Liberals Infuriated By NY Times Editorial Recognizing Cancel Culture Problem Cancel Subscriptions
“Well it looks like it’s time to cancel my @nytimes subscription. What the hell has happened to this once respected newspaper?”
The unthinkable has happened.
The New York Times, which proudly boasts of having one of the most “woke” (and intolerant) newsrooms of any news organization in America, has finally come around to admitting not only that cancel culture does exist, but that’s it’s also dangerous for our society.
In an opinion piece published Friday, the editorial board first noted in their headline that “America Has a Free Speech Problem.”
Within the piece, they pointed out how the “social silencing” that “has been evident for years” needed to be pushed back on, but that “dealing with it stirs yet more fear.”
But when it came to the blame game, they predictably pinned the lion’s share on the right rather than their fellow leftists, failing to acknowledge that the most prominent and obnoxious instances of cancel culture prevailing over the last several years have come from vicious left-leaning campaigns to silence opponents (archive link):
How has this happened? In large part, it’s because the political left and the right are caught in a destructive loop of condemnation and recrimination around cancel culture. Many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture exists at all, believing that those who complain about it are offering cover for bigots to peddle hate speech. Many on the right, for all their braying about cancel culture, have embraced an even more extreme version of censoriousness as a bulwark against a rapidly changing society, with laws that would ban books, stifle teachers and discourage open discussion in classrooms.
In reality, the majority of the “book banning” is coming from the woke left, while the bit about conservatives “stifling teachers and discouraging open discussions in classrooms” is pure gaslighting, not to mention very ignorant of the fact that the stifling of teachers and discouraging of open discussions in classrooms is very much happening at higher ed. institutions where conservative professors, students, and speakers are being shouted down and ostracized—and in some cases, canceled—by intolerant leftist mobs, mobs which oftentimes (and sadly) include faculty members.
Later, though, after waxing poetic about the supposedly awesome social justice-y things “progressives” have done in the past, the Times’ editorial board wrote about how the modern left has become chillingly intolerant of opposing views:
In the course of their fight for tolerance, many progressives have become intolerant of those who disagree with them or express other opinions and taken on a kind of self-righteousness and censoriousness that the right long displayed and the left long abhorred. It has made people uncertain about the contours of speech: Many know they shouldn’t utter racist things, but they don’t understand what they can say about race or can say to a person of a different race from theirs. Attacking people in the workplace, on campus, on social media and elsewhere who express unpopular views from a place of good faith is the practice of a closed society.
On balance, it was a thoughtful piece though sprinkled here and there with the liberal bias one would expect from the NY Times. At the very least it was something one would hope would spark a reconsideration from leftists on the issue.
Instead, it generated outrage from the Usual Suspects for whom suppressing the speech of conservatives is paramount to both their professional survival and their acceptance among elite cocktail circuit movers and shakers:
If I still worked at the NYT, I would seriously think about quitting today.
— Adam Davidson (@adamdavidson) March 18, 2022
NY Times has allowed the right wing to dictate the language of the debate. Fascist ideas acceptable opinion, white supremacy arguments acceptable opinion, ‘cancel culture’ bad. pic.twitter.com/29WXwV4jrC
— @ACNewman (@ACNewman) March 18, 2022
Dear @nytimes there is no “both sides” or “cancel culture” with these people. They are racists who are just angry that there are consequences when they exercise their free speech. https://t.co/gOe8XSJl7F
— Unexpectedactivist (@Unexpectedactiv) March 18, 2022
Hilariously, some noted that they were rushing to cancel their subscriptions to the paper, kinda sorta proving their point about cancel culture:
Cancelled Subscription. Until people over there make an informed informed statement regarding this Cancel Culture seems to be the only recourse. Misinformation can not be the norm. Without apology and clarificationI have to assume @NYTimes is moving in the wrong direction.
— Matt McGrath (@TheMattMcGrath) March 18, 2022
Well it looks like it’s time to cancel my @nytimes subscription. What the hell has happened to this once respected newspaper?
— Jo Ann Singer ✡️ (@jdpooch) March 18, 2022
Is it cancel culture that I canceled my @nytimes subscription for this @NYTimesOpinion whine?https://t.co/7Dq8JMSaAQ
— M A Gaylor 🇺🇦 🆘 (@MamaGaylor) March 18, 2022
Perhaps more disturbingly were the journalism professors who had meltdowns over the Times’ admission of an inconvenient truth:
Congratulations to the @nytimes Editorial Board for what is perhaps the worst argument a US newspaper has made on free speech and free expression in recent memory. Congratulations also for fueling "cancel culture" bullshit that facing the consequences of your speech is tyranny. pic.twitter.com/iIBZd7fv7h
— Christian Christensen (@ChrChristensen) March 18, 2022
The editorial's lede is the worst of it. No, we have not lost our right to speak. We are exercising our right to speak around the gatekeepers that included old, white, male, privileged, powerful, closed newspapers and editorial boards and they resent it. 2/ pic.twitter.com/AKqv8mzQB1
— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) March 18, 2022
Jarvis’ angry Twitter thread went on for 16, count ’em, 16 tweets. For grins and giggles, you can check it out in full here or here.
