Let's keep it simple. Don't ask for apologies, cancellations, suspensions. What she said was stupid and wrong, so call it stupid and wrong publicly and let the debate or verbal war roll forward. Enough with Inquisitions, right and left! I'm with Arnold and good for him for speaking up for the right of a left-wing idiot to be an idiot.
It's good to be current on this important issue. I used to totally agree on Free Speech, that Whoopi shouldn't suffer any cancellation, but now I'm not so sure. Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation talks about how "Tit for Tat" is the best prisoner's dilemma strategy. Offer cooperation, but respond in the next round as they responded this round. 2021 saw lots of wrong speech cancel culture intolerance against conservatives.
The 30 years War ended with the Treaty of Westphalia, establishing religious tolerance.
We need tolerance. Tolerance from an intolerant, soft totalitarian college indoctrinated elite whose lousy dishonest "political correctness" has already become cancel culture. I don't believe we who want tolerance will get it by tolerating those who spread hate and intolerance. I think we'll only get it when the elite Democrat totalitarians start losing money, and positions, and status, for their dishonest claims of tolerance while actually supporting intolerance.
Only when more Dems suffer from cancel culture will the Dems in power really question it.
Neo has much better discussion of the Jews as (racist) Whites issue, which is much bigger than just Caryn Johnson (who culturally appropriated the name Goldberg for stage).
I broadly agree, but there are two points where I disagree.
First, it is reasonable to expect Whoopi Goldberg to either apologize or to lucidly explain her thinking. She chose the stereotypically Jewish name Goldberg for her stage name, and previously claimed to know she is Jewish, so she should understand why her comment was so offensive to so many people -- Jew and gentile alike. (If she had not apologized, I would hope her friends or respected colleagues would intervene and try to explain why any attempted explanation would be soundly criticized.)
Second, she is -- in a very narrow sense -- right that European persecution of Jews, epitomized by the Holocaust, was not race-based as commonly defined in America today. That is mostly a reflection of ideological blinders that are too common in today's world, though: The modern American concept of race is not the only excuse that people use for inhuman behavior to other people. We must not forget that. Such intolerance is still a severe problem today: Half of Jews in France teach their children to hide their religion to avoid attacks.
(In sense that the modern left argues that race is a social construct, I think Jews were treated much like a race in century-ago Europe. Many anti-Semites were explicit about that.)
More seriously, I believe the correct response should be that what she said was horrible, but she shouldn't be canceled because cancelling people is wrong. That way we avoid the problem of people claiming that the right wants to cancel people just as much as the left.
You described yourself as a "free speech absolutist." Surely you know that the concept of freedom of speech applies to the government not being allowed to restrain or punish it. It has nothing to do with private speech. If an ABC employee says something stupid or "hurtful" and ABC perceives this will hurt their bottom line, they are entirely within their rights to discipline said employee. Private citizens are withing their rights to ask ABC to sanction the employee. ABC is free to ignore them. Note my use of the word "free." As long as no government entity tries to sanction the speech there is no loss of freedom.
Playing Greenblatt's advocate: the reason why the ADL is the way that it is is because its funders believe that it is more effective at preventing harm to its interests than the free speech absolutist position. You are arguing for the collective benefit of free speech. Greenblatt operates under a different and narrower bailiwick. The Arnold Kling ADL might restrict itself to strict incidents of defamation. The Greenblatt ADL seeks to snip incipient support for Farrakhanism in the bud before it has the chance to spread and create more problems for his clients. Her actual remarks were totally anodyne, and in a different context would not raise much controversy at all. After all, the census classes 'Jews' as 'Whites.'
So, to change the ADL, you would have to convince it that an environment of free speech on the ancient Anglo-American model is superior to the model that it has sought to advance since 1913. Greenblattism has a lot of credibility, but it has also accumulated many critics over the years. I would say more cynically that the Anglo-American model of free speech only exists insomuch as it serves corporate and secular interests, with the original telos only existing in a vestigial and rapidly expiring form in reality. You can instantly assemble billions of dollars in legal firepower to fight for the right to publish soft porn on HBO, or the right to host illegal material on a server, but it is significantly tougher to assemble that much for genuine issues related to political speech issues. To judge which side of a conflict is stronger, it's helpful to look at these types of resource cycle issues. Lady Chatterley's army is very big and very strong, whereas James Madison's is very puny and quite raggedy, especially now that the former no longer needs to feign support for the latter.
Can you explain why "the demands for apologies from Goldberg, and her suspension, are likely to increase rather than diminish the rise of anti-semitism."?
That seems way too broad to me. Setting aside calling for her suspension, it seems to say that we shouldn't even exercise our own free speech against things that are wrong and insulting.
I've read that a lot of woke tactics do generate anti-minority sentiment, and generally agree with that view. But I think this is a clearly different situation than haranguing people about their privilege and arguing for the infallibility of POCs. Here we have an individual who said something stupid. She shouldn't be censored or punished (I totally agree with that!), but asking people to refrain from something as prosaic as an apology seems like self-censorship
We are living in the insane world of outrage both fake and real.The thought and speech police need to get a grip on themselves. They themselves (tv executives) are worried about being called out! -rating$.
As ill informed as the ironicaly named Goldberg may be there are actually ultra-religious Jews who believe and say that the Holocaust was divine retribution for collective sins. Perhaps they too should be called out and cancelled for being Anti-semitism. Imagine the outrage that would follow.
Let's keep it simple. Don't ask for apologies, cancellations, suspensions. What she said was stupid and wrong, so call it stupid and wrong publicly and let the debate or verbal war roll forward. Enough with Inquisitions, right and left! I'm with Arnold and good for him for speaking up for the right of a left-wing idiot to be an idiot.
