These 2 made a great team, and I think Maher saw a lot of himself in Milo.

ADDED: Yesterday on this blog, we were talking about a Reason.com piece by Robby Soave. Soave disrespected the comic version of political speech:

Too many right-leaning student groups have lost interest in inviting speakers who are knowledgeable about philosophy and policy: they would rather score easy outrage points with provocateurs.

He's talking about Milo (as the link makes clear).

What I said yesterday was: "I don't agree with Soave's disapproval. I think you can have philosophers and policy wonks and also lively provocateurs...."

Seeing Milo and Maher working together in that clip — and going meta about how political comedy works — reinforces my strong belief in the value of comic speech.

"Cornell University Students Vote Against Intellectual Diversity, on Grounds It Would Harm Diversity."

A funny headline on a piece over at Reason.com by Robby Soave. At Cornell, the Student Assembly voted down a resolution that called for a committee to look into the lack of political diversity in the Cornell faculty. The arguments against the resolution were summarized as:

(1) conservatives have not been historically oppressed as have other groups; (2) spending resources on intellectual diversity diverts resources from promoting other forms of diversity; and (3) conservative students are free to speak out in class if they find something disagreeable or wish to argue their own point of view....

The headline isn't very fair to that 3-point objection to having this committee. It focuses on #2 and distorts even that. I rather doubt that the cute, clickable headline was written by Soave, because he disapproves of campus conservatives acting like leftist students by "playing the victim" and inviting speakers who are "provocateurs" and not serious experts in "philosophy and policy."

I don't agree with Soave's disapproval. I think you can have philosophers and policy wonks and also lively provocateurs, and I think it's worth exploring victimology — who's really the victim? I've spent enough time around conservatives and libertarians to know that their pretensions about neutral, egg-headed reason feel hollow and deceptive much of the time to those of us who aren't already on their side. I believe it's unreasonable to deny that emotion is part of human reason, and I have seen Reason magazine philosophy/policy types boil over with anger at the expression of that belief.

But I want to get back to that headline, inapt as it is for Soave's brief essay on the Cornell committee that was not to be. It seems like an argument through stating a paradox: They voted against diversity on the ground that it would hurt diversity. (It's reminiscent of that old Vietnam War line: "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.")

But it occurs to me that there are some ideas that are destructive of intellectual diversity. I don't mean ideas put into practice, such as censorship or discrimination based on viewpoint. I mean the ideas themselves. Within a free-speech approach, you can argue that censorship or viewpoint discrimination is a good idea. It would be censorship or viewpoint discrimination to exclude those ideas. People can see those arguments in the marketplace of ideas and decide for themselves if they want to buy them. You might say, but if people do accept those ideas, they might put them into practice, but if you believe in the overarching idea of free speech, you are trusting people to consider and reject the bad ideas, and you think the idea of free speech will win in the marketplace.

But there is one type of idea that just as an idea is destructive of the diversity in the marketplace of ideas. Do you see what it is? It's an idea that is so good it wrecks the market for all the competing ideas, the completely convincing idea. There are many ideas like that — problems where the solutions have been discovered. We needn't puzzle over the possible answers anymore. We know (or feel sure that we know). That's the one type of idea that you should exclude if intellectual diversity is your most sacred goal. That shows why intellectual diversity can't be your highest goal. Why would you exclude the most devastatingly obviously correct ideas?

I'll pose one answer to my question and let you decide whether you want to buy it: You'd exclude those ideas when you have other ideas you want to protect from competition. So then there's this corollary: To genuinely love intellectual diversity and to want to exclude one of the ideas is to admit that it's devastatingly better than those other ideas.

And, yes, yes, of course I know that "they" do not really love intellectual diversity. It's a hypothetical. Assume genuine love for intellectual diversity. Assume it is really and truly your highest value. If you had 10 ideas about how to solve a particular problem and a new idea came along that was so obviously true that no one would bother with the other 10 anymore, you would suppress the 11th idea, so that you could continue to benefit from the vibrancy of 10 living, breathing ideas.

If that's all too abstract, think it through in the context of a culture with 10 thriving religions and the question whether to ban the discussion of atheism.

"We are concerned that our brothers have been named publicly with reckless disregard in violation of their constitutional rights."

"We are now compelled to speak for our team and take back our program."



Reason.com has this, by Robby Soave: "University of Minnesota Football Team Boycotts ‘Unjust Title IX Investigation’/Ten students of color were suspended for sexual misconduct, even though the police said it was consensual."

[Team member Carlton] Djam told police that their sex was fully consensual. He produced three video clips taken on the morning in question that showed the woman was "lucid, alert, somewhat playful and fully conscious; she does not appear to be objecting to anything at this time," according to the police report. This satisfied the police and no charges were filed....

[But] the university has its own process for investigating sexual misconduct that is separate from the police. According to the Education Department, Title IX—a federal statute mandating equality between the sexes in public education—requires universities to adjudicate sexual misconduct internally.... [T]he Office for Civil Rights—the agency that ensures Title IX compliance—has instructed universities to use a lower standard of proof. OCR guidance also discourages administrators from allowing cross-examination, one of the most vital tools a defendant has to prove his or her innocent.

As a result of Minnesota's Title IX proceeding, 10 players were suspended. 

Soave proceeds to critique the NYT for failing to mention race in its piece "Minnesota Football Players Pledge Boycott Over Teammates’ Suspensions." 

All 10 of the suspended players are black.

IN THE COMMENTS: David Begley said:

The players are essentially saying: Hey, it's okay to for ten of our teammates to have sex with a single drunk woman.

"Grabbing an unsuspecting and unwilling person's genitals is a criminal act of sexual assault under any definition of sexual assault."

"Trump is evidently proud of the fact that he wielded his wealth and star power as a weapon to help him abuse women—to kiss and grope them without their permission. This is violence, full stop.... Trump would be a dangerous enough human being if he were just a regular celebrity with a penchant for groping women. As it so happens, he might also become the next leader of the free world—a position he is manifestly unqualified to hold.... No man whose overriding ideology is that he gets to do whatever he wants—to whomever he wants—should be president."

Writes Robby Soave at Reason.

I said the same thing when I first heard the recording yesterday. Quoting Tim Kaine's "I don't like to say the words that he's used in the past... but this is behavior," I said:

Yes, Tim Kaine is right. Trump's statement — which is itself only words — is a confession to behavior.

Criminal behavior. Sexual assault.

And I agree with Soave that the problem goes beyond sex. It reveals an attitude about how to use power: If there is no external restraint, you can do anything.

You can't trust a person with power who doesn't have an internal moral core and who is not governed by self-restraint.