Interestingly enough, he had nothing to say when he was alerted to the fact that the Times’ editorial board is a very definition of the very types of diversity leftists like Jarvis normally laud:
NYT Editorial Board: pic.twitter.com/omq5hv1t77
— Sтяхшмхи 🌵 (@strxwmxn) March 18, 2022
In any event, though this won’t change the balance in terms of how the Times typically operates (from a radically left-wing perspective that oozes out of every news article they write), conservatives can at least celebrate a small victory in the cancel culture wars in that the Times’ opinion-side awakening on this topic has at long last begun.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
The New York Times decided years ago to be a liberal voice. Their conservative subscribers left and all that remains are liberal followers who expect to get their money’s worth. Or else.
Years ago? Try DECADES ago.
The leftist cancel culture is once again enacting cancel culture for an article that condemns cancel culture by…. Conservatives.
I don’t recall threats of death for leftists activists like Bill Ayers when he speaks on a campus. But Ben Shapiro has a chick with a dïck threaten to send him “home in an ambulance.” As if one goes home in an ambulance instead of the hospital.
Fucking leftturds. Echo chamber from hell.
By the way New York Times. Have you hidden the genocide of any jgoos lately?
Cancel culture: when you can shout down and physically intimidat people of an opposing opinions (usually conservatives) because because you don’t have any answers to their questions/criticisms, and knowing that the mainstream media and social media will back you up.
Or, more simply, a mob. A socialist, fascist mob.
It kind of puts the paper of recoil in a bad spot. Conservatives already don’t read it and liberals are turning their backs.
Oh please, the NYTimes as well as the rest of the liberal propaganda arm of the democrat party certainly hasn’t changed its mind in any manner. This is just a cynical attempt to rehabilitate the left’s image before the upcoming Nov. 2022 midterm elections.That they are pissing off the only people that still read their rag of a paper is just an unfortunate side effect. After the midterm election they’ll all be right back to their leftist shenanigans.. Guaranteed.
Or recognition of the fact that Biden has to go, and this is the beginning of the process.
What next, Biden has dementia stories?
Communist regimes, like the NYT, always impose a divine justice on their own. They are so intolerant of other views, they that if they don’t cancel their comrades, who holds a slightly variant view from their own, their comrades will cancel them. The purges at the NYT have been going on. They know they will eventually be the next, just like the Bolshevik leadership always knew their turn would come.
To acknowledge or concede would be an existential challenge to their being. To face the fact of how wrong you were on most everything, and how willingly you accepted the lies. Very hard to do. Many know they are wrong, but the dogma dies hard. It is dying, however. increasingly. Hope the world does not explode before the transformation occurs. It’s tragic how far things have fallen under their high culture.
And now, having issued their STERNLY WORDED MEMO in defense of free speech, the Times’ editors will return to their regularly scheduled gaslighting.
Billions are left unflabbergsted.
Frankenstein, redux
What happened to NYT, Hunter’s lap top is Hunter’s and free speech all in the same week…I’d be suspicious, too
Don’t the first two words of this article’s headline more or less describe the default state of the average leftist?
“Liberals “Infuriated”
Yeah, but it should say “Liberals Happy” because they get their way all the time.
The New York Times can die in a fire.
All of them, plus the building.
And if we’re lucky, it will spread.
“Attacking people … who express unpopular views from a place of good faith is the practice of a closed society.”
Hmmmm … “closed society” … what an odd term to use in a newspaper editorial. It’s almost as if the editors inadvertently let the mask slip a little, revealing that the NY Times is controlled by … oh, I don’t know, maybe George Soros …
The NYT is simply planting a comment for the internet (is forever) that can be pulled up in the future and cited as proof of its objection to and calling out of the cancel culture. It means nothing, they know it and we know it. Expect more like this from the entire left wing media – personalities, scribblers, talking heads, flacks – as they scramble to get on the record for posterity. It is going to be revolting.
Or recognition of the fact that Biden has to go, and this is the beginning of the process.
What next, Biden has dementia stories?
Hilarious that the NYT complains about cancel culture by blaming it on the right but still gets the left riled up and angry.
Many years ago I did my Cancel Culture thing with Consumer Reports, the American Chemical Society, any many other organizations that promoted Global Warming/Climate Change. Although I am not a climate scientist, I am trained in evaluating data, and its trends, Looking at isolated climate stations in the middle of nowhere showed no warming since the hot year of 1934. Unfortunately, those stations were closed down in the 1990’s because they did not fit the warming narrative. Now I believe nothing from the media, Government or advocacy groups unless I can see the raw data.
O’Keefe and Project Veritas are going to take them to the cleaners in court. O’Keefe has pubicly said it is not about the money, basically he wants blood. This may be some convoluted way of trying to appear as far to everyone.
O’Keefe’s case is fascinating and I suspect the NYT may have to settle if the appellate courts found that the NYT acted improperly in precipitously publishing information that it had access to solely due to the cooperation of the DOJ
The problem will be proving that. As I understand it, the NYT denies that it got its information from the FBI, or that the FBI raids had anything to do with it. It may not expect anyone to actually believe this, but in O’Keefe has the burden of actually disproving it — without the usual tools of discovery and compelled testimony, because of the dishonest interpretation of “freedom of the press” that the news industry has convinced many courts and state legislatures to adopt.
This is what happens when the NYT an expensive Twitter page with a horrible record on Communism, Nazism and anti Semitism and a promoter of every woke cause under the sun deviates from a woke norm.
It’s worth noting that when they talk about book burning and stifling teachers it isn’t about free speech. People have a right to read those books and teachers have the same free speech rights as anyone else.
When they are working however, they mustn’t use their position of power to influence children so there is an entirely reasonable limitation on free speech in that scenario. It’s not unusual nor unreasonable.