Items of Interest, Reconciliation and Redemption Edition
"We are setting a new norm and a new subculture that no longer tolerates ugliness."
Collin May, Cancellation, Counter-Speech, and the Common Good. “In general, while we may not want to engage in restrictive anti-hate legislation that would bump up against the First Amendment, there are legal actions in addition to creating a free speech culture that could assist targets to recuperate damages from cancelers. These legal remedies, often dealing with workplace-related claims or contracts are less engaged with free speech than defamation claims and have the potential to operate not unlike the tribunals of Machiavelli’s cherished Romans, though without the need to cast the culpable to their deaths from the rocks above.”
Uri Berliner, I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust. “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.”1
Andrew Beck, The Anti-Fragile Brendan Eich. “I am not here to complain about cancel culture. Brendan Eich does not. He is too busy. He refuses to be defined by the evil done to him, or by the purported heterodoxy of his beliefs, but by the work he does and by his character, as known by those closest to him.”
David A. Eisenberg, Overlooking the Past. “Imagine finding a lost dog, keeping it, and solemnly proclaiming that this dog traditionally belonged to the Thompsons who live down the street. If the people issuing such statements were not so thoroughly neutered, one might say upon hearing a land acknowledgment: that takes balls.”
Zach Brown, The Department of Aesthetics. “We are setting a new norm and a new subculture that no longer tolerates ugliness. Be judgemental. Point out the visual offenses around you; whether it be a new building in your neighborhood, an art exhibition, or a badly dressed co-ed at your local bar. The success of cancel culture was the weaponization of public shame. The difference here is that there is reconciliation and redemption from aesthetic sins. We must want something more for those we love, our friends, our families, and our children. We must inspire a love of beauty and the ability to recognize it.”
, Muse among the Drafts: Part II. “What art communicates is never divorced from how it does so. And the how—an artwork’s aesthetics—is always and in the first place what impresses upon our spirit and our senses. In a draft or earlier version, we often find much the same content as in the completed work, but its authority lacking, its impression on us—and thereby its meaning—muted.” and , How BLM and COVID Are Wrecking the American Theater. “So it's just funny to me to see now that the industry is now self-immolating over this idea that it's a white supremacist industry, and no one has ever impeded me. No one has ever made me feel out of place. No one has ever made me feel not included, until a bunch of mostly white progressives decided that I don't belong in the industry, which I think is ironic.”Maxim D. Shrayer, The Silencing of the Jewish Poet. “Jewish poets also report being ‘disgusted and betrayed’ with one-sided or pro-Hamas statements of some publications and feeling unwelcome at literary venues, cultural organizations, and publications. A Jewish poet did not want these powerful words attributed: ‘At this point, I have withdrawn from the literary community. I have stopped submitting, and stopped reading a lot of journals. I only feel safe with other Jewish writers. Maybe when the war is over I will have the emotional energy to reengage, but the poetry world currently feels like poison.’”
Tonight: 7 PM, a panel discussion for “Mind Leaves Body: Elisabeth Condon, Susan Luss, Alyse Rosner,” at the Westbeth Gallery. Exhibition runs through April 24.
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The next entry of the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is The Sphinx and the Milky Way: Selections from the Journals of Charles Burchfield. For more information see the ASBC calendar.
Dissident Muse’s first publication, Backseat Driver by James Croak, is available now at Amazon.
Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art by Walter Darby Bannard is out now at Allworth Press. More information is available at the site for the book. If you own it already, thank you; please consider reviewing the book at Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads.
NPR’s president, who has never before worked in journalism, responded to this report with a dissembling note to staff. It subsequently came to light that her political inclinations are embarrassingly partisan. Unsurprisingly, NPR suspended Berliner with a warning that future alleged breaches of decorum would result in his firing. Berliner subsequently resigned, announcing that “I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.”
Berliner is Jewish and may well be considered to fit a new woke term I recently learned of, "Ashkenormativity." Columbia University's school of social work orientation glossary defines “Ashkenormativity” as a “system of oppression that favors white Jewish folx.” I'm not making that up.
Beautiful Elisabeth Condon picture cuts through all the bs