John Stalnaker
It's good to be current on this important issue. I used to totally agree on Free Speech, that Whoopi shouldn't suffer any cancellation, but now I'm not so sure. Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation talks about how "Tit for Tat" is the best prisoner's dilemma strategy. Offer cooperation, but respond in the next round as they responded this round. 2021 saw lots of wrong speech cancel culture intolerance against conservatives.
The 30 years War ended with the Treaty of Westphalia, establishing religious tolerance.
We need tolerance. Tolerance from an intolerant, soft totalitarian college indoctrinated elite whose lousy dishonest "political correctness" has already become cancel culture. I don't believe we who want tolerance will get it by tolerating those who spread hate and intolerance. I think we'll only get it when the elite Democrat totalitarians start losing money, and positions, and status, for their dishonest claims of tolerance while actually supporting intolerance.
Only when more Dems suffer from cancel culture will the Dems in power really question it.
Neo has much better discussion of the Jews as (racist) Whites issue, which is much bigger than just Caryn Johnson (who culturally appropriated the name Goldberg for stage).
https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/02/01/whoopi-goldberg-the-nazis-and-those-white-jews/
I broadly agree, but there are two points where I disagree.
First, it is reasonable to expect Whoopi Goldberg to either apologize or to lucidly explain her thinking. She chose the stereotypically Jewish name Goldberg for her stage name, and previously claimed to know she is Jewish, so she should understand why her comment was so offensive to so many people -- Jew and gentile alike. (If she had not apologized, I would hope her friends or respected colleagues would intervene and try to explain why any attempted explanation would be soundly criticized.)
Second, she is -- in a very narrow sense -- right that European persecution of Jews, epitomized by the Holocaust, was not race-based as commonly defined in America today. That is mostly a reflection of ideological blinders that are too common in today's world, though: The modern American concept of race is not the only excuse that people use for inhuman behavior to other people. We must not forget that. Such intolerance is still a severe problem today: Half of Jews in France teach their children to hide their religion to avoid attacks.
(In sense that the modern left argues that race is a social construct, I think Jews were treated much like a race in century-ago Europe. Many anti-Semites were explicit about that.)
From the Babylon Bee. "While Watching 'The View' In Hell, Hitler Surprised To Learn Holocaust Wasn't About Race" https://babylonbee.com/news/while-watching-the-view-in-hell-hitler-surprised-to-learn-holocaust-wasnt-about-race
More seriously, I believe the correct response should be that what she said was horrible, but she shouldn't be canceled because cancelling people is wrong. That way we avoid the problem of people claiming that the right wants to cancel people just as much as the left.
While I agree with the sentiment, I am beginning to understand that Alinsky was right all along.
You described yourself as a "free speech absolutist." Surely you know that the concept of freedom of speech applies to the government not being allowed to restrain or punish it. It has nothing to do with private speech. If an ABC employee says something stupid or "hurtful" and ABC perceives this will hurt their bottom line, they are entirely within their rights to discipline said employee. Private citizens are withing their rights to ask ABC to sanction the employee. ABC is free to ignore them. Note my use of the word "free." As long as no government entity tries to sanction the speech there is no loss of freedom.
Playing Greenblatt's advocate: the reason why the ADL is the way that it is is because its funders believe that it is more effective at preventing harm to its interests than the free speech absolutist position. You are arguing for the collective benefit of free speech. Greenblatt operates under a different and narrower bailiwick. The Arnold Kling ADL might restrict itself to strict incidents of defamation. The Greenblatt ADL seeks to snip incipient support for Farrakhanism in the bud before it has the chance to spread and create more problems for his clients. Her actual remarks were totally anodyne, and in a different context would not raise much controversy at all. After all, the census classes 'Jews' as 'Whites.'
So, to change the ADL, you would have to convince it that an environment of free speech on the ancient Anglo-American model is superior to the model that it has sought to advance since 1913. Greenblattism has a lot of credibility, but it has also accumulated many critics over the years. I would say more cynically that the Anglo-American model of free speech only exists insomuch as it serves corporate and secular interests, with the original telos only existing in a vestigial and rapidly expiring form in reality. You can instantly assemble billions of dollars in legal firepower to fight for the right to publish soft porn on HBO, or the right to host illegal material on a server, but it is significantly tougher to assemble that much for genuine issues related to political speech issues. To judge which side of a conflict is stronger, it's helpful to look at these types of resource cycle issues. Lady Chatterley's army is very big and very strong, whereas James Madison's is very puny and quite raggedy, especially now that the former no longer needs to feign support for the latter.
Can you explain why "the demands for apologies from Goldberg, and her suspension, are likely to increase rather than diminish the rise of anti-semitism."?
That seems way too broad to me. Setting aside calling for her suspension, it seems to say that we shouldn't even exercise our own free speech against things that are wrong and insulting.
I've read that a lot of woke tactics do generate anti-minority sentiment, and generally agree with that view. But I think this is a clearly different situation than haranguing people about their privilege and arguing for the infallibility of POCs. Here we have an individual who said something stupid. She shouldn't be censored or punished (I totally agree with that!), but asking people to refrain from something as prosaic as an apology seems like self-censorship
We are living in the insane world of outrage both fake and real.The thought and speech police need to get a grip on themselves. They themselves (tv executives) are worried about being called out! -rating$.
As ill informed as the ironicaly named Goldberg may be there are actually ultra-religious Jews who believe and say that the Holocaust was divine retribution for collective sins. Perhaps they too should be called out and cancelled for being Anti-semitism. Imagine the outrage that would follow.