Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Jonathan Chait has written an article for New York Magazine about his concerns that political correctness threatens free debate by trying to silence certain points of view. Political correctness, in Chait’s view, is a “system of left-wing ideological repression” that threatens the “bedrock liberal ideal” of a “free political marketplace where we can reason together…
http://youtu.be/uEe5xL4G3Y8 via How Objective Is The Law? Serial: Part 1 | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios – YouTube.
Prolific political blogger and former New York City resident Andrew Sullivan announced today that he is stepping away from blogging. His announcement comes nearly exactly ten years after the last time he announced that he was stepping away from blogging. Today, Sullivan writes, “I’ve decided to stop blogging in the near future.” Why? Two reasons….
This is what realpolitik looks like on the Internet. Marek Sotak/Flickr If you use Twitter, you’ve probably encountered the “subtweet,” a technique we defined last year in The Atlantic as “the practice of talking about someone without referencing them explicitly.” Alexis Madrigal exemplified subtweeting like this: So, “@alexismadrigal is a jerk” is one thing, but…
One of the things I’ve always tried to do at the Dish is to be up-front with readers. This sometimes means grotesque over-sharing; sometimes it means I write imprudent arguments I have to withdraw; sometimes it just means a monthly update on our revenues and subscriptions; and sometimes I stumble onto something actually interesting. But…
There is a need these days for a strong liberal argument against the tendency of some on the left to lean on silencing and censorship instead of vigorous argumentation. Sadly, Jonathan Chait’s recent piece for New York, titled “Not A Very P.C. Thing To Say,” was not it. While the article purports to be a…
So, here is sad white man Jonathan Chait’s essay about the difficulty of being a white man in the second age of “political correctness.” In a neat bit of editorial trolling, New York teased the column with following question: “Can a white, liberal man critique a culture of political correctness?” The answer, as anyone with…
God forbid no one care that your feelings were hurt by a woman calling you a sexist after you called her a bitch. Photograph: Bill Varie/Corbis When a writer like New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait feels it necessary to whine in print about his and other (mostly well-remunerated) writers’ inability to write offensive tripe without…
To say I stood up and cheered as I finished reading Jon Chait’s new essay on the resurgence of a toxic political correctness on the left would be an understatement. There’s some great reporting in it that really helps put into context what the new guardians of the identity politics left are up to. Here’s…
As intended, Jonathan Chait’s denunciation of the “PC language police” – a trite note of self-victimization he’s been sounding for decades – provoked intense reaction: much criticism from liberals and praise from conservatives (with plenty of exceptions both ways). I have all sorts of points I could make about his argument – beginning with how he tellingly focuses on the…